[LeslieN]

OK...so about two weeks ago, I realized I needed to sync my phone (Storm I - 9350 I think) to my laptop (with 2003 Outlook). I have added to contacts on both the laptop and the cell phone and it had been awhile since I synched the two. So when I opened my Blackberry Desktop manager, it told me there was an updated version I could upload. I thought...hmmm...and then clicked OK. So it uploaded the new version.

When I sent to sync everything then, it duplicated most of my contacts (about 2500 - I'm a REALTOR!) in both the phone/device and my contacts in Outlook 2003. The filing was all screwy on the duplicated ones -- the "John & Mary Smith" filed as "& Mary, Smith John." It wouldn't allow me to correct the "file by" portion either. Needless to say, it was not fun...but it didn't do that to all of them. Some were simply duplicated and filed OK. I did a search and moved the "&" contacts into a separate folder (since some were going to be the new contacts from the device that I wanted in my laptop). I figured I was going to have to do some manually fixing--quite time consuming with the number of contacts in my computer. So I didn't get right on it.

Well a couple of days later (last Monday - Feb 7th) the phone "crumped" (as my ex-paramedic husband would say); it went "10-7" (he's a cop now). I got the "white screen of death" with a tiny error message on it. No amount of reboots fixed it. I took it to the Verizon store and they concurred. They mailed me a new phone the next day.

So last Wednesday I activated the new phone. I got the e-mail set up fine. I then went to sync it to the Outlook 2003 and it got stuck half way. I had error message 0x80040fb3 pop up and stop the synching in process. I searched the web for that and it appears it has something to do with blank e-mails in field one but e-mails in field two, so I searched my contacts and corrected them. Tried to resync again. Still got the message. I thought it also had to do with photos, so I removed the synching of the photos from the equation. Still a problem.

And then on the phone, the contact screen showed a "Global Support." It was there endlessly, as I scrolled down the contacts screen. If I used the keyboard, some contacts showed up but not all as the synching had ended before properly completed. Let me back up--the synching of everything else was fine -- calendar, memo, tasks. E-mail with three different accounts - done wirelessly was also fine.

I decided to export my Outlook 2003 contacts into an Excel spreadsheet and I found out that the fields were all f'd up. The address, city, state, zip, country were all showing in one column/field with a double || between them for separators. Then in some contacts, it showed the address, city, state, zip, country, and then the city, state, zip country again below it!! Aargh!! I suspect these corrupted fields in Outlook created a "brain freeze" trying to sync it up to the phone.

I've now moved most of the 2500 contacts into yet another Contacts sub-folder (so my e-mail doesn’t want to locate them when I hit Cntl-K…joy) and left about 200 in the main folder after I fixed their formatting (I think). I tried synching them but am still getting the error message. I tried making it so the computer would only move contacts INTO the phone/device too, not back and forth. Now I think I've goobered it up more because that option to sync contacts doesn't want to work. It was grayed out and then not but still acting hinky.

The texting is acting screwy too. I'll assign a name to a number when it comes in but not the full name so I don't mess it up if I ever get to being able to get the contacts in the two devices to talk to each other again. Then when I go to text and want to pull the number from the name that I've assigned the number already, it can't find it. But if I put the number in for the texting, it sort of knows it's there. Now my son “Joshy” assigned in the phone still does not show when he calls.

It's driving me nuts!!! I don't know what to do but I don't have time to fix 2500 entries and I don't know if fixing them will help them sync better anyway if there are other areas of corruption I can’t see. Another thing that Outlook isn't doing that it did do was want the address in the correct boxes. If I put in an address (but not the city/state/zip on the next line), it would know the entry was incomplete and a dialog box would pop up for the rest of the information. It's not doing that now!

So...any help out there?? This one sounds crazy and it's making me that way!

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you can't fix it, then I'm sure you'll think your problem is minor in comparison to mine and you should feel blessed!!

Leslie

[aiharkness]

Is Outlook the only thing you sync with? Do you sync with anything else (Google, maybe), or perhaps have an app that interfaces with your contacts?

If you simply sync with Outlook and all changes on the BlackBerry and Outlook are manual by you, then I'm stumped.

[Dubdub]

Or do you have a backup of either your old BB or the new one? That should contain the contacts that were on the BB.