great tutorial. should be a separate thread locked to only be used as a guide. why don't we have threads like that here? instead of hunting through hundreds of posts... thanks times ten

Hmm. As I can't sync with iSync on my Mac (due to https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2793) I thought I'd try and 'squirt' my contacts from my Z610i straight to my N900. For some bizarre reason, the N900 complains that there is "Not enough memory in target location". This is after I selected my 8GB card as the target for the transfer. Weird huh? Any ideas why this might be? There doesn't seem to be a problem writing files to /media/mmc1 and there's thousands of millions of bytes of space there ....

sounds like the N900 has a default bluetooth reception point in phone memory.

Well, the N900 initially offered Documents as the place to put the all-in-one vcf file and I got the previously mentioned error message. I then told it to put the file on the card whilst approving the transfer and got the same error message again.

I feel another trip to bugzilla coming on.

Yes, known problem. We have modified the dialog to allow import of multiple contacts. The feature should be available with the next but one update - if our other bugfixes are good enough to pass quality control.

Well, quite too late for you, but lardman gave a good hint: You could merge all your vcf files into one single vcf file and open that new file in the import dialog.

You can import up to 1000 contacts in one batch that way.

If you are brave you can use the terminal to create that merged file:

$ cd "MyDocs/.documents/Export Folder"
$ cat * > ../merged-contacts.vcf

thanks, hasselmm

If you want to see how this works.

Go Back to that dir with the vcf files and you can play with your cat command as well as ls

type 'ls -al | more" to see a dir of the files

then type "cat john_smith.vcf" or whatever the name is of one of the individual vcf files. You'll see the begin and end tags

then type "cat combined.vcf | more" to look at the concatenated file and how it was put together.

Don't type in the quotes and notice the pipe before more.

You can also just type "more combined.vcf" to see the file as well.

Spacebar to advance. Q to quit.

I've uploaded a little program to address that problem to Extras Devel:
http://maemo.org/packages/view/osso-abook-import-many/
http://gitorious.org/ebook-tools/osso-abook-import-many

Hopefully becomes obsolete soon.

Im trying to transfer my contacts from my blackberry via bluetooth with no luck as i keep getting a "FAILED" message, can anyone help?

I just posted a long blog article about My First 24-hours With the Nokia N900. Excerpt re: PIM Syncing:

I explored the following two PIM-sync scenarios:

1. Direct device-to-device syncing via Outlook and the Nokia PC Suite software: The software installed and ran just fine on my Lenovo T43p laptop running Windows7. Pairing the N900 with my laptop via Bluetooth took several tries, and required an updated driver from the Bluetooth component manufactureer. But once it was setup, I could sync Calendar, Contacts, and Notes between both devices using either the Nokia PC Suite software or Windows7’s built in Sync feature. I was also able to sync via the N900’s sync/charging USB cable. One detail I noticed however, is that when creating a new appointment in the N900’s built-in calendar I couldn’t find an option to invite others to it (a basic feature in Outlook/Exchange). I was able to sync 1200+ contacts to the device in about 15 minutes, and 200+ appointments in another 10 minutes.
2. Over-The-Air syncing via Nuevasync to my Google Calendar/Contacts: As a long time Windows Mobile user without my own Exchange Server, I’ve relied steadily on Nuevasync, a free service that provides synchronizing of Calendar/Contacts info via Exchange ActiveSync to your Google account. I configured my N900 to NuevaSync’s service but couldn’t get it working past the initial connection stage before it threw an error. NuevaSync appears to be seeking testers with N900’s in order to fix this. I’ve registered my interest in helping them out, and others might wish to do so in order to speed progress towards a workable solution. Also, I have to give a shout-out to OggSync’s product, which is how I automate syncing of my Outlook data to Google in the first place.

More here: My First 24-hours With the Nokia N900