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iPhone Contacts capacity?

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Pastor Smith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 5, 2008
3
0
Hi, my first posting here.

I have an HTC Windows Mobile 5 PDA/Smartphone, with 3,900 contacts, which are synched every evening with my Outlook Contacts 2007 (running on Windows XP Pro). Each contact has multiple phone numbers, so I reckon I must have about 12,000 phone numbers. This is no problem for the HTC Tytn.

I bought my first iPhone today, and the phoen is just amazing ...

Anyway, after stating the obvious ... would like to know whether the iPhone has the capacity to handle this number (4,000) of Contacts when I synch with my Outlook 2007?

I haven't tried a synch yet...

Amazing phone, formidable forum
 
AGSHender

AGSHender

macrumors regular
Apr 15, 2007
132
0
Pastor Smith said:
Hi, my first posting here.

I have an HTC Windows Mobile 5 PDA/Smartphone, with 3,900 contacts, which are synched every evening with my Outlook Contacts 2007 (running on Windows XP Pro). Each contact has multiple phone numbers, so I reckon I must have about 12,000 phone numbers. This is no problem for the HTC Tytn.

I bought my first iPhone today, and the phoen is just amazing ...

Anyway, after stating the obvious ... would like to know whether the iPhone has the capacity to handle this number (4,000) of Contacts when I synch with my Outlook 2007?

I haven't tried a synch yet...

Amazing phone, formidable forum
Click to expand...

I can't answer your question offhand, but I just wanted to say Holy Cow. Why so many contacts?
 
R

rayward

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,697
88
Houston, TX
Try it and find out! The beauty of it is, if it doesn't work out, you can restore your phone and start again from scratch. Just make sure that on first sync, it's going one way from the PC to the iPhone.

FWIW, I doubt that there's a limit on the number of contacts other than the available capacity on the phone, which shouldn't be a problem. I have 3,300 photos on mine, and that only takes up 2 gig.

I have Outlook 2003 on a PC, and the one area with contacts that I've noticed a difference is that Outlook doesn't recognise a phone number designated as "Main" on the iPhone and it doesn't sync a contact's photo from the iPhone. This isn't a major problem for me, and syncing doesn't lose those items on the iPhone so there's no harm done by it. Otherwise, they happily sync contacts with multiple phone numbers, emails and addresses.
 
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Pastor Smith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 5, 2008
3
0
AGSHender said:
I can't answer your question offhand, but I just wanted to say Holy Cow. Why so many contacts?
Click to expand...

Hi, AGSHender,

Thanks, but as to why so many contacts? Well, I travel a lot, and visit 5 continents regulalry. Every one I deal with in business, and there are a lot of them, goes into my Outlook contacts. Cell phone numbers are in most countries ex-directory, so I need to have them in my phone or in my PDA. And I deal with a lot of Govt. officials, whose land-line phoens are also ex-directory, etc..
Most convergence devices I didn't like, so I carried a PDA & a cell phone, till I found the HTC TyTn and was hooked ... It does everything I want, but without the elegance and simplicity of the iPhone.

Now it seems the iPhone would be the ideal unit for me, except for the Contacts issue not being a straightforward sync, and I am told also that it doesn't have a search function in Contacts.

I have put some music & videos on the iPhone, and it's simply amazing. I have iPods (all of them ...) since they came out, but the iPhone is simply wonderful.

Just the Contacts matter ...:(
 
P

Pastor Smith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 5, 2008
3
0
rayward said:
Try it and find out! The beauty of it is, if it doesn't work out, you can restore your phone and start again from scratch. Just make sure that on first sync, it's going one way from the PC to the iPhone.

FWIW, I doubt that there's a limit on the number of contacts other than the available capacity on the phone, which shouldn't be a problem. I have 3,300 photos on mine, and that only takes up 2 gig.

I have Outlook 2003 on a PC, and the one area with contacts that I've noticed a difference is that Outlook doesn't recognise a phone number designated as "Main" on the iPhone and it doesn't sync a contact's photo from the iPhone. This isn't a major problem for me, and syncing doesn't lose those items on the iPhone so there's no harm done by it. Otherwise, they happily sync contacts with multiple phone numbers, emails and addresses.
Click to expand...

Thanks Rayward, I did try, but nothing from Outlook was synchonised.
I de-selected everything (videos, pictures, music, etc) and only selected the Outlook Calendar & Contacts to Synch, and after shwoing me the Synching icon on the iPhone, and observing the Synch progress bar in iTunes working for a while, it ended and nothing had been synched.

I am running Outlook 2007, and like you I would happily live with the limitations you mention above (none-synching of a contact's photo, etc), but currently I have nothing. Not even a message at the end.
 
R

rayward

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,697
88
Houston, TX
Pastor Smith said:
Thanks Rayward, I did try, but nothing from Outlook was synchonised.
I de-selected everything (videos, pictures, music, etc) and only selected the Outlook Calendar & Contacts to Synch, and after shwoing me the Synching icon on the iPhone, and observing the Synch progress bar in iTunes working for a while, it ended and nothing had been synched.

I am running Outlook 2007, and like you I would happily live with the limitations you mention above (none-synching of a contact's photo, etc), but currently I have nothing. Not even a message at the end.
Click to expand...

