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Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

nickgrimshaw — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 20:27:21 GMT

Is it possible to import contacts from BT Advance Quad Phone 090641 to the new Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa (Type A). This does not appear to be possible is there a solution or fix can anyone just say Yes or No.

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

imjolly — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 20:32:22 GMT

Can you export the contacts from your existing BT ADVANCED phone to a vcf file. If so you then just import the vcf file into the new DV phone by going to contacts in hub manager

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

nickgrimshaw — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:55:39 GMT

Thanks for your communication. I bought the quad system a month ago so a rather new model (I would have thought) but as far as I can see I cannot manually export these contacts to the the hub from this/these phones. I have access the the BT Smart Hub2 manager and only succeeded, so far, in importing VCF data from an IPhone. Though this is not really what I want. I would much prefer the data that is currently on the BT quad phones. Why is it that these recent models do not communicate with each other. What is more, where is the data stored that is on the Quad system? Why hasn't this been updated with the IPhone data too - surely BT can do better than this?

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

imjolly — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 22:03:04 GMT

So you have managed to import the contact from IPhone to the DV phones. There is No sharing of data between the DV phones and your quad system which presumably is connected to the socket on back of SH2

The quad system may be advanced in some features but importing/ exploring contacts unfortunately does not appear to be one of them

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

globe1nh — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 17:47:26 GMT

I tried this with my SH2 and DV Advanced handset. The .vcf import function is OK if you just want to import all your contacts, but importing an additional .vcf contact files overwrites the file you've already imported to the hub, and the contacts get overwritten on the handset - plus any contacts you've added manually on the handset also get overwritten.

Providing capacity to store 500 contacts but no effective way of managing them is disappointing.

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

imjolly — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 19:44:57 GMT

Just need to sort out your contacts into what you want on DV phone before creating the vcf file make sure you save the vcf file as from previous experience a factory reset lost al my contacts. Now I have Alexa phone linked to my mobile I can use my mobile contacts and don't need contacts in my DV phones

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 18:09:31 GMT

Hi folks,

I'm new to this, so please be patient with me.

We're about to be switched over to BT's DV and we've received 2 handsets. I've been worrying about the management of contacts but am pleasantly surprised by what I read in this thread and in one of the user guides for the handsets. There some things I need to ask, though.

By way of background, we have a set of old Gigaset SL78H handsets. Their buttons are no longer reliable so we've been looking forward to switching to some new handsets. The SL78H has a micro-USB socket on the back and I've been syncing our contacts from our Mac to the handsets via Gigaset's (rather flaky) QuickSync software.

From what the user guide and this thread say, I think that I can:

1 Export some or all contacts from our Mac's Contacts app, selecting the "Export vCard" option.

2 Somehow get the BT Hub to access the resulting file.

3 Import the Contacts into the Hub, for use by all the BT handsets.

Is that correct? Any hints re steps 2 and 3?

Now it seems to me, from reading this thread, that it would be best to delete all the contacts from the Hub before importing the fresh set of contacts, in order to avoid problems. Is that correct?

Anything else I should know about this business?

Many thanks!

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

imjolly — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 18:29:05 GMT

Importing the vcf file to the DV phones will automatically overwrite any existing contacts

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:12:35 GMT

Two more questions ...

1. Do all phone numbers being imported via the .vcf file have to start with "+", followed by a country code?

2. Does the import process understand phone number descriptors such as "home", "work" and "cell"?

Note: I peaked inside a vCard exported from our Mac's Contacts and saw:

TEL;type=CELL;type=VOICE:

Thanks

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 07:16:23 GMT

It seems BT have decided not to support the + dialling format. There is no way to enter it from the keypad & when importing from a VCF, it is apparently simply stripped out, rendering the number invalid.

https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/All-Digital-Voice-contacts-have-disappeared/m-p/2197976#M80492

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:06:05 GMT

What a pain!

And UK numbers? Do they have to start with "00 44"?

Thanks

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

VeteranISPUser — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:17:36 GMT

@Misha1wrote:
What a pain!
And UK numbers? Do they have to start with "00 44"?
Thanks

Hi @Misha1 UK numbers dialled in the U.K. do not require an international dialling code! So the answer to your question is no. Obviously all numbers do need the local area code. Also don’t use any spaces in the numbers as this stops the calling I’d recognising the caller. For example 01234 567 8901 should be entered as 012345678901.

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:42:05 GMT

Thanks.

I know that when dialling using a UK mobile or landline phone one doesn't need the "00 44" but I wasn't sure whether this applies to BT's DV.

So "all" I need to do to the .vcf file exported from our Mac Contacts is:

- Replace each "+" with "00"

- Strip out all spaces from phone numbers

Is that right?

Thanks

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

KalK — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 17:53:57 GMT

Hi Misha,

Did you manage to make this work? Is there way of importing contacts to by BT homephone? Very annoying if there isn't.

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 18:28:15 GMT

Hi @KalK,

I have made it work but using quite a few steps. My starting point is the Contacts app on our rather ancient Mac and the steps are:

Export the Contacts using the Mac "Exporter for Contacts" app (which I purchased for about £10).
Using the "vCard Phone Number Formatter" (which Stefan, the creator of the Exporter app, sent me), replace each “+” with “00” and remove spaces, hyphens & brackets from phone numbers.
Bulk edit the resulting vcf file as follows:
•   Remove each “;type=pref”
•   Remove each “;type=VOICE”
•   Replace each “TEL;” with “TEL;VALUE=uri;”
•   Replace each “type=HOME:” with “TYPE=home:tel:”
•   Replace each “type=CELL:” with “TYPE=cell:tel:”
•   Replace each “type=WORK:” with “TYPE=work:tel:”

Thats wasn't too bad, was it?!

😀

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

KalK — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 11:23:50 GMT

Thanks very much MIsha..that's amazing of you. Sadly, I only have the basic digital phones that BT sent me when i upgraded to full fibre. I assume I need the more upmarket type with Alexa. Do you know?

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 11:30:28 GMT

@KalK

Contacts are stored in the Hub, so not dependent on the handsets.

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

KalK — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 11:56:56 GMT

@rbz5416

How does one find/access that bit in the Hub? Sorry to ask....complete newbie to all this.

Thanks

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

Misha1 — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 13:35:00 GMT

Hi @KalK,

Type 192.168.1.254 into your browser.
Click on the box labelled "Phone" in the leftmost column of the Hub display.
Click on "Contacts" in the top left corner.
Click on "Browse".
Supply your admin password.
Click on "Contacts" in the top left corner (again).
Click on "Browse" (again).
Select the .vcf (ie vCard) file you want to import.
Click on "Import".

Enjoy!

Re: Importing Contacts to Advanced Digital Home phone with Alexa

KalK — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:43:52 GMT

Amazing...you are a superstar! Thank you SO much. I was envisaging months of slowly adding contacts during the winter months as I ran out of things to watch on Netflix.