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Phonebook file format

 
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 3:39 am    Post subject: Phonebook file format Reply with quote

We know that the imported phonebook is a simple text file called contacts.txt

The format of each line of the file is as follows

"NAME","NUMBER","DEFAULT"

The "DEFAULT" item determines what icon is shown on-screen next to the name and can be changed to show different phone types.

I know "HOME" and "WORK" produce different icons, but "MOBILE" seems to be the same as "DEFAULT".

Does anyone know any others that work, or preferably the complete list?
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pcaouolte
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Andy

I think that "CELL" works and gives you a mobile phone icon.

I don't know of any others.
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IanS100
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My 550 has imported a load of numbers without names so I need to edit the file - is it stored under contacts?
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, the file is called "contacts.txt' and it's located in the "contacts" folder.


Copied from a topic of mine on another forum...

This (no names copied across) is quite common, even on phones which TomTom's own compatibility list say are OK to import contacts.

By all means complain to TomTom, it's the only way things might get fixed: but until then, the only workround is to import the names manually.

The phonebook on the TomTom is a simple text file.
If it has partially imported it, just open "contacts.txt' (find it in the "contacts" folder) in Notepad and you can edit it manually to whatever you like. Then re save it with the same name in the same place.

The partially imported text will often look something like this:
Code:
"","+4477123456","DEFAULT"
"","+436991123456","DEFAULT"
"","07833123456","DEFAULT"
"","07886123456","DEFAULT"

You need to put your contact names in-between the first pair of quote marks, so it ends up looking like this:
Code:
"FRED BLOGGS","+4477123456","DEFAULT"
"KATE BLOGGS","+436991123456","DEFAULT"
etc...


If you want to experiment, you can try replacing the "DEFAULT" entry with "WORK", "HOME" or "CELL" etc.
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IanS100
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cheers Andy, it's typical of TomTom to do half a job. My Parrott (bluetooth that is not bird) supports 'Businiess Card' importing complete with linked photos, I expected TomTom to use something similar Rolling Eyes
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Often it isn't really TomTom's fault, a lot of phones just do things differently.
However, I've just bought a new phone (SE W595) and I tried importing the phonebook into a 720 and a 940....

On the 720 it imported it fine, although it imports contacts from the phone memory AND the SIM card so if you have backed them up, you get everything twice. (I just temporarily deleted the SIM versions and did the transfer to the Tomtom again).
Strangely, the text file wasn't in alphabetical order, but when shown on screen it was OK.

But on the 940, the text file created looked like this (I've changed the phone numbers):

Code:
"}}A!l!e!x! !+! !J!a!n!/!M!","0123456789","DEFAULT"
"}}A!l!l!S!t!a!r!-!M!i!/!M!","0123456789","DEFAULT"
"}}A!l!l!S!t!a!r!-!P!/!M!","0123456789","DEFAULT"
"}}A!l!u!n! !C!u!r!n!o!/!M!","0123456789","DEFAULT"
"}}A!r!n!o!l!d!'!s! !L!/!M!","0123456789","DEFAULT"

(The }} characters are actually "greater than" arrows, but you can't show those on this forum)


So for some daft reason it has added an exclamation mark after EVERY character!
Again it looked fine on screen, but would have been a nightmare to edit the text manually.

In the end I just copied the one from the 720 across, and that worked fine too!
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pcaouolte
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Andy

I have had a look at the software and the complete list of options (with navcore version 7.903) is:
"HOME", "WORK", "CELL" and "DEFAULT". Anything else in this field produces the same icon as "DEFAULT".
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Many thanks, pcaouolte, very useful!

You wouldn't let on how you did something so clever, would you? Not Worthy
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pcaouolte
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Andy

The tomtom software is compressed on the memory card and needs to be decompressed by the tomtom in order to run.

Some time ago when people were trying to find SDK menu commands for the new options like "Help Me" I decompressed the software so that I could search it with a text editor. This showed that the "Help Me" option cannot be added to a cusom menu. I saved the decompressed version in case I wanted to search for anything else in the future.

When I looked for the string "DEFAULT" in the decompressed file I found "HOME", "WORK" and "CELL" immediately before it. There are no other strings nearby.
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bhl62
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:13 pm    Post subject: Exclamations in name Reply with quote

My bet is that the phone from which the names were downloaded stored them in Unicode. For languages like English that makes each alternate byte a binary zero which may be changed to an exclamation for display convenience (and to keep C/C++ programs happy).
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Exclamations in name Reply with quote

bhl62 wrote:
My bet is that the phone from which the names were downloaded stored them in Unicode.


Thanks, bhl62, you're probably right, I see similar problems these days with Firefox and how it renders pages with different character encodings. I'm constantly changing it in the "view" menu, between Unicode and the various "Western", "ISO", "Windows", settings, as "Auto" never seems to work.

But does that explain why an OLD model (the 720) imported them OK, but a new model (940) didn't?

I suppose TT would say "Well it looks fine on-screen, what are you moaning about? You're not supposed to be looking at it with a text editor!"
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JaguarV12e
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The newer device software probably actually supports and displays (some) unicode character sets, so needs to store everything in unicode, even if the phone only supplied 8 bit data.
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