How do I move contact between smartphones?

Q After buying an HTC HD2 smartphone, I need to find out how to transfer all the contacts from my old Palm Treo. I have read about using Microsoft Outlook but I have only used the Palm Desktop software.
Barbara Cummins

A There are standards for storing contact information so it should be possible to transfer this information.

We should warn that as some companies may tweak exactly how they work with the standards, some information may be lost, so don’t be too fast to get rid of the old Palm.

As the HD2 works with the Google Android operating system, the best way to make the transfer is by using a Google mail account. These accounts cost nothing. Go to the Gmail site and click on the ‘Create an account’ button.

The Treo can export all of the contacts into a single file that can be imported into your Google account. Go to the contacts program on the Treo. Select the correct contact category or All, press the menu button and then tap on Send Category.

Choose how you want to send the contacts file – email is probably the easiest. This will send a single file ending in .vsf to the email address you specify. Save this file to your computer. Log into your Google Mail account, click on the Contacts link on the left and then on Import. Click on the Choose button and select the vsf file. Click on Import.

The disadvantage with this approach is that the category information is not kept by the process. If this is important, we recommend exporting one category at a time to individual vsf files. When you come to import the contacts to Google, make sure that the option ‘Also add these imported contacts to:’ is selected. Choose an existing group or make a new one.

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