Phone List shorter than Outlook's entire Contact ?

[Guest eieioeieio]

i've never had a Windows Mobile 5.0 or a Smartphone, so pardon my newbie-ness.

i'm looking to move from my S700 Sony Ericsson to the i-mate SP5 or the Qtek 8310.

let's say i have an Outlook Contact List on my PC of 2000 names/contacts. it is very nice to have all of that on my SP5/8310, should i need any of them, they will be on my fingertips. i'm so used to having a nice, "lean" list of Phone List people/numbers on my current Sony Ericsson S700 since it is an abridged, "short list" of, say 500 names/people (call this "Phone List") that are basically the only people that i tend to call from a day to day basis. it seems very cumbersome to scroll through so many names in Outlook to find a name, or even type in a number of letters.

is there a way to have the entire Outlook Contact list activesync'ed onto the SP5, yet, have an abridged "Phone List" for day to day convenience of calling people quickly?

i cannot be the only person who's thinking about this. it seems to be that it would be very cumbersome to look through 2000 names in my entire Outlook Contact List to make phone calls!!

hope someone can help to enlighten me. it seems to me that this Win Mobile 5.0 / Smartphone thing MUST be better but i can't seem to figure it out.

Thank you very much in advance.

PS: how would one "store" my entire Sony Ericsson Phone List, just in case in the future, i might go back to a Sony Ericsson phone, if i'm now going from the Sony Ericsson S700 to the i-mate SP5? there doesn't seem to be any Sony Ericsson software that allows one to backup the Phone List to a PC. i'm thinking that after the i-mate SP5, should a really fancy camera Sony Ericsson phone come out (like the code named Hermine one, should it ever be announced finally after all the rumors), then i would have my Phone List all ready to go, except for some updates due to the number of elapsed months when i would be using a Smartphone i-mate SP5.

[Guest SinisterJunkie]

Not sure if there is anything new for this on WM2005, but it should be very different.

I probably have just shy of 2000 names in my address book and don't have any trouble finding the number I want with a few quick click my phone has narrowed down the list to just a few names.

You could also set a "Phone List" Category in Outlook on your PC and then filter that category on your phone, so you have the entire list but only use the "Phone List" category most of the time.

With a large phone list and a lot of bussiness contact I also use SmartphoneFind to search for company name, etc. a lot. Very useful and unfortunately missing function on the smartphone OS.

[Guest dewdman42]

no, you are not alone. I came to this forum today hoping to find an answer. But it looks like there is none.

I had my nice little collection of 30 numbers I need in my phone, on my sim card. Everything was find. I activesync'd with outlook, which slurped in a few hundred names and numbers of people I only need but once a year. But after doing that, two things are now happening.

1 - The the numbers I previously had on the sim are no longer searched for when I hit the contacts button, now it goes to the outlook list..which is rarely the set I want.

2 - When I try to search for numbers, the list is long and a pain to scroll through.

I agree it would nice to have all the contacts in the phone in an aux app that I can pull up to look at whenever I want, but I do NOT like the fact that syncing with outlook has taken over my normal list of numbers I can jump to quickly with the contacts button followed by a couple key presses, nor do I like the fact that my 30 numbers on my sim card are now essentially hidden. The only way to pull up one of the sim card numbers that were working find before sync, is to go into the sim manager manually and dial the number that way. It should really be the other way around. Those should be my first numbers and it should an optional manual step to go into the big contacts manager to find one of the more unusual numbers to call.

I reckon that unless someone knows of a better solution to fix this in my phone the only logical thing for me to do is to get rid of the contacts, disable that part of sync and just live without that information in my phone..which is kind of a drag, but less of a drag than having to deal with having all those numbers in my phone and cluttering up my list. Also, many of the numbers I put into my phone, I don't want to be put back into outlook when I sync. Before I did the first sync, if I entered a number and hit the save number button, it would save it to the sim card it seems. But now if I enter a number and try to save it..it saves it instead to my contacts list which would sync with outlook and furthermore is not on my sim card.

Anyone have any other tips about this or ways to perhaps configure windows Smartphone 2003 so that the behavior is back to the old way and the BIg list is hidden from normal dialing procedures?