Moving an iPhone user to WP7 - NIGHTMARE!!!!!

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crazy-eye

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Sep 7, 2012
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OK I am new to WP7 and am a current iPhone user. I was looking forward to switching my wife from her old iPhone to a nokia lumia 800 today (the contracts are dirt cheap and giving them away!). I thought it would be a good exercise as I am seriously thinking of ditching apple and moving to WP8 when released.

I thought this would be a simple matter....... OH HOW WRONG I WAS!

FOr all its great contact intergration the process of getting an end users contacts from an iPhone to a Windows Phone device is practically impossible.

Firstly getting contacts off the iphone in a readable format was total pain, eventually solved by downloading a multi account vCard from the icloud website. These were then imported into outlook.

Digging out an old hotmail account for the WP7 live ID and the Hotmail Outlook intergrator seemed to be the answer. However this only sync'd the hotmail contacts NOT all the ones I'd imported. When I tired to add the contacts of outlook to the Hotmail contacts it failed because they were phone numbers not email addresses!

Seriously its a phone, phone numbers are THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTACTS! Facebook and email are all very nice but if you cant call somebody you may as well have a tablet.

No amount of google searching produced a SIMPLE guide for this obviously desired feature!

Please tell me its me? I really hope I have just missed something but as it is a great phone but 3 frustrating hours and my wife is ready to send it back and pay more for a new iphone. At least they work as PHONES!
 
crazy-eye said:
OK I am new to WP7 and am a current iPhone user. I was looking forward to switching my wife from her old iPhone to a nokia lumia 800 today (the contracts are dirt cheap and giving them away!). I thought it would be a good exercise as I am seriously thinking of ditching apple and moving to WP8 when released.

I thought this would be a simple matter....... OH HOW WRONG I WAS!

FOr all its great contact intergration the process of getting an end users contacts from an iPhone to a Windows Phone device is practically impossible.

Firstly getting contacts off the iphone in a readable format was total pain, eventually solved by downloading a multi account vCard from the icloud website. These were then imported into outlook.

Digging out an old hotmail account for the WP7 live ID and the Hotmail Outlook intergrator seemed to be the answer. However this only sync'd the hotmail contacts NOT all the ones I'd imported. When I tired to add the contacts of outlook to the Hotmail contacts it failed because they were phone numbers not email addresses!

Seriously its a phone, phone numbers are THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTACTS! Facebook and email are all very nice but if you cant call somebody you may as well have a tablet.

No amount of google searching produced a SIMPLE guide for this obviously desired feature!

Please tell me its me? I really hope I have just missed something but as it is a great phone but 3 frustrating hours and my wife is ready to send it back and pay more for a new iphone. At least they work as PHONES!
Click to expand...
You should have used the contacts transfer app on the Nokia Lumia 800
 
What you can do is use exchange on the iPhone to sync contacts to a new hotmail/outlook account and then add that account on initial setup.
 
eric12341 said:
What you can do is use exchange on the iPhone to sync contacts to a new hotmail/outlook account and then add that account on initial setup.
Click to expand...

No you cant. not anymore. Iphone sync to outlook is one way - > Outlook to Iphone not the reverse. I tried that first.

Although some gudes say otherwise its NOT the case. Not if you have enabled icloud at any point any way.

I also was unable to sync to yahoo! or Google Mail. I was only able to get them off icloud into vcard.
 
crazy-eye said:
No you cant. not anymore. Iphone sync to outlook is one way - > Outlook to Iphone not the reverse. I tried that first.

Although some gudes say otherwise its NOT the case. Not if you have enabled icloud at any point any way.

I also was unable to sync to yahoo! or Google Mail. I was only able to get them off icloud into vcard.
Click to expand...

Ok try exporting the contacts to SIM on the iPhone and then import from SIM on the lumia.
 
Last edited:
if you were on ATT they have an app that FLAWLESSLY transfers contacts pictures and video (up to 2Gb) over to your new phone. I was quite amazed by how well of a job it did. It takes time but it works.
 
'Export Contacts' app on iStore: $1.99

Exports to CSV file on your PC.

Hotmail/Outlook:Contacts: import CSV file.

done.
 
Export the contacts from iPhone in iTunes to "Contacts" in Windows 7. Easily done. Then import your contacts into Hotmail or Gmail and you never have to worry about syncing anything ever again, especially once you are on Windows Phone.
 
metsfan421 said:
Export the contacts from iPhone in iTunes to "Contacts" in Windows 7. Easily done. Then import your contacts into Hotmail or Gmail and you never have to worry about syncing anything ever again, especially once you are on Windows Phone.
Click to expand...

Again, it wouldnt transfer to the computers contacts, I tired all options. Nothing worked except as mentioned from icloud web site.
 
Coffee said:
'Export Contacts' app on iStore: $1.99

Exports to CSV file on your PC.

Hotmail/Outlook:Contacts: import CSV file.

done.
Click to expand...

Shouldnt have to pay just to transfer phone numbers. And once I had the contacts in outlook they wouldnt move to the hotmail account as they didnt have valid email addresses.
 
I just hope they iron this out for WP8 otherwise the average iphone user will never switch as they like

A) things simple
B) technology to just work
C) Rely on their contacts and are probably used to just plugging a new phone into itunes and watching all their contacts, emails and apps appear on the new device.
 
Coffee said:
would this work:

UPDATED : Copy contacts from iPhone 4 to Windows Phone 7 - Jo?o Ribeiro - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

(some additional help in the comments)
Click to expand...

"Next, connect your iPhone to your computer and then wait for it to show up as a device in iTunes.
Once connected, click on the "Info" tab and go down to "Contacts". Select to sync contacts with Outlook and then sync your iPhone.
This operation will copy all contacts from your iPhone (including contact pictures, if you use them) to the Outlook Contacts folder.
Just need to make sure that the contacts were sinchronized to the Outlook."

Its this part that doesnt work. Not a WP issue but an apple issue brought in after icloud. It USED to work. No longer.

the second part abut adding the contacts to the hotmail account failed as they werent email addresses.

Why didnt MS just bundle a simple vcard based contacts manager into ZUNE? Then its universal. Also sync to outlook -> sync to a live account with a plugin -> too bodegy and too complicated for end user.

iTunes may be a bit poo but it is easy, reliable and does the basic job. Thats what ZUNE should be... At the very least it should be able to import windows contacts direct without HAVING to go via the cloud.
 
If you had a Gmail amount and your contacts backed to it, that would work
 
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