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Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

martinput — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 10:57:30 GMT

I recently had a service visit that taught me a valuable lesson about BT Digital Voice and the handsets, I thought I'd share it here...

I learnt that all the data relating to personalised settings and contacts:

Handset names

Speeddial numbers

ringtones choices

and in particular your Contacts...

etc

- are all stored, not in the handsets but in the associated router - so data and settings automatically update to each seperate handset without the need to manually transfer handset to handset.

And that, should you need to replace or perform a factory reset that router, all those settings and your Contacts are lost.

When the handsets reconnect they are "out of the box" reset and you need to register all handsets to the router again, setting up handset names etc from scratch.

All Contacts are lost - however if you follow this advice, before that replacement or factory reset, all will not be lost and the Contacts recovered.

Enter your Router Hub Admin - type 192.168.1.254 into your PC browser, enter the Admin Password on your router if required.

Open the Phone tile and select the Contacts Tab where you can use the Export option to create a back up file of your Contacts - I created a "Digital Voice" folder in my PC Documents folder to save the file to.

If you have to replace or perform a factory reset on the router return to the same tile in Router Admin to recover your Contacts file.

You will have to reset all other settings such as Handset names, speed dials, ring tone options etc still, but your precious Contacts will be secure.

I have set up a Calendar memo on a three monthly basis reminding myself to update that backup file regularly so recent changes to Contacts are backup and preserved.

Happy updating...

Martin

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

imjolly — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 11:37:00 GMT

been covered before but nonetheless good post

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

GCMA — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 10:34:31 GMT

Was interested to read your message re backing up Digital Voice Phone contacts.

Please advise, I havw done everything you suggested but only the first contact was backed up and I have approximately 56.

Am I doing something incorrectly?

Please advise

Thanks

regards

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

licquorice — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 10:43:22 GMT

You will find that all the contacts have been backed up. Open the vcf file in notepad rather than the defaut app and you will see they are all there.

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

GCMA — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 11:29:51 GMT

They are not easy to read unfortunately but you are right they are all there. Many thanks.
Graham

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

GCMA — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 18:55:06 GMT

Is it possible to open the vcf file in another app rather than notebook?

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

licquorice — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 19:59:56 GMT

Probably, but why do you need to open it? It's just a backup that you can restore.

However, I find notepad very useful for adding contacts, much easier than adding them via a handset. Copy one entry as a template and then just paste and edit extra contacts.

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

GCMA — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:21:12 GMT

Thank you for your quick response.
regards
Graham

Re: Digital Voice - PIN NUMBER FOR DIGITAL VOICE PHONES

GCMA — Fri, 12 May 2023 12:11:19 GMT

Does anyone know if the the BT digital phones have a PIN Number?

I came across this information in the user instructions.

regards

GCMA

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

RJeremyB — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 09:54:16 GMT

I find it useful to be able to edit the .vcf file in Notepad. Each entry looks like this:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:4.0
FN:Forename
N:Surname;;;;
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=home:tel:home_tel
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=cell:tel:mobile_tel
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=work:tel:work_tel
MEDLODY:0
ACCOUNTID:0
DFTNUM:0
OWN:0
END:VCARD

Process:

Download the contacts.vcf file to a PC
Open the .vcf file in a text editor (notepad or wordpad are fine).
Copy and paste the module above into the .vcf file
Replace forename and surname (if you want your address list to appear alphabetically by surname, leave forename blank and put surname forename in the N: field)
Replace home_tel, mobile_tel & work_tel.
Check that you have no spaces after the colon in the telephone numbers.
Repeat as necessary.
Save the .vcf
Upload to the router

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

Debbie789 — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:49:05 GMT

Hello,
Can I ask a daft question? We've just renewed our contract and got a new Hub from EE - we were with BT.

When we received our new digital phone with BT I wasn't aware you could back up our contacts for the phone so everytime the hub did a factory reset we kept loosing our numbers. I've since found out that we can back up the contacts but I can't find out how to do it. Our digital handset doesn't have a button called contacts, other than the little phonebook picture. Is that the button I have to press? as when I do there is no option there to import or export the contacts.

I've also been onto the hub manager and I click on the phone to take me to a page where I can see the number of handsets. but again when I click into contacts it doesn't give me an option to import or export any contacts.

please can someone help? as it's tedious to manually input all our contacts, over and over again.

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

RJeremyB — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 22:10:06 GMT

@Debbie789

You need to access the advanced options in your router - the original poster on this thread lays out the process.

My previous post outlines how you can edit your contacts on a PC.

Hope this helps.

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

crg511 — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 18:58:54 GMT

Interesting, my problems different but in trying to solve it I was able to EXPORT the contacts from the Contacts tab on the Hub Manager.

Re: Digital Voice - make sure to back up your Contacts regularly...

Debbie789 — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 06:35:27 GMT

Unfortunately the hub I have dosent let me do that. We'd been in contact with EE several times and finally we were told the type of hub we have that ability to back up our contacts wasn't available yet so every time our hub gets a factory reset we have to manually input all our contacts in.

I'd been into the advanced part and found the export button but it was greyed out.

Thats just one of the annoying things about EE. we have many and would not recommend them to anyone.