Save your Motorola phonebook to a text file

I can’t imagine many are fans of Motorola’s slow and bloated Mobile PhoneTools. Looking at the functionality offered, it makes using a mobile phone simply for making calls seem an anachronism.

Why can’t we quickly backup the phonebook: name & number? A text file would be fine. Yes, I will type them in again if I lose the phone. No, that doesn’t fill me with dread.

Thankfully, there is a way.

Hugh Sparks has done a good job of noting the AT commands to access the Motorola phonebook. These commands work on the Razr.

Update 12/06: He has also written a small utility to do this! MotoBackup will read all the phonebook entries in your phone and write them to an XML file. What follows has been left for reference…

Here’s how to backup your phonebook to a text file. Once the phone is attached to your PC, you need to find out to which COM port your phone is attached. Mine is COM5.

  1. Start HyperTerminal (under Start > Programs > Accessories > Communications)
  2. Name your connection.
  3. On the ‘Connect To’ dialogue ‘Connect using’ the COM port of your phone, and click OK.
  4. For properties set: bits/sec=19200, data bits=8, parity=None, stop bits=1 and flow control=Hardware, then click OK.
  5. You are now connected. To save the result of the session, select Capture Text from the Transfer menu. Set a .txt file and click Start.
  6. Now type the following AT commands, one at a time:
    1. at+mode=2 (enables the extended command mode)
    2. at+cpbs=AD (picks the full, combined, phonebook)
    3. at+mpbr=1,400 (displays entries 1-400 of the phonebook)
    4. at+mode=0 (disables the extended command mode)

Not pretty but good enough, and we have a text file of the phonebook. Save your connection and configuration, making the time for your next backup very quick (<10 secs)

 

Motorola AT Commands Hyperterminal

Published:
11.06.07 / 11pm
Category:
mobile, windows