Syncing my BB address book with Yahoo!

[DigitalDave76]

Since the message board has some helpful and knowledgeable folks hanging around tonight, I'll throw out another question...

Syncing my BB address book with my Yahoo! address book doesn't seem possible. Am I doing something wrong? Any quick and easy pointers, or links to other threads on this topic anyone could give me? All my searches of the boards on this topic turn up too many threads to sort through.

I have a carefully organized address book with my Yahoo! Mail that I've kept nice and tidy for years and I'd love for it to just drop into my BB but I can't seem to make it happen.

I don't need my BB address book to update 'live' with every addition or change I make when I'm on my desktop computer using my Yahoo! mail/address book. I don't mind having to take some kind of action to update my BB address book every now and then (by USB cable or just pushing some buttons on the BB). I'd just like to be able to get the whole Yahoo! address book into my BB and then be able to update as necessary.

[daphne]

I don't think this is possible. Check here for available Yahoo mobile apps.

Yahoo! Mobile. Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search and more on your phone. (http://mobile.yahoo.com/)

Unless there's a way to export you Yahoo address book to your PC and import it into Outlook. Then you could sync it with your BlackBerry.

[BB_Luver]

Yeah, I think this is the reason I switched to GMail. Google has Google Sync which NOW has contact synching. So not only do I have all my calendar options synchronized, I now have my contact list done too. If I ever lose or break my BB, getting my calendar and contacts back onto my BB is a snap.

[Serpentine009]

Ummm...you can sync your contacts, calendar, notes, tasks all with Yahoo using the Desktop Manager. Yahoo is the only internet provider that has a direct conduit within Desktop Manager. I have a Yahoo Plus account which I pay 20 bucks a year for. I am not sure if having the "plus" is a necessity, however, if it is, it is definitely worth it.

I often add new contacts to either my device or online and they seamlessly sync when I connect to DM.

I am a huge fan of Yahoo over Gmail. Yahoo offers 2-way read/unread mail sync and a built in sync conduit in Desktop Manager.

IMHO-Yahoo is the closest thing to BES for BIS users.

[rugmankc]

I am 99.9% certain you have to have the plus account. Then you can do exactly what Serpentine009 said.


Ken

[daphne]

Interesting. The Yahoo mobile site says it has address book synching with the iPhone, but unless I missed something, it didn't say that for BlackBerry. Good to know.

[Kaliaila]

I am 99.9% certain you have to have the plus account. Then you can do exactly what Serpentine009 said.


Ken

I am 100% certain that you do not have to have plus account to do everything that Serpentine009 said.

The main problem I have is with the fact that you have NO real control over how the synching works. If you had put a contact into your blackberry and that was already in your addressbook you can very easily end with a duplicate as you cannot match them. It also might incorrectly match people. If you do not have 2 way sync'ing chosen the only information that will be sync'ed is that which is in the one you are sync'ing from. In other words if you add a phone number or address to Yahoo that is blank for that contact on your blackberry and are sync'ing from your blackberry then that portion of the yahoo contact will not be looked at or sync'd.

[Serpentine009]

Wirelessly posted

If you start with a clean slate (one way sync either to yahoo or to the device) the 2way sync works perfectly when you add a new contact or update one. If you happen to add the same contact to both yahoo and BB you may end up with a duplicate, but that defeats the purpose of syncing. Just add it once in one place and sync.

Let me be more clear...I converted my wife over from a "dumb" phone to a BB and then some time after that converted her from Gmail to Yahoo. Her Gmail contacts were 99% names and email and contained duplicates. Her BB phone book was 99% names and phone numbers and contained dups. I dumped both files into excel and split the name field where applicable and then merged the two files. I sorted on last name and manually merged all data where possible. Then I went thru and actually read each contact to see if it had a dup somewhere else. (like Cuz Bobby and Cousin Bobby and Bobby N.....). Once this was done I uploaded the file to Yahoo's address book. I then used DM to blow away her old address book and replace it with Yahoo's.

From that point forward DM was able to 2way sync with no problems or dups. Once you have a good working copy, it is pretty easy to keep things neat and clean. If you add contacts to your BB...the next time you sync it will be in Yahoo and vice versa. If you happen to add a contact that already exists somewhere on the other end, yes you will get a duplicate, however, that will happen even with Exchange, BES, and Outlook.