OT, how do I back up Android straight to the PC?

[micky]

OT This question is off topic, or more than half of it is,, but it
seems that people on the phone ng and even the Android forum don't
really get into the near internals of Android OS, and you guys
probably understand them better than they do. At least those of you
who have Android.


How do I sync contact list directly to PC, without Gmail? I don't
have Gmail; I don't want Gmail, and I certainly don't want it knowing
my phone number and all my phone contacts and other data.

I have a Huawei Fusion U-8652 running Android v 2.3.5 , that I bought
used. He had left his gmail address in it and I think before I knew
how it worked, I backed up the 3 phone numbers I entered to HIS
computer.

I hope you can help me. I want to be able to sync my contact list to
and from my PC and phone, without involving gmail.

I thought there might be something in the Play Store (sp?) but all but
one of the backup programs I looked at wouldn't even work with my
phone, the webpages said. (and that one didn't do what I wanted..)

I had hoped to just find the contact list in a file on the phone, and
copy that file to my computer, add more names and numbers, and copy it
back. That's how it worked with a Samsung phone and Samsung PC Studio
3. Studio 3 formatted everything nicely, but I don't need formatting.

I connect the phone to the pc by cable and it brings up two Windows
Explorer windows, one for the sim card and one for the extra memory
(right?), which windows treats as external storage devices and assigns
the partition letters F and G**

Five minutes earlier I had created two new contacts, one for the sim
and one for the phone, so in Windows Explorer, I look for files that
were updated 5 minutes ago. I find only 3 files that were updated
today, and it was indeed 5 minutes ago,

One is F:\.dataviz\.dinfo , a file that is only 166 bytes big, and
when I use TCC LE (a great piece of free software) to look inside it,
it has no phone numbers, of course. It's too short.

The other 2 are files for DoubleTwist, backup software that _Android
for Dummies_ recommended, which I installed on my PC and somehow got
to my phone, and then I noticed that it only backs up audio, video,
and photos, when what I really want to back up are names and numbers
of the people I call on the phone. But I look at the files and can't
find anything legible that is a contact name or number.

No files in the G partition changed their Date Modified date or time.
..
I've gone through this whole routine twice.

How come the only files that changed their date/time when I added
contact numbers were DoubleTwist files, that aren't even essential to
the phone? I don't think DoubleTwist replaces the original storage
location, because a) that would be amazing and a problem if someone
uninstalled Doubletwist, and b) I found photographs in their own
folder, not in Doubletwist,, easy to upload to my computer using the
method I'm striving for.

Can anyone suggest something for me to do next to find my contact info
and copy it to the PC? The name of the file would be nice. ;-)

Thanks


** (It also shows a partition E , but when I put the cursor on it, the
message says " Please insert a disk into drive E.". I think once
early on it did show files in it, and I think they were the phone's
bootstrap files. Why it stopped showing files, I don't know enough
to guess.)

 

[Dee]

OT This question is off topic, or more than half of it is,, but it
seems that people on the phone ng and even the Android forum don't
really get into the near internals of Android OS, and you guys
probably understand them better than they do. At least those of
you who have Android.


How do I sync contact list directly to PC, without Gmail? I
don't have Gmail; I don't want Gmail, and I certainly don't want
it knowing my phone number and all my phone contacts and other
data.

I have a Huawei Fusion U-8652 running Android v 2.3.5 , that I
bought used. He had left his gmail address in it and I think
before I knew how it worked, I backed up the 3 phone numbers I
entered to HIS computer.

I hope you can help me. I want to be able to sync my contact list
to and from my PC and phone, without involving gmail.

I thought there might be something in the Play Store (sp?) but all
but one of the backup programs I looked at wouldn't even work with
my phone, the webpages said. (and that one didn't do what I
wanted..)

I had hoped to just find the contact list in a file on the phone,
and copy that file to my computer, add more names and numbers, and
copy it back. That's how it worked with a Samsung phone and
Samsung PC Studio 3. Studio 3 formatted everything nicely, but I
don't need formatting.

On my Droid X2 running 2.3.5, I go into Contacts, then press the Menu
button, choose Import/Export, choose Export Contacts to SD card.
This creates a file named 00001.vcf on the SD card. Then I connect
the phone to the PC and copy it over.

Dee

 

[micky]

On my Droid X2 running 2.3.5, I go into Contacts, then press the Menu
button, choose Import/Export, choose Export Contacts to SD card.
This creates a file named 00001.vcf on the SD card. Then I connect
the phone to the PC and copy it over.

Dee

Thanks, Dee. I should have come here two months ago (although I have
heard that "Unearned suffering is redemptive". Marlin Luther King,
Jr. )

What you said, maybe one minor variation to get to Export, worked
fine. I had noticed the "Export to SD button", but a) that didn't
strike me as really exporting since it was still in the phone, and b)
I figured I should have been able to see the file in the SIM or phone
even before I exported it. But I was wrong about both of these, and
I was able to connect the phone to my PC, copy F:\00001.vcf to the PC
if I'm not in a hurry, and with any text editor, add, remove, and edit
entries on a full size monitor and keyboard, even when the phone is
not connected. Then later, copy it back to the SD card and import
from the SD card to the phone.

I don't use the vcard editor, which wastes my time with its
formatting, and which might not match the phone editor were I to fill
in some of the fields, I just use a plain text editor like Wordpad,
and each entry looks like this:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:;sol;;;
FN:sol
TEL;TYPE=CELL:413-433-4852
END:VCARD

where the entry name and my friend's name is sol, and the phone number
is obvious. I just made an entry with first, mdddle, last names, 3
eamil addresses, home address, etc. to view and learn more about the
format, and boy was it hard!! It might have been easy using Gmail,
but it's certainly a pain using the phone.

Also instead of
TEL;TYPE=CELL:413-433-4852
I have another TEL line that looks like this
TEL;TYPE=CELL;TYPE=PREF:413-433-6234
Eventually I will figure out the difference (You don't have to help me
unless you know a page where all the formatting is explained. Well
you still don't have to help.

So I'm good now. No need to tell Gmail my phone number , no need to
use gmail, no need to have it, no need to let it keep a record of any
of my contacts, photos or any other data, all of which I don't want to
share with strangers.

Strangely, after my first step, exporting, when I connected the phone,
partition G never showed up in a new Windows Explorer window, but
partition F got a new window, and, more interestingly, E got a new
window, complete with the files in it. E hadn't gotten its own
window for weeks. I thought E was "the phone" but it had no file
named "contacts" in it, and iirc no file with a recent update date.
EVen though iiuc now, that's where the contact list spends most of its
time.

Plainly this will work on any version of Android that has import and
export, which is all of them iiuc.

Thanks again.

You've been so nice to me, I have one or two more questions for new
threads. ;-)