Anyone know a workaround when required to spell someone's name in a phone directory. Sometimes when I call a company I have to spell the name of the person I want to get their extension. Of course the letters assigned to the numbers on my 7100r do not correspond to the traditional number/letter relationship. Anyone find a way to deal with this yet?

Hold down the alt key while typing in the letters.

But is there any way of identifying that for instance that on a traditional phone a "K" is the number 5 (because on the 7100 "K" =6). See what I mean?

Exactly what I said; dialing the "letters with alt" generates the tones that corresponds to a traditional 3x4 phone pad.

That doesn't seem to work.

To dial 555-JUMP on a regular phone (spaces inserted for readability only):

5 5 5 5 8 6 7

To dial 555-JUMP on a 7100 (spaces and dashes inserted for readability only):

5 5 5 Alt-JK Alt-UI Alt-M Alt-OP-OP

You need to hit the OP key twice to get "P" which is the second letter on the key, otherwise you will have dialed an "O".

wow! i've been getting caught up with this lately. NICE TIP!
so when is the BlackBerry Hacks book coming out from o'reilly heh.

I think we need one. Or at least a site like Macosxhints.com. The blackberry seems to be like Macs, no documentation, but lots of great hidden gems.

Does anyone know of a similar technique on a non-7100 Blackberry (eg. a 7280 with the regular RIM keypad)? This can be a problem when you dial an IVR and have to spell someone's last name to get their extension.

Foobar! Nice Tip! I'll sign up for a copy of that tip book as well.