I’m trying to get into the 21st century and update my personal contact database into something more manageable and efficient and need some help. I’ve used an old Palm and built the database in their software on my computer. I can’t copy it to my phone to find phone numbers quickly and was wondering if there is a way to import it into Outlook or something more “modern day” that will give me some more flexibility and be more practical for phones, mail merges, etc. (versus carrying around this little antiquated Palm thingy that doesn’t do much else but serve as a phone book). I’d rather not have to retype all the information if possible. On a similar note, how do people manage their e-mail addresses? How can it all be done together for someone who uses AOL and has a long list of e-mail addresses in his account? Any ideas and/or thoughts would be appreciated. And obviously, I’m no computer genius (but am willing to learn).
If you can get the addresses out into a file, then you can import them into Outlook. Outlook accepts many different file formats for importing including comma or tab delimited. Most software apps can export into some kind of delimited file, so you should be good to go.
I’m not sure what you mean by your question about how do we manage e-mail addresses. Do you mean your own e-mail addresses or other people’s?
The last few versions of the Palm Desktop software included some software which would let you choose between syncing with the Palm Desktop or with Outlook. If you have this all you have to do is change your choice to Outlook then synch your Palm. Everything there will then be in Outlook. (Sorry, I can’t remember the steps for this but it is easy if you have the software on your computer – if not, you’ll need to get it from the Palm website.)
Once the data is in Outlook, it is alot easier to move around. Some phones will sync directly with Outlook. You can also export the data as a .csv file which your service provider might have tools for which can be used to get the data onto your phone.
You can always get it out of the Palm stuff (exporting it to a .csv file - Excel) and then import it into the program of choice. There is a whole slew of products out there, including a new one called Scrybe (currently in beta).
Thanks for the replies and thoughts so far. I’m on a PC and can probably figure out how to export my data from Palm to a file that I can then open in Excel and quickly “clean up.” From there, I can import the data into Outlook for starters. Next step would be to manually (total torture) go through my AOL address book and type in updated/appropriate e-mail addresses to match names, addresses, etc. in Outlook. In many cases, I think I’ll have to add new records that will just contain names and e-mails. At that point, I think I’ll be current.
Next goal…the question then becomes staying current and finding the right technology and programs as I use a cell phone, e-mail, database program, etc. all at once and things change, new records are added, etc. That’s where I need help with what to use, how to keep it simple, etc. Hope this makes sense. And yes, this is probably a project for a rainy day but it’s bugging me right now.