Have you ever received an error message about the iTunes Add-In for Outlook? Regardless, in Outlook, go to the Help menu and click "About Outlook". You should see a button for "Disabled Items", click that and make sure that the iTunes Add-In is not on the list. If it's not (which is what you want) you should check your sync options in iTunes to make sure that you're syncing from the correct location.

If the iTunes Add-In is disabled, it gets a bit more involved. I had this problem with Outlook 2003, and I'm not certain that I've fixed it: it's just in remission. I found that the add-in was disabled, so I would enable it, which required a re-start of Outlook, but upon re-starting the add-in would cause an error and get disabled again.

The way I got it to hold was to re-enable the add-in and then, instead of just re-starting Outlook, re-install it. After the re-install, the add-in would hold for a while and I could sync, but then randomly it would get disabled again. I repeated the same process and after doing this for the 3rd or 4th time, it held. For about 6 months now...
 
S

sk8teguy

macrumors newbie
Jul 19, 2008
2
0
Contact Limits

I have approximately 9600 contacts with each having multiple numbers, addresses and notes. I have heard the IPhone can only store about 1,000 contacts, but I have yet to see anything in writing. Please, can someone answer this? I am not going to purchase the phone until I know it will hold my contacts...

I have seen that the 3G does have a contact search engine. Maybe the guy writing the article was wrong, but he said the new Iphone does allow you to search through the contacts.
 
H

hbg

macrumors regular
Jul 6, 2007
121
2
There is no 1,000 limit. I have 2,300 now and have had up to over 5,000 with zero problem.
 
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sk8teguy

macrumors newbie
Jul 19, 2008
2
0
iphone contact limit

Okay, I had the sales staff contact Apple. The sales staff told me the contact limit will be held to the memory capacity. So, if you have the 16 gig version, it would appear as if it will hold as many as you can throw at it. This is a welcome change, which had something to do with it now handling corporate email. I am not tech savy, so I don't recall the specifics.
 
Julien

Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,835
5,432
Atlanta
MacMalv said:
There is a search function as long as your are running 2.0
Click to expand...

It's not much of one. I need to be able to search by keywords in my notes. I wish someone would make an App for this? Why didn't Apple add a full search for contacts?
 
anthonymoody

anthonymoody

macrumors 68040
Aug 8, 2002
3,061
1,153
Julien is right - the notes section is not included in the (current) search function in the 2.0 software. I have to Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume that they'll add it sooner or later.

That said, the bigger problem I have - and I know I'm not alone - is the sluggishness in the contacts (and calendar) when you open them in 2.0. I have about 1700 contacts, and my calendar has probably 100 or so items in it (I don't sync old events - not worth the hassle to me).

Every time I go to contacts, it takes several seconds before the app is responsive.
 
roland.g

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,414
3,152
All your contacts should sync. You can put them in subgroups to categorize them by company, gov't, country, continent, whatever (done in outlook and shows are Groups on the iPhone). The only limit you should have is the capacity of the phone, but text is small, so I can't see 4000 contacts taking more than several MB. And yes, there is search in contacts in the iPhone now. Just tap at the top of your contacts area on the right side above the mini 'A' there is a mini magnifying glass for search or scroll to the top.
 
ivtecDOu

ivtecDOu

macrumors 6502
May 24, 2008
441
4
mass
i have about 6000 contacts, i just go through the phonebook and copy everyones number:rolleyes:, how do you have so many contacts i have about 270.:eek:
 
M

MonsterRain

macrumors member
Jul 13, 2008
76
0
I mistakenly used MobileMe to sync up my Yahoo contacts, not realizing it wouldn't sort them differently from contacts already in there...something like 7000 people that I've talked to at some point in my life with Yahoo. Thank God for the backup feature..
 
D

dacreativeguy

macrumors 68020
Jan 27, 2007
2,032
223
sk8teguy said:
Okay, I had the sales staff contact Apple. The sales staff told me the contact limit will be held to the memory capacity. So, if you have the 16 gig version, it would appear as if it will hold as many as you can throw at it. This is a welcome change, which had something to do with it now handling corporate email. I am not tech savy, so I don't recall the specifics.
Click to expand...

Even the smallest 4GB iphone will hold more contacts than you could ever need or imagine. Remember, contact info is just text... and not much text per record, at that!
 
J

jamesarm97

macrumors 65816
Sep 29, 2006
1,090
116
J

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
I have just over 4100 contacts on my 3G iPhone, synced with Outlook 2007 (not using activesync). The Contacts application lags a little, but not too bad. So far hasn't been to much of a problem with that many records.
 
M

msiler

macrumors newbie
Dec 21, 2008
12
0
I have about 1700 contacts with multiple phone and e-mail addy's...syncing with Outlook 2003 with no problem after a month of use.
 
S

samiwas

macrumors 68000
Aug 26, 2006
1,598
3,579
Atlanta, GA
How on earth does anyone have 9600 contacts?? I don't think I've even met that many people in my entire life, especially enough that I would keep a contact. Unless you are putting an multiple corporation's entire contact lists in there I guess...
 
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