[Blaize19]

Palm has informed me that contact information is encrypted and cannot be retrieve via the USB cable.

Palm is wrong. Search the forum for backup. I haven't done the backup but I know there is a way to do it via USB.

[pyrex]

Then go back to your iphone. Surely your contacts are still there, just a few months old.

I've pretty much been forced back into using it again. That's really the only option at the moment.

[pyrex]

Palm is wrong. Search the forum for backup. I haven't done the backup but I know there is a way to do it via USB.

It doesn't surprise me that he was incorrect. He was completely unaware that if sprint disables the phone's serial# you can't even access the UI, it's bricked. He was telling me to just log into my old phone and backup the data, then once I explained to him that it won't let me do anything he told me I was screwed and blamed sprint.

11:27 PM C.J.: I need to get this data before a meeting tomorrow
11:28 PM C.J.: is there any way for me to retrieve my contact data via a usb cable?
11:28 PM Sergio: No, the data cannot be obtained through USB cable.
11:28 PM Sergio: As the data stored on server will be in encrypted form.

[pyrex]

Well, one thing I learned from searching the forums on backup is that there is a hell of a lot of people that lose their contact data. And, a few people which are on their 6th/7th replacement have never had the backup function work correctly. That's mind blowing. Hopefully I can figure something out.

[Blaize19]

It doesn't surprise me that he was incorrect. He was completely unaware that if sprint disables the phone's serial# you can't even access the UI, it's bricked. He was telling me to just log into my old phone and backup the data, then once I explained to him that it won't let me do anything he told me I was screwed and blamed sprint.

11:27 PM C.J.: I need to get this data before a meeting tomorrow
11:28 PM C.J.: is there any way for me to retrieve my contact data via a usb cable?
11:28 PM Sergio: No, the data cannot be obtained through USB cable.
11:28 PM Sergio: As the data stored on server will be in encrypted form.

Oy! I promise the whole problem is fixable, just don't know if it's fixable before your meeting tomorrow. A couple people here mentioned going to the sprint store and having them plug both phones into the "magic machine". When I had to exchange my 1st Pre that's what they did for me after the 1st one was turned off and 2nd one activated. They were able to transfer all my contacts and music and pics and etc. Hope this helps.

[windzilla]

Well, one thing I learned from searching the forums on backup is that there is a hell of a lot of people that lose their contact data. And, a few people which are on their 6th/7th replacement have never had the backup function work correctly. That's mind blowing. Hopefully I can figure something out.

like you many come to the forums and post with problems or complaints.

you definitely have a problem, one that is unacceptable and needs a fix from palm/sprint better than a magic machine. Hopefully they here you and others and will fix it soon.

good luck, you can get the data, its just not a straightforward process.

[pyrex]

Oy! I promise the whole problem is fixable, just don't know if it's fixable before your meeting tomorrow. A couple people here mentioned going to the sprint store and having them plug both phones into the "magic machine". When I had to exchange my 1st Pre that's what they did for me after the 1st one was turned off and 2nd one activated. They were able to transfer all my contacts and music and pics and etc. Hope this helps.

From what I can gather the Cellebrite machine might not work if one of the pre's have already been disabled (which is true for my old phone). But it seems like good info is hard to find on the specifics on the process. I'll try it tomorrow at a local sprint store.

[Blaize19]

I do wish you the best of luck. If this doesn't work, definitely escalate by phone to Tier 3 tech support at palm. This is the other solution I've heard about that works although it can take time.

[daniela]

call palm 877426377, they have a way of importing your database from last month, up until the 2nd week of November... so just jot down those that you have added recently since the import process will overwrite what you currently have

[ksom]

So, I've been carrying my contacts from phone to phone for about ~10 years now. I have about ~500-750 business contacts on my phones. Well, for the first time ever, apparently I'm completely screwed out of all of them. And these contacts are beyond irreplaceable. I absolutely must have these contacts without any question - they are my contacts for business, and I can not enter these in manually, it's simply out of the question.

