BlackBerry 101: How To Clear Your Address Book Database

With a title like that I'm sure some of you out there are asking why would I want to clear my address book? Well, let's face it even though BlackBerry does a good job of contacts synchronization through Outlook and various other methods, unless you are on a BES it has a tendency to wreak havoc on occassion.

Duplicate entries, missing email addresses or just general chaos can happen. This is a quick and easy guide to show you how to remove your whole contact database without removing wanted items such as calendar entries or needing to wipe your whole OS. 

Desktop Manager

*NOTE* -Before doing this you will want to have a back up address book resource available. Be it Outlook, Google Sync or MiQ. Whatever method you choose, you'll want it to be a corrected database and NOT a copy of the one you are removing. Reloading the one you are wiping will not solve any problems.

For this, we're gonna need desktop manager available for use. But, before desktop manager you are gonna want to disable anything that may be using "Wireless Synchronization" on your BlackBerry, since this is BlackBerry 101 is targetted at BIS users you may have GMail doing your contact sync. If that is indeed the case go to your set up folder and adjust your email setting to temporarily disable the synching. If you had set this up, then it will be easy to find to disable as well as it does not default to an enabled status.

Next, you'll wanna open BlackBerry Desktop manager, plug your BlackBerry in and go to "Back Up and Restore". Once inside go to "Advanced", you'll then see desktop manager accessing your device and loading all of the databases associated with it.

Desktop Manager Databases

Now that your databases are loaded as seen on the right hand side, you can then select your "Address book-All" item listing and go to the bottom and click on "Clear". It will do clearing of your database at which point when completed you will no longer have any address book entries.

Having cleared your address book, you can now start the process of reloading it by however method you choose. ie: Outlook, Google Sync, MiQ etc. When completed, you should have a nicely organized address book with all your contacts in place and corrected entries. Assuming you did not reloadabackup of what you just removed but instead loaded a corrected version.

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