If you travel a lot, like us, your cell phone may be your only phone. I love the feature that you can keep your little black book of phone numbers right in your phone. Then, when someone calls who is in my phone list, I even see their name on the caller ID. If I lost this phone, or it broke, it would be difficult or impossible to recreate that phone list.

In our Computer Education business we are evangelists for doing backups on your computer. Well, cell phones today are also computers. So I was thrilled when a friend mentioned that he uses Verizon’s free service to back up his phone online! I’m not sure if other carriers offer this service, but for Verizon, you go to www.verizonwireless.com and log into your personal account. If you haven’t created a personal online account, you will need to register.

Once you’re logged in, find ‘Tools & Applications’ ; Business/Tools ; Backup Assistant. You need to download this to your phone. On my phone (the LG enV) I did it with the ‘Get it Now’ option. You would need to find the instructions for your phone. Once it is downloaded, it will automatically backup your address book every day! As long as the phone is on, and it has signal – the backup happens automatically. How cool is that!?

Backup your phone's address book online

Once the backup is done, you can access your address book on your computer as well as on your phone. So, if you should ever lose your phone you can just download the numbers to your new phone!

Chris Guld
www.GeeksonTour.com

Leave a Reply

17 comments

  1. Thanks for starting the ball rloilng with this insight.

  2. H.O Cochran,
    There are a ton of RV parks around Disney in Orlando … or, how about staying on-site at Fort Wilderness?!
    But, a better place to ask this question would be in the Forums, probably the Campgrounds, Resorts, and Attractions forum.

  3. Bob,

    You can backup Internet Explorer Favorites by clicking on the Add to Favorites button (the gold star with the green plus) and choose Import/Export. You can then export to a file on your computer. In Firefox, choose Bookmarks – Organize Bookmarks, Then File and Export. Those are the only two browsers I know. Both of them create an HTML file in the backup process.

    As for reading the URLs that are linked – that’s another story. Great question. I’ll need to research that one.

  4. H, O, Cochran

    My family want to go to Disney Land. We travel in an RV but my family want to stay in one of the resorts. Do you know where I can park my RV safely while there for about three days?

    Do you answer such questions?

  5. John Speciale

    Chris,
    First, Verizon BroadbandAccess Connect and now Backup Assistant. You continue to improve my life. Thanks so much. Can’t wait to find out what’s next!

  6. Bob & Linda

    Wow., I’ll try this latter. Is there a way to back up or print out your favorites on your computer, with their web address? We have 100’s in our favorites in many different headings. Some we use often, some only monthly or less. Thanks in advance.
    Bob

  7. David Hopkins

    OK, my bad. I read a little closer and they said it’s waived as long as you remain a Verizon customer. The jury is instructed to disregard the previous remarks.

  8. David Hopkins

    According to the Verizon web site, it’s $1.99 a month, not free. It may be free with certain plans but according to the web site, they’ll do it for a price.

  9. John Christman

    Chris,

    AT&T offers the service, but they are greedy and charge $4.99/month for the service that is FREE with my Verizon. As soon as my contract is up with AT&T, I’m bidding them farewell. All they want is $$$.

    Gypsy John

  10. Ron Butler

    Very happy with that backup service with Verizon as well as their overall service.

    Thanks for the tip about a replacement phone. Will have to keep that in mind when we replace the current one.

  11. Good to know. Thanks John!

    Standardization in the cell phone industry is still a ways off!

  12. John Shelton

    One must be aware when selecting a phone that this service is not available for all Verizon phones. I learned this the hard way when I replaced a Motorola RAZR phone with a Palm Centro. I had my address book backed up with the RAZR, and only learned after I purchased the Centro and attempted to set up the back-up, that this service is not available on the Centro. This was quite a disappointment because I thought I was going to transfer all my numbers through the service. Didn’t happen!