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How to import your Facebook Phonebook to your Cell Phone

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 , Posted by Unknown at 10:50 AM

I generally blog about the things I'm interested in, and I've been trying to figure this out for a while now. Last night, I succeeded. Hooray!
Perhaps you've noticed, but in the 'New Facebook' layout, if you click on the 'Friends' tab along the top, one of the new features on the friends page is 'Phonebook' in the 'Showing:' row. So no more posting groups titled "Hey Guyz, I lost mah Phone LOLZ..."
But how do you get this info into your cell phone?
Well, I'm going to show you how I got it into my phone, which is the AT&T Tilt, running Windows Mobile 6.1. I'm going to walk you through getting your Facebook Phonebook into Microsoft Outlook 2007, so you can sync it with your phone contacts. I'll also link you to a couple other workarounds for phones that support vCards, or .vcf files.

First off, the Facebook Phonebook is great, but it would be a pain to copy-paste all that info into outlook. To make things easier, head over to the mobile version of Facebook at http://m.facebook.com/ scroll down to the bottom, and click on 'Phonebook.'



This will give you a nice organized listing of your friends and their numbers. (My friend's numbers blurred so you don't spend all your time harassing them, cause obviously they're all wicked cool.)



Make a new text document (Right Click on Desktop>New>Text Document) and open it with Notepad. (Not Wordpad! Wordpad will add a bunch of crap we don't want.)
Highlight all your friends names and numbers and copy/paste them into the new Text Document. If you have multiple pages of friends, copy/paste all the pages into this Text Document.



Next we have to reformat our new Text Document into a format Outlook will understand. This is called CSV, Comma Separated Values. We need to reformat the Document so that on each line it reads exactly: FirstName,LastName,Cell. Also, we need to format the cell phone numbers as xxx-xxx-xxxx.
The easiest way to do this is by pressing Ctrl-h and using 'Replace' to first remove all the periods from our file. Type a period in the 'Find what:' box, and leave the 'Replace with:' box empty. Click 'Replace All.'



Next, we need to replace all the spaces with commas. Hit Ctrl-h again, and press the space bar in the 'Find what:' box. Type a comma in the 'Replace with:' box. Press 'Replace All."



Next, you'll need to go to the beginning of each Phone number line, and press 'Backspace' to bring it up to the end of the correct FirstName,LastName line. Then press Comma so each line reads:
FirstName,LastName,PhoneNumber

You'll need to go through the list and format all the telephone numbers, as well as clean up friends who have multiple first or last names, Maiden names, Middle names listed, and Nicknames.  For example, my friend Clayon,C-bass,Ashcraft needs to have his nickname either removed, or combined with his first name. Right now the phone would think his last name is 'C-bass', and his phone number is 'Ashcraft.'

Once all the formatting is done, we need to add a line at the top of the document so Outlook knows how to organize and import the data. Add this at the very top:

First name, Last Name, Cell,

Your file should look like this:



In the File Menu, Click 'Save As.' In the 'Save as type:' drop down, select 'All Files (*.*)' Enter the name you want for this phonebook, followed by .csv



If you have a Windows Mobile Phone, and are going to Sync through Outlook, keep following along. If not, skip down to where it says CSV to vCard.

Open up the 'Contacts' Tab, then go to 'File>Import and Export...' Select Import from another program or file and click 'Next.'



Select 'Comma Separated Values (Windows)' and click "Next."



Use 'Browse...' to navigate to and select the file you just created, then click the appropriate button for how you want it to handle duplicate items. Click 'Next.'



Click Next again, unless you want to specify a location for this Data other than contacts.



Click 'Map Custom Fields ... "



If you click the + next to 'Name' in the right column, you should see the field 'First Name' mapped from 'First Name' correctly, and the same for 'Last Name.' Scroll Down and you should see field 'Mobile Phone' mapped from 'Cell.' If not, Drag 'Cell' from the left Column, and drop it on 'Mobile Phone' in the right Column.



Click 'OK' then click 'Finish' to import your Facebook Phonebook into your Microsoft Outlook Contacts.
Next time you Sync your phone you'll have it all!

Now for the workaround for non-Windows Mobile phones and devices.

CSV to vCard

Head over to this website:
http://homepage.mac.com/phrogz/CSV2vCard_v2.html

Open your newly created Phonebook file with notepad, and Copy/Paste everything into the 'Step 1' Box.  The 'Step 2' tab should already be correct, so click on the 'Step 3' tab.
Make a new Text Document, and Copy/Paste all the data from the 'Step 3' field into it. Click File>Save As. In the 'Save as type:' drop down, select 'All Files (*.*)' This time, name your file, and the type .vcf afterwards. (For Example, Phonebook.vcf)

Transfer this file to your phone either with your data cable, or by BlueTooth and you're all set.

Note: This second method also works to import your phonebook into the Address Book in OS X by dragging the file into the Address Book!

I hope some of you find this helpful ;)

Currently have 1 comments:

  1. Anonymous says:

    hey, this has been very useful. now lemme try that. haha. :)

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