Learning how to backup iPhone contacts is really easy – in fact if you’ve ever used iTunes to sync you iPhone contacts, the chances are that they will already be backed up for you. There are lots of advantages to backing up iPhone contacts: when upgrading to a new iPhone you can easily transfer your entire address book to your new handset, if your phone becomes lost or damaged you can easily restore a back up of your address book on your new iPhone – and much more!
Address books can take weeks, months or even years to nurture and build up – and when you lose your address book unexpectedly it can be a real blow. It’s not just friends and family that you may not be able to get in touch with, but it’s also colleagues and work mates too. It’s vital that you backup iPhone contacts regularly – but it’s not just something iPhone users should do, those with other phones like Blackberry and HTC should also back up their phones. There’s normally no warning when your phone is about to break, so to avoid extended problems beyond getting a new one, ensure your iPhone contacts are backed up frequently.
How to backup iPhone contacts
Here are two easy ways that you can backup iPhone contacts in no time at all!
Backup iPhone contacts through USB/iTunes
- Connect your iPhone device to a PC or Mac with iTunes installed
- Under the devices tab in the left column, select the iDevice/iPhone you’d like to backup
- Simply right click on the name of that device then hit “Backup”
Backup iPhone contacts through iCloud (this requires the iCloud app to be configured on both your PC/Mac and your iPhone)
- Ensure iOS 5 or later is installed – this includes the iCloud app
- Go to the Backup and Storage menu on your iPhone (Settings -> iCloud)
- Enable the backup option on this menu – your iPhone will now backup periodically when your iPhone is connected to a power source, is in range and connected to a wifi network, and the screen is locked
The traditional way of backing up iPhone contacts was to use iTunes and a USB sync cable. Of course this means that every few days or weeks you need to plug your iPhone into your PC or Mac and sync it. If you don’t, the only contacts that will be backed up are the ones that were present last time you backed up. If anything goes wrong and you didn’t back up your phone for a few weeks, you will lose any contacts that were added in that window.
Thanks to the new iCloud app from Apple there’s no need to panic about backing up iPhone contacts – because you can configure the iCloud settings in order to have it done automatically for you! What’s so great is that iCloud will even backup iPhone contacts between your devices – so contacts on your iPhone will also show up on your iPad if you have one, which makes it ideal for using applications such as Apple’s Facetime.
Backup iPhone contacts to transfer to your new phone
If you get a new phone and it’s not an iPhone, don’t assume that you can’t transfer your contacts to the new device. Of course you won’t be able to connect other phones from manufacturers like HTC, Samsung or even Blackberry to iTunes on your computer, but you can use a series of simple tricks in order to successfully export the backed up iPhone contacts on your computer. Additionally, you may also find that when buying a new phone the shop that you get it from may be able to help you transfer the contacts by using a special machine. Be sure to ask in store if they can backup iPhone contacts for you and transfer them to your new phone for you.
There are lots of pieces of software on the internet that will claim to help you transfer contacts from one brand of phone to another, but the simple fact is that often you can do it by yourself by using simple tutorials on the internet. For example, transferring contacts from an iPhone to a new Blackberry handset is particularly easy, and only requires iTunes in order to backup iPhone contacts to your PC. These contacts are then restored to your new Blackberry phone using the Blackberry software. This makes transferring easy, and means there is no need for expensive software.
Now you know how to backup iPhone contacts!
Now you?re sure of how to backup iPhone contacts there’s no excuse for not doing it regularly. If you choose to go down the route of using the iCloud app backing up is effortless – you don’t have to do a thing because your phone will backup all by itself if it is kept powered up and in range of a wireless network (which it must be connected to).
Learning how to backup iPhone contacts is easy – and it can really save a lot of hassle and stress a little further down the line if your phone does get broken and you’re left with a blank new one. By backing up regularly you can resume normal service quickly simply by reverting to your backup. Remember upgrading phones is easy now too – so be sure to backup iPhone contacts on your old iPhone before you get a new one!