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

[martinput]

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

[imjolly]

been covered before but nonetheless good post

[GCMA]

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

[licquorice]

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.

[GCMA]

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

[GCMA]

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

[licquorice]

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.

[GCMA]

Thank you for your quick response.
regards
Graham

[GCMA]

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

I came across this information in the user instructions.

regards

GCMA

[RJeremyB]

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