Copying contacts/address book from iPhone and others

[normangrey]

Hi Guys,

As you probably know, if you're using an iPhone it's not possible to transfer your contacts via Bluetooth to the head unit in the car. This really pissed me off, not because I wanted to use the head unit to call people - I can use the phone for that - but because I could never see who was calling on the screen of the head unit. Anyway, I found out how to do it and it doesn't really matter what phone you are using, so, if this is something you think might be useful to you and you have a laptop with Bluetooth or a computer with Bluetooth that is within 20 metres of your car then here's the way to do it. I should point out that I did it using a Dell laptop and it worked first time but other laptops may show different screens and instructions.

What we're doing is:

Exporting the address book from computer or laptop into .vcf format,
Pairing laptop to car audio,
Copy .vcf files to car audio.

If you're on a Mac open address book and make sure 'All Contacts' is selected on the left and then select Export > Export Group VCard from the menu bar. This will export all contacts to 1 file called Vcards.vcf to a location of your choice - better to make it somewhere simple so you can find it easily later. If you're on a PC then it's pretty much the same process except that it will export each contact to its own .vcf file and you will have 1 .vcf file for each contact so you might want to export them to a new dedicated folder.

Now you just need to take your laptop to the car and pretend it's a phone and 'pair' it with the head unit, the same way you do with a phone. Just make sure your laptop is all set up to use Bluetooth. Probably best at this stage to turn off your phone so as the head unit won't try and connect to it at the same time. Once your laptop is paired with the car then you start the 'copy address book' facility on the menu of the head unit, at the same time you should see a menu on the laptop asking if you want to transfer files and you would then select the .vcf file you exported earlier and press 'Go'. If you exported from a PC then you will probably have to multi-select all of the .vcf files and then press 'Go'. For reasons unknown the Bluetooth screen on the laptop was displaying 'disconnected' while the files were being transferred but then displayed 'connected' after the file transfer was complete.

Just to make sure there were no problems with the phone afterwards I deleted the laptop connection to the car so as it only ever tries to connect to the phone and not the laptop.

Like I said earlier this is really handy if you would like to see who is calling on your head unit screen so as you can choose to ignore, etc. Bit of a workaround but you only have to do it once and then you can add individual contacts via the menu.

Ps. If at any stage you find yourself in the car with a 10 amp Red/Yellow extension cable, computer on the floor and a CRT monitor, keyboard and mouse on the passenger seat - Give up and buy a laptop!

Give me a hoy if any dramas.

Norman

[Earl-mi]

That's great mate. Something to do one night after work. Good read. Thanks

[jogal]

Is there any tricks to getting to laptop and headunit to pair?

[normangrey]

Should be exactly the same as getting phone and head unit to pair. Just make sure Bluetooth on laptop is ON and hit 'register phone' on head unit.

[Lux1]

Hi
When i go to transfer my contacts my laptop then recognises the hilux bluetooth conection has speakers and wont show it as a bluetooth device??? any ideas cheers

[Unluckyalf]

For anyone that still wants to do this, i can confirm that the uploading of contacts now seems to be supported directly from the iPhone on the latest Hilux. Its not an automatic transfer though, you need to initiate it manually.

The path is:

Setup
Phone
Phonebook
Add contact
All Contacts

Takes a few seconds and voila!

[wooyeah84]

Does this only apply to factory head unit of does this also work for a-sure