I have some contact information in an excel sheet that I would like to import into my blackberry address book. Does anyone know how I can do this? I know you can do it by choosing asci, but I am not sure how the rows or columns should be layed out in order to do it properly. Thanks.

First you will need to import that information into a PIM type application like Outlook. Then you can use Desktop Manager to sync the information with your BB.

Do you have Outlook and Desktop Manager?

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The Desktop Manager will allow you to import directly from an ASCII file as well. If you run a quick export you will get a file with the default field mappings and then you can use that layout to format your existing data.

Here are the default mappings for ASCII import/export in DM:

Address Book
-------------------
"First Name"
"Middle Name"
"Last Name"
"Title"
"Company Name"
"Work Phone"
"Home Phone"
"Fax"
"Mobile Phone"
"PIN"
"Pager"
"Email 1"
"Email 2"
"Email 3"
"Address1"
"Address2"
"City"
"State/Prov"
"Zip/Postal Code"
"Country"
"Notes"
"Interactive device"
"1-way Pager"
"User Defined 1"
"User Defined 2"
"User Defined 3"
"User Defined 4"

Calendar
-------------------
"Description Title"
"Notes"
"Location"
"Alarm Date"
"Alarm Time"
"Start Date"
"Start Time"
"End Date"
"End Time"
"Alarm Flag"

MemoPad
-------------------
"Note Title"
"Note Body"

Tasks
-------------------
"Title"
"Notes"
"Due Date"
"Priority"
"Completed Flag"
"Status"

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And in my experience, outlook likes either the native xls format or csv (comma seperated values) files for import. Ascii will work, but for me Outlook tends to botch the info on an import. Ask was posted above, DM will import ascii directly with no PIM app

CSV is an ASCII filetype ... ?

The c in CSV refers to the type of delimiter, in this case a comma. The columns in ascii file could have space or tab boundary, for example.

Gotcha ... yes, I'm aware that CSV is a comma delimited file. I just think that saying "ASCII" imports don't work well is unclear.

I agree 100% that Outlook (and most applications) work best with comma delimited files. Tab delimited would be a good second ... space delimited is just bad news ...

I have a regular excel file with column headings I created and their other corresponding information listed below them in the cells. I also have lotus. I wondered is there a specific layout I need to put the information I currently have in the excel worksheet?

In my post above, the order in which I've listed the fields for each application should be the order of your columns in Excel.

So does each correponding information I want have to be listed horizontally like this? Right now it is vertical. Do I have to put double quotes around the info like this?

It's in list format simply because it's tough to enter a chart into a forum post.

Each of the entries in the list would be your Column headers in Excel (so yes, just switch it from vertical to horizontal in Excel). It doesn't really matter if you put in the quotes.

Is ascii another way of saying .csv(excel)

No. CSV (Comma Separated Values) files are saved in ASCII format. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a plain-text filetype. CSV is a way of representing data records from a table or database in plaintext format. In CSV the fields of an individual record are separated by commas and each record is separated by either a Line Feed or a Carriage Return.

You should note as well that CSV is not an Excel specific format. CSV is a generic format that can be very useful for importing and exporting data between different applications.

But possibly also very hazardous, especially if any of the fields contain legitimate uses of a comma.

That's a good point. The choice of delimiter should be based on the content of your dataset. In general it's best to choose a delimiter that would be considered an illegal character within your dataset; sometimes this is not possible.

This is just one of the reasons why XML is a much better choice for plaintext representation of datasets.