iPhone + Address Book Question
 

Hello,
I would appreciate it if an iPhone user could answer my question:
I currently have:
2008 E70 and AT&T Blackberry 8300.

My phone pairs with no problem. I use MS Outlook 2007, on a MAC, under Parallels. I have 1000 contacts. I made a BMW Category. Under the bluetooth options, my blackberry is set to send ONLY the address book entries in the "BMW" Category. Works great.

I would like to change over to an iPhone, and I would like to discontinue Outlook and move over to Mac Address Book. As far as I can tell, there are no "Categories" in Mac Address Book. There are "Groups." If I make a new "BMW" Group, is there a setting on the iPhone to send ONLY that BMW Group to the Car? I really do not want to send 1000 contacts.

Thank you for your help.

This presumes you are using a Mac.

Set up BMW Group in the mac address book.
Drag the address you want to that group.
When you sync the phone in iTunes that
group will appear on the info page.
Just choose selected groups (not all contacts)
and the check the group/s you want, then sync the phone.

That's it

Thank you for your reply.
I understand that part with the groups, however if I sync only he BMW group, only those contacts will be sent to the phone. I need all the contacts. I just to control which contacts are sent to the car. I want to send only the BMW group. Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks.

I am not aware of a way that you can only restrict certain contacts (e.g. a group) synching from the iPhone to the car.
Is the reason that you do not want all contacts on the car because:
1. you don't want them all on the car for confidentiality reasons (a passenger may see)?
2. you are concerned about how it will take to get all the contacts onto the car each time you connect? I don't think that is an issue. My BlackBerry had hundreds of contacts and I never experienced any slowness after the initial synch. My iPhone only has 200 contacts on it.
3. you are concerned about navigating around the 1,000 contacts, using that iDrive interface :(, to get to the contact that you want?
4. other reason/s?

. . . . Brian

Brian,
Thank you for your thoughtful response.

The answer is rather complicated:

On my X5, I don't want to scroll through 1000 entries, just to find the one that I want, although the most commonly dialed ones will be in Top 8.

My dad has a older X5 with the combo bluetooth/BMW assist card. This car, for some reason, is much more finicky about address book entries. I can only get about 100 to load and they all have to be formatted on a particular way.

I was just joking with him this morning, that a $300 phone, is going to end up costing him 75K for new car.

He loves is X5 and does not want a new one.

So you only want to use the iPhone with your 2008 E70 --- you're not looking at using it on your dad's older X5?

On your car, you would not have to scroll through 1,000 entries. Worst case, you would select the first letter and then have to scroll (it would would still be painful).

I don't make a lot of calls from my car so my calls are typically to the Top 8 --- so the number of entries was never an issue.

Of course, you have voice-activated dialing that you can use too :thumbup: Haven't spent much time on that option myself but it did seem to work...

Not sure what you mean by "Older X5" Mine is a 2005 and It has
no trouble loading address book entries and neither do
they have to be formatted in any special way.

Along with that My iPhone is seen in my wife e-60 and I can get
to the numbers very fast but here's a thought. Cant you select from
the iPhone any number you need in the iPhone address book? I can.

I would need to iphone to work in my 2008 E70, my Dad's 2004 E53, and my Mom's 2008 E65.

In my X5 and in the 7er, I'm not too worried about importing the phone book. We usually dial by voice command, of by Top 8.

In the E53, I had a lot of problems. At that time you had to decide between BMW Assist or Bluetooth integration. We went with the Assist. Later on, BMW offered a new upgrade combo Assist/BT card. This card does not behave the same as the factory BT. The pairing procedure is different and complicated. Through extensive trial and error, I figured out how to upload the address book, with a specific category, to the car.

I did this quite a few years ago, but as I remember it: The bluetooth will not load a contact with multiple phone numbers. So, for example, my Dad's Outlook has two cards for me, one with all my info, emails and multiple phone numbers. Then he has a second card for me with ONLY the name, in the fill name field, and the phone number in the Business phone number field, attached to a BMW category. The name field has a limited amount of characters too, I don't remember exactly how many, but I had to abbreviate some of the names. Once I got it all together, I found out that the bluetooth will accept only about 100 names. Thus, the need to upload only one group (category) from the iPhone.

Thank you all again for your time.

The E-53 issues you speak of must be vehicle specific.
Many of my iPhone contacts have more than one Tele#
and all of the those numbers show up on the screen to be dialed.

You never said weather you we're using Mac or Windows.
I ask because maybe the issue is not with the iPhone but
with the way "outlook" files the numbers in the iPhone.



I don't use outlook for contacts. I use Mac Address book

I currently use Outlook, on Vista, on a Mac, under Parallels Desktop. I just signed up for Mobile Me, which is very impressive. I have it synchronizing, the Mac address book and calender, Outlook, under Parallels, Outlook under two other PCs, and the address book and calender on an iPod Touch. This is why I want to dump our Blackberries. The BBs do not sync with Mobile Me. I need to sync them manually with Outook. BTW, I have used both Pocket Mac and The Missing Sync. Both are total crap.

I've pretty much decided to purchase one iPhone, under the 30 day trial. But I will wait until 3.0 comes out, and we know that 3.0 is BMW compatible. I don't want any surprises.