Constructive (hopefully) Feedback to BT DV team
When I saw that BT DV would include the ability to import and export contact lists via the SH2 (with up to 500 entries) I had assumed this would work in a way that was similar to how contact lists work (and have for many years) on mobile devices. I quickly realised that this wasn't the case.
- First disappointment: Contact list files can only be added in .vcf format. Virtually every contact management application out there as a minimum will import .vcf and .csv files, and in this case as the only data fields required are First Name, Last Name and the phone number it isn't exactly a massive challenge.
- Second disappointment: As far as I can tell, importing contacts from a file overwrites (as opposed to appends to) the existing contact list on the handsets. No warning appears, so beware of uploading the wrong contacts file (and keep a back-up).
- Third disappointment: I travel abroad quite a lot, and (I suspect like many others) I maintain my contact 'phone numbers in "full" International format, with the standard international dialling prefix "+", the country code, the local/city code and the number - I could be in any country and be calling any other country). However when these numbers are imported the "+" prefix is stripped-out and all of the phone numbers fail because they all now begin with a two-digit country code (as opposed to the UK "00" international dialling prefix).
I've now managed to import a file that works. All(!) I had to do was:
- Export from my primary Google Contacts list three individual .VCF files (Family, Friends, Personal); fortunately these groups were already set up in Google Contacts or I'd have had to hunt through and manually select about 300 contacts from a total of well over 1000.
- Use Terminal on my Mac to enter a command line to combine the three .VCF files into one single .VCF file (an "append" option would avoid this step - I could have just added each file in turn).
- Use TextEdit on my Mac to run a find-and-replace and swap the "+" for a "00".
- Import the file (the easy bit) and check it's loaded onto the handsets (yes, and very quickly).
Having loaded the file, it works fine, but a further disappointment was the poor search functionality.
- The contact list displays in alphabetical order, by First Name, Last Name - I couldn't find an option to change the list to Last Name, First Name.
- Using the keypad to enter a search string only works in terms of the first keystroke taking you to the first name in the list starting with that letter, the second keystroke takes you to the first name beginning with your first and second keystrokes, and so on. Would it be that difficult to have the entered search string bring up all entries containing that string?
Maybe most people don't need this level of functionality, but it's pretty basic technology. Maybe most people don't have as many contacts as me, but if it's advertised as having that capacity it sets an expectation that it can deal with it.
I don't expect to use the Contact List "Export" function because I don't know what use the exported version would be. I'd have to change "00" back to "+", but only where "00" is the first two digits in the contact number.
