How to Keep All of Your Contacts in Outlook But Only Keep a Selection of Them in Your Blackberry When Using a BES

Posted by kevin on 6. February 2009 07:37

Ok, do you have way too many contacts to keep track of on your BlackBerry? There is a way to configure your Exchange account so that you can select which of your many contacts you want to have available on your BlackBerry without having to do any kind of manual sync. It does require some setup in Outlook, but, in theory, you should never have to plug the phone into the machine. The BES works by synching the main contacts folder with its own address book, but not subfolders of your Contacts. So, to make only some available on your BlackBerry but all of them In your Outlook, simply move all the ones to a new subfolder of your contacts! Don’t know how? Here are some simple step-by-step instructions:

A.    Create a new contacts folder:

1. Open Outlook
   
2. Hit the Contacts button to open up your contacts
   
   
   
3. In the Upper left-hand corner, select file
   
   
   
4. From the drop down menu select "New" and then from the menu the pops up, select "Folder"
   
5. In the "Name" Field, enter something like “Outlook Contacts” and hit OK
   
   

B. Move all of your contacts from your main contacts folder to the Outlook Contacts folder

      1.    Select your Contacts Folder

             

      2.    In the upper left hand corner, click on View

             

      3.    Select "Current View" then choose "Phone List" from the options

      4.    Your Contacts will now show up as a list

      5.    Select a contact in your list and then, on the keyboard, click Ctrl and the letter A at the same time. This will select all of the contacts in your list. With a list as large as yours, Outlook will probably take  while to select all of the contacts, so be patient at this step

      6.    When all of your contacts are highlighted, right click on one and select "Move to Folder"

     7.    Highlight the new folder, "Outlook Contacts" and then click OK. Just like in step 5, this may take a while since there are so many contacts.

           

     8.    Once the move has completed, all contacts will now be in the "Outlook Contacts" and your main "Contacts" folder will be empty. This is the folder that will sync with your phone, so you will now want to add your 500 important contacts to this folder. They should then sync with your Blackberry and the sync should go both ways, as originally intended