I figured one of the things that would delay the Nokia Lumia 928 from replacing my iPhone 4S would be my contacts. They were a mess. I had them spread across different accounts, with very few in my Microsoft account. I had all the accounts configured on my iPhone so I saw them in one view. But I wanted to consolidate everything into my Microsoft account. I figured it would be a tedious manual process. But while browsing through the Nokia apps in the Microsoft Store I came across the app “Transfer My Data“. It was in the store but not on the phone. It claimed to move contacts from various phones to the people hub. It would also move text messages from some (unlisted) phones. It uses a Bluetooth connection for the transfer.
I downloaded it and gave it a try. It was simple to use, which means there’s not real choices to make. For my iPhone 4S it would only transfer contacts, no SMS messages which was fine with me. It was a simple wizard.
The first screen provides an introduction and reminder to enable Bluetooth on the old phone.
The next screen displays devices available for pairing, I select my old phone and accept the connection on my old phone. Then it displays what it can transfer. I check Contacts and let it do its thing.
The wizard finishes quickly. But the contacts didn’t appear in my People hub. After some searching I went to Outlook.com and saw the contacts there. I went back to the phone and they were there now. Looks like they go online first then get synced down to the phone.
The import seemed clean, at least within the limits of an already messed up contact list. It took the contacts from all the account that were enabled for contacts on my iPhone. Outlook.com then allowed my to de-dup the contacts which also seemed very clean.
The app can be deleted from the phone once the import is done.
It’s nice when things work as expected.
