How to back-up your Sony Ericsson W960i's data on your PC

Thanks to the Sony Ericsson PC suite software that came with your W960i, you can easily keep any important information stored on your phone stored on your PC too in back-up form.

The most obvious use for this is backing up your contacts from your SIM card into Outlook (or Outlook Express), in case the worst should happen and your handset gets lost or stolen. But the PC Suite doesn’t just keep your SIM contacts safe – you can also use it to synchronise your Calendar, Notes and Tasks as well if you have a full copy of MS Outlook.

Inside your W960i box, you’ll find a CD with the Sony Ericsson PC Suite software installer. Insert this into your PC to begin installation. If you don’t have the CD you can also download the software directly from the Sony Ericsson website.

Once the installation is complete, you’ll be able to run the PC Suite application. Recent versions are much more straightforward to use than previous ones and you’ll see all the various tools laid out in a convenient menu.

To begin using the tools, you need to connect your handset to the computer. The fastest and most straightforward way of doing this is to use the supplied USB cable. Plug it into your handset and a spare USB port on your PC.

Once it is plugged in, your phone will show a new menu that will ask you if you want to enter File transfer or Phone mode (Figure 1). To synchronise, you need to use Phone mode; scroll down once to highlight it and press Select.

Once your PC has recognised the phone and automatically installed the correct drivers, the menu will disappear and the PC Suite will inform you that your W960i is connected.

Now you can use your PC to do the rest. You will normally just use the Synchronisation button to back up your information, but first it is worth making sure that the settings are correct. Click on Sync Manager, then Settings to adjust the settings. Within the menu is a list of the different types of information you can synchronise: Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and Notes (Figure 2). Clicking on these will expand the menu on the left hand side and give you a few basic options, or you can just use the Wizard to talk you through it.

The main thing you need to do is make sure that your information is going to the right program. If you have a full copy of Microsoft Office, you will probably want to ensure that everything goes into your copy of Outlook. If you don’t, you can make do with Windows Address Book / Outlook Express – use the drop down menu to select the correct program (Figure 3).

If you have a more up to date contact listing on your SIM card than on your PC, it will be worthwhile temporarily using the manual settings to set the Conflict Policy in the side menu to Overwrite PC content (Figure 4). If you want the PC information to overwrite your phone’s information, you can set the Conflict Policy to keep the PC item instead of the phone content. However, if in doubt, click the Use last item modified radio button to ensure that whichever information was most recently edited has priority.

Once you’re happy with your settings, click OK to return to the PC Suite’s main menu and click Synchronise Now (Figure 5). This begins the synchronisation process and will present you with a summary of the items changed when completed (Figure 6).

If your PC has integrated Bluetooth or a Bluetooth dongle, you can synchronise your phone wirelessly. Once your handset is paired to your PC, double click the Bluetooth icon in your taskbar and then double click on your mobile phone icon to connect to it. You will automatically enter Phone mode as above and can begin synchronisation.

Tip: Although the Sony Ericsson PC Suite is not compatible with Mac operating systems, Mac OS X users can use iSync instead. This allows you to synchronise contacts and calendar entries within iCal.