There may be many reasons why people would like to save their contacts from an iPhone. In this Techspirited article, we tell you the most common ways to save the important contacts you have on your iPhone.
Did You Know?
The easiest way to save your contacts is to connect your iPhone to your computer and just do a back-up. This will save your contacts, but you will only be able to view them after restoring the data to an iPhone.
The iPhone has proven to be a revolutionary device, that along with its cellular capabilities, has emerged as a successful device for entertainment purposes as well. The iPhone can be used as an iPod, a video player, an Internet communication tool, and as a camera as well. And with Apple refreshing their line-up every year, things are only getting better.
The only problem with a new iPhone every year is the question of moving your data to the new device. Luckily, this is not an altogether difficult task, and there are multiple ways of doing the same. The most important thing when you upgrade your iPhone to a newer model, is the need of your contacts, or your address book, on your new phone, without which you are severely debilitated. In the following paragraphs, we tell all you need to know about transferring contacts to and from the Apple iPhone.
Saving Contacts on Your iPhone
As in any other mobile phone or PDA, the iPhone also has an address book tagged with the name ‘Contacts’. The Contacts icon is located on the second page of the main menu of the iPhone, for which you will need to slide your finger to the left on the screen. To save a contact to your address book, click on the ‘Contacts’ icon, and when it opens, tap the ‘+’ option situated at the top of the screen and to the right of ‘All Contacts’. Doing so will let you access the ‘New Contact’ page which consists of white spaces to add contact details.
You can tap on any field you want to enter data in and view the virtual keyboard. You will also find optional fields to enter details such as email addresses, mailing addresses, and website addresses of a contact. Once all details are entered in the required fields, you will have to tap the ‘Done’ option located at the upper right of the page. This will save the contact in your address book, and you can find it later from the aforementioned ‘Contacts’ app on the second screen. This was how to save contacts on your phone itself.
Exporting Contacts from Your iPhone
Even though the iPhone is an exceptionally robust and stable device, at times, it too may suffer from a plethora of problems. In such cases, securing the data on your phone, especially the contacts, becomes very important. Your phone may crash, or you may have to restore it, and this will cause you to lose all your data on the phone. To save your contacts, you will have to export them to another program, or sync them, so that in case you need to recover them, it becomes possible.
There are many ways to do this, and here we give you some of the more popular and easy ways of backing up your contacts.
Saving your iPhone Contacts to a Mac or PC
This is the most basic way of saving your contacts from your iPhone. This method will save the contacts on your computer. This can be a good option if you have just one iPhone in the house, as multiple iPhone will just mess up your contacts.
➥ Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed.
➥ Connect your iPhone to the computer using the USB cable that came with your phone.
➥ When your phone is connected, iTunes should open automatically. If it does not, locate iTunes and open it manually.
➥ Once iTunes is open, you should be able to see your iPhone in the left pane of the software. Click on the name of your phone.
➥ Once you click on your phone, the right pane will offer you a few options; choose the INFO tab at the top of the screen.
➥ Once in the info tab, you can choose how to sync your contacts; choose ‘Sync Contacts With’ for Windows machines, and ‘Sync Contacts’ or ‘Sync Address Book Contacts’ for Macintosh machines.
➥ Click on apply in the bottom right corner of the screen. Your contacts will sync with either Microsoft Outlook (Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8), Windows Address Book (Windows XP), Windows Contacts (Windows Vista, 7, and 8), Address Book (Mac OS X v10.7 and earlier), Contacts (Mac OS X v10.8), Microsoft Entourage, or Microsoft Outlook for Mac.
➥ Note that you can choose the program you want your contacts to sync to in step 6.
If you think that going through all these steps as cumbersome, then there are certain apps available in the App Store that can do this for you with the click of a single button.
Saving your iPhone Contacts to Gmail
Saving your contacts to Gmail can be a very good option, as then you are not dependent on any program or app to restore your contacts. Almost every phone has an option to add a Gmail account and sync your contact information. This is one of the best methods to keep your contacts safe. To save your contacts to your Gmail account, so you can sync them via exchange or Gmail, follow these steps.
➥ Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed.
➥ Connect your phone to the computer using the USB cable that came with your phone.
➥ When your phone is connected, iTunes should open automatically. If it does not, locate iTunes and open it manually.
➥ Once iTunes is open, you should be able to see your iPhone in the left pane of the software. Click on the name of your phone.
➥ Once you click on your phone, the right pane will show you a few options; look for the INFO tab at the top of the screen, and click on it.
➥ Once in the info tab, you can choose how to sync your contacts; choose ‘Sync Contacts With’ for Windows machines, and ‘Sync Contacts’ or ‘Sync Address Book Contacts’ for Macintosh machines.
➥ Make a note of the program you are syncing your contacts to. If you are using a Windows machine, then choose Microsoft Outlook, and if you are using a Mac then choose Address Book.
➥ Once the contacts have synced, go to Outlook or Address Book, and using the export option, export the contacts as a .CSV file. Save this file to your desktop.
➥ Now, open your Gmail account. Click on contacts, which will be in the left pane.
➥ Once the page opens, click on ‘More’ and then on ‘Import’.
➥ In the box that pops up, choose ‘Browse’, and select the .CSV file you saved in step 8. Click open.
➥ Wait for the file to load. Once completed, you will have successfully saved your contacts to your Gmail account.
Once your contacts have been synced or saved to your Gmail account, recovering them on your iPhone is a simple matter of adding your Gmail account, and selecting the ‘Sync Contacts’ option.
How to Save iPhone Contacts to iCloud
If your iPhone is running iOS 5 or later, then you have the option to save your contacts to Apple’s cloud service, called iCloud. This is, by far, the easiest option to save your contacts, but people might not be comfortable with their personal data being online.
➥ Go to ‘Settings’ on your iPhone, and from there navigate to the iCloud option.
➥ Once you click on the iCloud option, you will be taken to a screen where your iCloud account and options to sync will be shown.
➥ Depending on the settings of your phone, you will have to slide the option for Contacts to the ON position.
➥ If this is the first time you are setting up iCloud, then the iCloud option will turn on. If you have already performed a backup, or have contacts in your iCloud account, then you will see a popup that asks to merge the contacts. Click on the merge option.
➥ Return to your contacts app, and refresh the contacts you see there. That’s all. Your contacts have been successfully merged or saved to your iClould account.
You may have to register for the iClould service if you have never used it before. Just follow the prompts on the screen of your phone to get it set up.
Transferring Contacts from Another SIM Card
Those searching for information on saving iPhone contacts to the SIM card should note that the device does not store contact data directly on the SIM card. However, if you have a SIM from another mobile phone and want to transfer its contact details to your iPhone, you can do so by following a few steps.
➥ Take out the SIM from the iPhone and insert the SIM with the contact information to be saved.
➥ Tap the ‘Settings’ icon and then access the ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ option.
➥ In the contacts section of the list, select ‘Import SIM Contacts’, after which the SIM contacts would be saved onto the iPhone memory.
Note that if the SIM you are importing contacts from was used in an iPhone previously, there are very little chances of the SIM having any contacts. If you have always used your SIM in an iPhone, then you will not be able to import any contacts using this option.
These are a few of the easiest and most popular ways to save your iPhone contacts. In order to keep your contact details secure, make sure you periodically do a data backup of the iPhone on your computer. A data backup automatically saves your contacts to your machine, but it is not in a machine readable format. To read contacts or any data saved in such a manner properly, you will need to restore it to an iPhone.