How to export or backup your Windows Mobile contacts without Outlook or Activesync

Written on 9/18/2009 06:27:00 PM by poison_ivy

Sure syncing your contacts from your Windows Mobile phone to your PC is easy enough with Activesync but what about those people who don't have Activesync or Outlook? How can they sync their Windows Mobile contacts or back it up?

Transferring Contacts to Outlook without Activesync/backing up contacts

I found this really cool freeware application at XDAdevelopers.com called PPCPIMBackup which allows you to backup or upload CSV contact files to your Pocket PC phone. It really helped me a lot back when my PC was on the fritz and I needed to backup my contacts because I just added new ones. You can find the download link here but you have to register first. BTW, PPCPIMBackup can also back up the messages on your mobile phone.

Transferring Contacts to PC without Outlook

Outlook is a really nice software, however, it's not free and most of the times, the full version is not bundled with any PC packages so you have to buy the separate software. Well, there's always the free alternative which is: Thunderbird, from the creators of Firefox. Thunderbird is Mozilla's free email client similar to Outlook. Thunderbird can import CSV files of your contacts. You can also use PPCPIMBackup to export CSV files of your Win Mobile contacts or you can also use Thunderbird Contacts Export which does the same job but just have a more specific name.