Transferring calendar and contacts from Nokia to Google

I recently upgraded my lovely but old-fashioned Nokia N73 to a shiny new Android - the HTC Desire. It's a great phone, but I have hundreds of events, contacts, tasks, and notes in the N73. How to get them across?

Well, there are a few ways *not* to:

• Don't follow Google's advice and install Mail for Exchange on the old phone, pointing it to your Google account. This didn't work for me - 'connection failed'.
  
• Don't follow Orange's advice and put your new SIM in your old phone and save your contacts too it. Good stop-gap, but all entries are truncated and case-smashed.
  
• Don't try registering for Orange Sync.  The website hung for me at the registration screen.
  

Instead, do the following.

• I used Nokia PC Suite 7.0.9.2 on Windows Vista.
  
• Do a full phone backup before you start! It's too easy to sync the wrong way and wipe everything.
  
• In PC Suite, make sure your phone is not set to auto-sync on connection.
  
• In Windows Calendar (not Windows Live Messaging calendar), create a new calendar and deselect all the others.
  
• Choose the Contacts menu option, which dumps you in Explorer with some shell extension running.
  
• Delete any contacts that are here already (if you care about them, save them first).
  
• In PC Suite, create a new sync setting. Sync calendar and contacts, to Windows Vista Calendar and Contacts, choosing the calendar you named earlier. Choose 'advanced', and set conflicts to prefer phone and one-way sync from phone to PC.
  
• Do a sync.
  
• Go to Windows Calendar, make sure only your new calendar is selected, and export it as an .ics file.
  
• Choose the Contacts menu option, select all contacts, and save as a folder of vCard files.
  
• In the command prompt, go to the folder and type
  
  
  

  for %f in (*.vcf) do type %f >>all
  ren all all.vcf
  

  
  
• On your PC, log into Google and go to Calendar. Go to Settings, Calendar Settings, Calendars, Import Calendar.  Click Browse and choose the .ics file you saved earlier.
  
• Now go to GMail.  Go to Contacts, Import.  Click Browse and choose the all.vcf file you saved earlier.
  
• On your phone, go to Settings, Accounts and Sync, Google, and sync your contacts and calendar.

That's it!


I haven't yet worked out how to move my tasks or notes across.