My palm pre's screen cracked last week and only 30% of the left side of my screen would respond to touch, and only for 2 seconds after the screen was turned on. I immediately had a new one (refurbished already cracked one from the insurance company) sent to me. I did a backup of my broken pre in a very time intensive span of 2 seconds each time, successfully backed up all my info to my palm profile. I shut down my phone, activated my new one - and then i got a an error trying to pull my palm profile info ( I PRESUME because the "new" phone they sent me was on the original webos 1.0, so i updated to 1.3.1, and tried to sync my contacts again through the calender/contacts file menu, and I received back _12_ contacts, all of which were the last 12 contacts i had added this week. Nothing else.

Now, I'm sure that all my contacts are still on my old pre - but of course I can't even USE this damn phone now because it has an alert that pops up saying my old phone is no longer logged onto my palm profile. My question is - how the hell do I get my contacts off my old pre and onto my new one - palm profile is definitely the worst thing ever invented and has completely unequivocally failed in every sense of it's purpose.

On one hand I feel your pain. But on the other hand, I think if the information is you live line, I would not rely on a brand new service such as Palm Profile. I have suggested before, a good feature for Palm to add is to allow quick copy from one account to another in the contact app. That way, people can have contacts duplicated on multiple accounts, so any one service went down would not wipe all data out. Even Google is not immune for data lost, although they probably have better backup and protection than anyone else out there.

I hope you get the problem solved, but if not, please let us know what you feel when you move back to your iPhone.

[hparsons]

Palm has informed me that contact information is encrypted and cannot be retrieve via the USB cable.

Unfortunately, there are different levels of technical support. He's incorrect that the data is encrypted, it is not. In one respect, the guy is correct, the information cannot be retrived simply by using a USB cable. But it can be retrieved using using a USB cable. I know even that is confusing, I'll try to explain (do with the information what you choose).

If you plug the Pre up and use it as a USB storage device, the information is not accessible.

However, if you put the device in Developer Mode (by typing a command on the screen), you can access the underlying Linux system.

The instructions for that can be found here:

Portal:Accessing Linux - WebOS Internals

Once you have access to the underlying system, you can copy the database that actually contains your unencrypted information, including your contact list. There are tools that you can run to extract that data, or if you prefer, you can send it to me, and I'll extract the data and send it to you in a CSV format.

BTW, when I way "extract", it's not because the data is encrypted, it's not. It's because the database contains a lot of different information, and is difficult to use in its "raw" format. You'll want the data in something you can import into whatever you end up with.

Sorry you're having difficulty. I really think this is one of the major "public awareness" issues that Palm has fallen short on. What you were doing is not "cloud computing". What you were doing was storing all your information on a device that was doing an over the air backup. That's not cloud computing. Your backup was corrupted, so when you went to a new device, the restored backup did not have the correct information.

Some folks are having successful results with Palm recovering their backup. Others are not. Were it me, my first attempt would be at getting the information off the device.

Good luck. Personally, I think you're giving up on the device too soon, but I can definitely understand why you would.

====
After reading further in the thread, the tech support was right - the data on their server is encrypted. It was a nonsensical answer though, as you cannot access the data on their server with a USB cable.

However, the data on your device is not encryptied. It's in a standard SQL Lite database.

[pelikan3]

Like so many have said, this is definitely fixable. The "easiest" solution is to go to the Sprint store, have a tech reactivate your old phone, back it up withe their machine, and then activate the new one and download your data to it.

[ilogik]

+1 on syncing your contacts with gmail, I switch phones quite often and after doing a simple sync with my gmail account all my contacts are moved to whichever phone I am using.

[shadavis08]

I extracted my contacts myself with webos QI it was very easy. Just do a search on backup contacts and you should find the thread for it .

[warblad13]

bye

[bpdamas]

From what I can gather the Cellebrite machine might not work if one of the pre's have already been disabled (which is true for my old phone). But it seems like good info is hard to find on the specifics on the process. I'll try it tomorrow at a local sprint store.

Have you tried a full erase on your current phone after updating to 1.3.1? Just a thought to see if this helps.

