Transferring Address Book from Blackberry or Other Phone to Windows Phone (Lumia)

I just purchased a new phone since my Blackberry Torch 2 has problem with its internal (built in storage). This problem caused the phone  cannot be used since when it is restarted, it stopped when reaching 85% progress. iPhone 5 was first came to my mind (7 years ago I didn’t like iPhone but since I had iPad, I changed my mind), but because of it’s ridiculous price in Indonesian market, I need to look other alternative. Android is just like iPhone, cheaper but not better. I have 2 iPads and iPod Touch gGen #1. iPad 1 (my children has claimed it as theirs at home) and iPad 3 (for my daily business activity). If I took Android gadget (my wife has Galaxy Note), I will have a gadget with similar user interface like iPad. But definitely not better. No, I am not a fan boy. I am a gadget freak, and I believe I can judge quite objectively. iDevice is still the best gadget in the market in term of  the completeness of applications, simplicity, and responsive user interface. Until now, I can say I have no chemistry with Android as a user. As a developer, I would probably create an application in that platform. Blackberry Z10 has arrived. I went to Blackberry store and I found that RIM is trying to combine Windows 8 and iOS. But the GUI for me is pretty clumsy. No Whatsapp at the moment, we still need couple of months until it’s ready. So basically RIM hasn’t cooked its product well done yet. Ok, now time to compare with Lumia 920. I used to be a Nokia fans. Lumia 920 is claimed has a good camera with a responsive user interface. When I was at the Nokia store they sold it with a free wireless charger.  Since I have Acer Iconia and Lenovo Twist, both with Windows 8, I would like to try the new Nokia Win 8. It has offline map for driving (doesn’t has to connect to Internet).

Ok, now it’s time to transfer all of my contacts (thousands) from long time ago since I used Nokia and now it has merged in Blackberry contact. Actually it’s pretty easy to transfer the contacts. Basically I just sync your contacts to Microsoft Outlook, and export all contacts to CSV, and upload it to Microsoft People at http://people.live.com. Ensure that we have a microsoft account (hotmail, outlook, etc) and use the same account in Lumia. When I uploaded the file, it didn’t say error, it just return to Import screen. There must be something wrong with the file. So I discussed it with a fellow in Microsoft, and he suggested me to code a small tool to detect which line may causing the problem. In less than half of an hour I successfully made the tool and spot which line that causing the error. The problem is with all contacts that have notes. Since notes usually stored as memo, it has several lines. When using CSV, those lines will be treated just like a new record. That’s the problem. Microsoft actually should ignore all bad records and store the valid ones. This tool doesn’t correct the CSV but it will spot suspicious lines that may cause a problem when we try to import it.

After deleting unwanted records:

The algorithm is pretty straight forward. Iterate all records in the CSV file, if you spot suspicious character, show it in the memo result.

currentChar := UpperCase(Copy(list[i], j, 1))[1];
if Not (CharInSet(currentChar, ['0'..'9']) or CharInSet(currentChar, ['A'..'Z']) or
 CharInSet(currentChar, ['(', ')', '/', ',', '"', '-', '.', ' ', '@', '+', '_', '<', '>', ''''])) then
 begin
  mmResult.Lines.Add('Line : ' + VarToStr(i+1) + ' containing ' + QuotedStr(VarToStr(currentChar)) + ' : ' + list[i]);
 end;

You may download the tool here, with your own risk.

My Lumia look and feel:

Lumia and Wireless Charger

Lumia 920