SIM card question - need advice

You can transfer your contacts from your old phone to your new phone - you just need Motorola Phone Tools - you can simply save all contacts from your phone to your computer and then from your computer to your new phone. I don't know if the sales reps have MPT, but if they do, they are just being lazy by telling you that it cannot be done because it does take, oh, 10 minutes, instead of 30 seconds to move your SIM from your old phone to your new one

As far as your other question is concerned, go into your phonebook setup and set it up to display primary contact only. Then, you will only get one display per name and you can switch between, home, work, mobile, etc. by using the left and right arrow keys.

 

Here's what you do. You don't need any special software or tools. Put your SIM card in your old phone. Copy all of your contacts to the SIM card. Remove SIM. Place SIM in your new phone. Copy contacts from SIM to new phone. Done. Then you can either select delete all to take the SIM contacts out, or just set up your phone book to only display contacts from phone memory.

I don't know why the store didn't figure this out. Did you buy the phone at Best Buy or Wal-Mart?

 

Yeah.... I think the "show primary" option only works for the numbers stored on the phone. I am not aware of any solution - maybe someone else would chime in. I never store anything on the SIM, so I am not as familiar with it.

 

I used to have a V60t. That is a TDMA phone and it does not use SIM cards. They did make a GSM V60 model, but I do not think the "t" designation was continued on it. When I bought my V551 a few years ago they were unable to read my V60t and copy my contacts either. I just entered them in again. Now I guess I'd just use MPT though.

-Jay

 

Somewhere there is an option do only display contacts from phone, sim, or both. I don't know what menu it is in though.

-Jay

 

I would be interested to find out what that is too I only keep my numbers on the sim.., but the ones I call the most or would like to have caller id/ringtones for I make a copy to the phone. They show up as double posts. I haven't quite ever figured out how to get it to show only one name either.., but after awhile I find myself ignoring it.
I'll have to play around with mine and see if I can find a way.

 

I too, only keep numbers on the SIM. Don't know about Motos, but on Nokia phones you can definitely set which Address Book/Contacts memory is in use. On my 6061 its under Address Book>Settings>Memory in Use and you can choose the SIM, phone or both. You apparently have yours set on Both.

Why do you need the ones you use most to be in both memories? Again on Nokias, caller ID (and I believe custom ringtones) work for any entries in the address book, regardless of where they are stored. Numbers you call a lot can be set up in speed dial, also independent of where they are stored. I'd be surprised if Motos were very different.

Hope this helps.

 

Mine is automatically set up to save to the sim card first. I then make a copy and transfer to the phone memory so that I can have custom pictures and ringtones for these people as with my Motorola...you can't have custom stuff for the name on the sim. you must move it to the phone first. Same with my ringtones. I can transfer as many as I want to my Transflash card.., but unless I move them to the phone itself...I can't use them for the ringtone.

I just leave the original on the Sim so that if I transfer to another phone for some reason (my samsung c225 or my nokia 3220b) that the important numbers are still on the sim and I don't have to re-enter them again.
If that makes sense. I only do this for about 5 people...everyone else is on the sim.

 

Ah, I see what you are saying now. With the ringtone itself, I am not surprised that it has to be in the phone - I think most phones are that way. When you mentioned caller ID, I didn't realize you meant picture ID - I am guessing that that's not part of the GSM spec, because as you say, many phones' Address Books implement it (and other things like email address, street address, multiple numbers, etc) but the SIM card doesn't. I will see the name on my Nokia if the incoming caller ID matches an entry in the SIM address book, but not their picture.

In this case I think you are going to have to get used to them appearing double. You can choose to display the SIM, phone or both. I've never seen a phone where you could display only some addresses from the SIM and some from the phone.

Only alternative I can think of is to copy the entire SIM address book to the phone, add the details to the ones you want, and in normal use only display the phone memory. You will still want to make additions/deletions only on the SIM and keep the two in sync, so you can transfer to another phone, as you said.