[cardfan]

Threatening you? Why would I care about the community in reference to my work flow? I'm threatening palm and sprint essentially - their product does not meet my needs. I use it as my primary work device, it is imperative that it works - and if it doesn't work, I need to at the bare minimum retrieve my data. I had an iphone for 2 years, and had to replace it several times, but I never lost any contact information. I still have that phone right here as my secondary. Essentially what I'm saying is since all of my contact data came from my iphone, and now all of my new information has been completely lost, I'm back where I started - with an iphone with all of my contact information from a few months ago. Why spend all the time rebuilding my contact information on a device that isn't reliable if somehow gets damaged or needs to be replaced for any reason? I understand everyone here loves the pre - but I can't trust the phone anymore, I can't back up it's data continuously with the presumption it's going to fail at any moment and I can't retrieve my data. I have used palm products in the past and never ran into this kind of trouble. I wanted to switch to the Pre because I had been following it's progress for years, and I wanted to support Palm and an American company that needed my business. Unfortunately it seems Apple has a more reliable way of retrieving and storing my contact data. I'm sure some of you might think I'm being arrogant or unruly, but in all of this frustration lies a truth about the Pre - the palm profile service and centralized server design is flawed, and because of this one shortcoming I can't trust it any longer, and they've lost a customer. Sometime's is just that simple. I liked the phone, but I can't trust it.

How come you weren't syncing your info with outlook/exchange or a cloud service like google?

I assume you did sync with outlook with the iphone.

[Beanis]

I wish everyone that threatens to go to iphone or go back to iphone just would. As long as we don't have to hear about it.

[jbg7474]

Some of you are really being unfair to this guy. He's ****ed off, and rightly so. Every other smartphone device would have had a local copy of his important data on his desktop machine, and he could have accessed it easily with the replacement device.

It is Palm's fault for not defaulting people into a safe configuration for their data. You go to the Sprint store, they transfer your contacts, you think everything is hunky dory. You can't expect average users to know that that info is only stored on the phone and in an apparently unreliable backup system on Palm's servers. It's not Pyrex's fault that he was in this unsafe condition. Palm needs to either make their backup system reliable, or find a way to default users into a safe condition for their data (some other cloud storage). And they need to provide a way to backup your data to your local computer.

If you're using the Pre for business, and you're not using one of the 3rd party sync solutions, and you're not using either EAS or a Google account for all your important information, you're on shaky ground. Palm needs to make people aware of that.

[carlsenga]

Threatening you? Why would I care about the community in reference to my work flow? I'm threatening palm and sprint essentially - their product does not meet my needs. I use it as my primary work device, it is imperative that it works - and if it doesn't work, I need to at the bare minimum retrieve my data. I had an iphone for 2 years, and had to replace it several times, but I never lost any contact information. I still have that phone right here as my secondary. Essentially what I'm saying is since all of my contact data came from my iphone, and now all of my new information has been completely lost, I'm back where I started - with an iphone with all of my contact information from a few months ago. Why spend all the time rebuilding my contact information on a device that isn't reliable if somehow gets damaged or needs to be replaced for any reason? I understand everyone here loves the pre - but I can't trust the phone anymore, I can't back up it's data continuously with the presumption it's going to fail at any moment and I can't retrieve my data. I have used palm products in the past and never ran into this kind of trouble. I wanted to switch to the Pre because I had been following it's progress for years, and I wanted to support Palm and an American company that needed my business. Unfortunately it seems Apple has a more reliable way of retrieving and storing my contact data. I'm sure some of you might think I'm being arrogant or unruly, but in all of this frustration lies a truth about the Pre - the palm profile service and centralized server design is flawed, and because of this one shortcoming I can't trust it any longer, and they've lost a customer. Sometime's is just that simple. I liked the phone, but I can't trust it.

Sounds like you have a problem with damaging your phones. Don't know of any phone on any system will fit your needs. Maybe a Zach Morris phone will hold up to your abuse! And you are on here slandering and flying off the handle. You didn't take the steps to back up everything properly. Every phone with any carrier has different methods to backup. You didn't take them, and now are mad about this. You said that you have had your Pre for this long, and you have not properly backed it up..... I would say this is a user issue.