Nokia Lumia 510: A Tale of Contacts Transfer from Old Samsung Phone!

Well…...this is not a review of Nokia Lumia 510. But it is an interesting and exciting (at the same time- frustrating) tale of transfer of contacts from old Samsung mobile (from pre-android era) to new Nokia Lumia 510.

The problem at hand was as follows:

1. Old Samsung phone had around 1000 contacts.
2. Nokia Lumia Windows Phone Series did not support contacts transfer through Bluetooth. (They say this issue has been resolved with Windows 7.8 Update. However, we have not tested it).
3. It was not possible to copy-paste contacts in multiple cycles through sim-card, since Nokia Lumia supports micro-sim and old Samsung did not.
4. Manual entry of contacts was not possible (or plausible) since adding 1000 contacts manually is a cumbersome task.

What we did?

1. We took the back-up of contacts from old Samsung mobile. It was in VCF (vCard) format. So, we had around 1000 VCF contacts with us.
2. Now, we could not transfer these contacts through Outlook, since we already had a lot of contacts existing in Outlook and to mix those with these new one could have created sorting problem.
3. Next solution was to import these contacts to Google Contacts and syncing that Google Account with Lumia.
4. Now to manually import the 1000 different VCF files into Google Contacts was not practical solution.
5. So, the next (natural) step was to search for a freeware on internet, which can convert multiple VCFs into single CSV/Excel file.
6. Needless to say, it was a disaster. We found few paid softwares. But not a single free software which could convert them in Google contacts format.
7. Now what? Next (natural) step! Find the freeware which can convert multiple VCF files into single VCF file. 
8. Again, no freeware found!
9. Next invention: We do not need any freeware for it. It can be done by running a simple command through Windows Command Prompt.
• Go to command prompt. (Windows Button -> Search Program Files Box -> Enter ‘cmd’ Or Press Windows+R -> Enter ‘cmd’ in message box)
• Go to the directory in which VCF contacts are stored (‘CD’ command can be useful)
• Copy Following test: COPY *.vcf all.vcf
• This will copy all VCFs into a single VCF file: all.vcf. You can name the file as you wish. Your original VCFs will remain intact.
• Now just import this single VCF file to Google Contacts. And hurrah! All the contacts will be uploaded……………but wait! 
10. This may work for you. But, unfortunately, it did not for us. Single VCF file was created. It was imported to Google Contacts. But, alas! It did not work. No contact was uploaded.
11. Back to square one! Now what? Search…..again! Frustration is mounting!
12. And then we found the solution in Google Product Forums (thanks to the User – Saandip).
• Go to command prompt. (Windows Button -> Search Program Files -> Enter ‘cmd’ Or Press Windows+R -> Enter ‘cmd’ in message box)
• Go to the directory in which VCF contacts are stored (‘CD’ command can be useful)
• Copy Following test: for /F "delims=" %i in ('dir /b *.vcf') do @more "%i" >> all.vcf
• This will copy all VCFs into a single VCF file: all.vcf. You can name the file as you wish. Your original VCFs will remain intact.
• Now just import this single VCF file to Google Contacts. And hurrah! All the contacts will be uploaded.
13. After that, click on 'People' tile in Nokia Lumia 510 Windows Mobile Phone. Go to ‘Settings’. And add the Google Account. Sync it. And your contacts will appear in your contacts list in Nokia Lumia.

Do you have similar experiences? Please share with us!