Rubbing the EmpegBBS lamp here, since both Uncle Google and experimentation have both failed me...

I'm currently trying to consolidate every possible piece of my contact information into my iPhone, so that the addresses and phone numbers of everyone I know are all in one place. This is an ongoing process, of course.

I'd also like to be able to reliably back up and restore this information in an editable format, so as not to lose my work if I ever have a failed piece of hardware, or if I ever choose to move to a different kind of telephone hardware.

Right now, my backup and restore procedure is: Set up the iPhone to synch its contacts with Outlook (my work's email client of choice), then export the outlook contacts to a spreadsheet file that I copy to a file server at home for safe keeping.

This works, except that certain pieces of contact data that are custom-named don't synch with Outlook. Here's an example:

I have a friend living in Vancouver BC who visits Seattle regularly. So that he doesn't get rogered by Rogers, he swaps a US simcard into his phone when he travels to Seattle. So I have two different phone numbers for him stored in the iPhone, each one labeled with a custom name. One phone number is labeled "BC" and the other phone number is labeled "USA".

When I synch with Outlook, I only get one of the two phone numbers appearing in Outlook, the BC number, and it's categorized as "Other". When I export the Outlook data to a file (being careful to make sure all fields are exported), the USA number (as well as any custom labels) are still missing.

I realize this isn't the iPhone's problem per se. It's Outlook's limitation of not having the ability to custom-name a phone number. But is there any other way to back up all my contacts, and all of the custom data, that doesn't have these limitations? Is there some kind of magic intermediary backup file that iTunes stores that contains my full uncensored contact list, something I can just back up myself by hand and edit with a text editor?

Note 1: I've also tried synching with Google contacts, and although the idea of this is appealing, it's got its own set of issues, including similar issues that crop up when doing local file backup and restore of the contact list.

Note 2: My iPhone is not jailbroken, and it'd be nice to keep it that way.

Anyone got any ideas?

Syncing to your Mac would be one solution. Using MobileMe (should be the same as a local sync), I made a new telephone entry on my contact card, and used a custom label. That label shows in Address Book, and in the VCard I exported.

MobileMe is now brilliant, they seem to have got over the initial teething problems that plagued it during its early transition from .Mac.

Even when it wasn't working properly and I had to get my 3G replaced a week into ownership, I went to the Apple store who verified that it was broken and replaced it. Of course all my contacts were missing from the replacement phone, so I entered in my MobileMe details the second I left the store and instantly all my contacts appeared on the phone!

Will be continuing my subscription when it needs renewing.

I'd like to avoid a subscription service if possible, so as nice as MobileMe is, that's probably out.

Synching to the Mac: Is there a way to export to a single file, easily edit, and re-import the contact list on a Mac?

Address Book can import from a number of sources, including a CSV or VCard. Exporting is a bit more limited, but there are 3rd party addons that will allow export to CSV as well. Just make sure you find one that works with your OS version, as Address Book moved from being a monolithic app, to a front end and OS database service. Old exporter apps may not work right on the newer Address Book.

I've been looking at this problem too...

...sadly the approach I'm taking is to port an LDAP server to my Nokia N800 and then running some kind of replication to my home LDAP server.

Since the UI involves tapping in ldap queries it's probably not going to get votes as an iPhone killer but I'm happy

anyway, back to your scheduled programming...

It's likely to have exactly the same kind of limitation, but SyncML? Funambol client (www.funambol.com) is available for the iPhone.

www.scheduleworld.com or my.funambol.com provide free "hosting".

So it's not a back up per se I guess.

Unfortunately this sort of problem has stopped me using Funambol. That and my new employer's somewhat dictatorship IT policy.