Take Action #15 - Back-up your Phone Contacts

Remember that post I made about backing up your computer?  Well, just for good measure, go ahead and back up your data on your phone too.  Not sure why I have to learn these things the hard way but….maybe it’s so I can share them with you.

I bought a phone for my daughter today and the first thing he had her do was create a Gmail account so that he could transfer all of her existing contacts to the Gmail account.  Then when she activated the new phone, she could download her contacts via e-mail.  He said I should do the same thing just in case anything happens.  We also ordered insurance on her phone since it is one of the nice ones.  He reminded me that I had insurance on my blackberry.

So – I get home from the Sprint store and gather some things to get ready to run out the door again.  I tuck my cell phone in the bra strap (sorry guys but it is a good holder in emergencies).  This allowed me to have both hands free.  Unfortunately one of the hands had a cup of water.  I bent over to get something off the floor and the cell phone fell from my shirt into the cup of water.  OK – I GET IT – BACK UP EVERYTHING – I didn’t even have time to create the dang Gmail account to do the download.  Thankfully, most everything is also on my computer –which yes, is now backed up.  AND thankfully I also have insurance.  I ordered the phone ($100 deductable thank you very much) and it will be here tomorrow – so they say.

For the first time in a decade I am without a phone for more than a couple of hours.  However…..I did discover something quite clever.  Since I no longer have a LAN line, I found myself needing to somehow let my kids know that I didn’t have a phone and my ex know that he needed to pick up my youngest from play practice.  I found a tutorial on how to send texts from your computer.  I was able to go to messaging.sprintpcs.com and send a message from my Sprint account online.  I also found out how to send a text message from e-mail.  AND because my daughter set up a Gmail account today and I was standing there when she did it, I was able to send her an e-mail to her new phone and she worked out transportation for me.   Here’s the link for the how-to text from computer.

So – Take Action item for tonight is to back-up your cell phone contacts and info to a Gmail account or something similar.

Tomorrow’s Take Action will need to be something I already know.  This learning stuff is for the birds.  I am supposed to be teaching, not learning!  Oh well…..here’s to Taking Action every day!

Angela