Berichten met label Toyota

There are a lot of questions on the Internet concerning how to export contacts from iPhone into a car’s navigation. In particular, I know that many Toyota owners experience this problem. For example, pairing iPhone with my Toyota Auris Executive went well, but when I tied to transfer contacts into the navigation system, I just got a notification that Bluetooth device is not connected.

My car has a build-in navigation system with a car kit, as well as a Bluetooth connection.  I also found information on how to export contacts in the instruction given. But this is not the case for iPhone users, due to the difference in Bluetooth connection systems: the navigation expects pushing of contacts, however iPhone doesn’t send contacts automatically.

Of course, you can always add contacts manually to your navigation system, spending maybe a few hours on that. And you can use another phone, which supports your car’s Bluetooth. For that just copy all your contacts to that other phone or insert your sim there using a micro-sim adapter.

But what to do when you don’t have another phone or micro-sim adapter? Or when you can’t copy your contacts? Or when you don’t have time to add them all manually?

I found my way, which you may found useful: it is exporting contacts from a laptop. In this example I used MacBook Pro with installed MacOS Lion, however I believe it’s also possible to use a laptop running Windows (then you just need to find out where your contacts from iPhone are stored).

With this 10 steps’ guideline you will have all your contacts transferred to the car:

1. Sync your iPhone with your MacBook (see iTunes tutorials).  Skip this step if already you use your iPhone with that MacBook.

2. Open Address Book (Application->Address Book). If everything is done correctly, you should see all your iPhone contacts.

3. Select all contacts (cmd+A).

4. Go to File->Export->Export vCard… and save it for example as vCards.vcf.

5. Now go to your car and pair MacBook with the navigation via Bluetooth.

6. Select in the navigation Telephone->Settings->Transfer data->Select some group.

You will see on the display that contacts are being imported (but be aware at that moment nothing yet happens).

7. On your MacBook click the Bluetooth icon (on the right -top side of the panel), then select your car’s connection and click Send file.

8. Choose vCards.vcf file, that you have previously created (see step 4), and click Send.

9. When importing is done, you should see a confirmation message on the navigation display. During the importing process you can see the progress on the MacBook.

10. Now you can disconnect your MacBook from the navigation.

I hope this tutorial has saved you a few hours of manually adding contacts.