----

"Never mind"
-- Emily Litella (Gilda Radner)

 

Yes, on Motorola phones features like Voice Dialing, Picture ID, and Distinctive Ringing are only available for contacts stored on the phone's internal memory. I recommend copying the entire contact list to the phone, and then selecting to display only contacts from phone memory. You can get even fancier by going one step further and only display primary numbers for each contact so you just scroll to the person's name, then scroll right or left for other numbers for that same person.

-Jay

 

Why don't you get Motorola Phone Tools and synchronize your contacts with Outlook (or Lotus notes or whatever). I have about 700 contacts on my phone and I keep it synchronized with Outlook. That way, I can always download new contacts to any new phone I get and I don't run the risk of having to type them all in if something happens to my phone.

 

Motorola Phone Tools is a software to synchronize your contacts and appointments between your phone and various popular email programs, for example Microsoft Outlook. It can also transfer video/audio files, pictures, etc. to and from your phone to your computer (beats having to pay to mail it from the phone). Google for it. Version 4.0 is the latest (you can update it online to 4.2 later) and you should be able to find it for $10-15 online. Well worth it in my opinion.

 

Unfortunately, Motorola phones do not have the ability to show only sim or only phone. If you have it on your sim and your phone, it will display twice. There is no setting, etc that will change this..

 

This is an old thread, but in case anyone comes across it as I did...

The original question was asking how to hide contacts that are stored on the SIM card from being displayed in the phonebook. Although Motorola Phone Tools does allow you to store, synchronize, and transfer contact information, there are several reasons why you'd want to store duplicate contact information in both the phone memory and on the SIM card.

As far as I know, most Motorola phones do not have an option to filter SIM card contacts explicity from the phonebook list. However, in many of their phones (including your V557 and the RAZR V3 series), you can use Categories as a workaround to do the same thing. Use the following steps to assign a Category to all of the contacts stored in the phone memory, then filter the phonebook to only display those contacts:

Assign Category to Phone Contacts
1. In the Phonebook, scroll to a contact stored in the phone memory that you wish to remain visible.
2. Press Menu, select Edit, change Category, and select a category that you will use for all of the contacts you wish to view.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all contacts you wish to view. (This can be done quickly as a batch process, in Motorola Phone Tools)

Filter Phonebook for the Desired Category
1. In the Phonebook, press Menu, select Categories, and select the category you used in step 2 above.

Some caveats: all of the contacts that you wish to view must be copied into the phone memory, and you'll lose the ability to use Categories to organize the contacts stored in your phone, since they'll all be the same (if you want to see them, at least!).

Hope this helps.

 

in Nokias the option is to select the memory where yhou want your contacts saved to not the contacts you want viewed

 

On my Nokias I can select one of three options: Phone & SIM, Phone only, SIM only. These options affect what is displayed, not where the contacts are stored. I have option to copy to SIM even if I select the Phone only memory for display, but the SIM contacts will not be shown.

 

when my mom had her Nokia 6010.......those options did affect where her phone stroed contacts

 

Yes, If you choose just one, then any new contact will be stored into that type of memory, but with the option to copy to another also available, so it doesn't limit your ability to add to both locations, just changes the default. But if you have contacts in both phone and SIM memory, then the phone will only display the ones in the selected memory, unless you choose to show both. If both phone and SIM memory are enabled you don't get a choice of where to store when adding a new contact, it defaults to phone.

 

well thats what i was exactly trying to point out.......we must have just been misunderstanding eachother......

 

I took exception to the highlighted part but since in reality the option affects both storage and display the misunderstanding ensued

 

You can do Backup/Restore with Motorola Phone Tools and leave Outlook out of the process. Many people do not like to clutter up the Outlook Contacts with purely telephone numbers rather than email addresses and street addresses.

Most Motorola phones also have SyncML which allows you to synchronize your phonebook for free (except for data usage) with Yahoo or other online sites. That way you can synchronize anywhere you have wireless data access.

 

I am one of those people that don't like to sync my phone with Outlook for these reasons.
If I had a smart/PDA phone, that would be different, but for my regular V635 I didn't feel the need to sync both.