Create Categories On Your BlackBerry!

How many people do you have in your BlackBerry Address Book?
100?
1,000?
10,000?
Don’t you wish there was an easy way to “clean-up” your Contacts?
There is, with a simple, yet generally unknown, option that appears on both your BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook called “Categories”, and here is how to set your Categories up.

CREATE A NEW CATEGORY ON YOUR BLACKBERRY
Go into your Address Book, and bring the menu up.
Scroll up to and choose “Filter”.
Now in the “Category” list, bring the menu up and choose “New”.
Name your Category.
You will now have a new Category.

ASSIGN A NEW CONTACT TO A CATEGORY ON YOUR BLACKBERRY
Open your Address Book, hit the menu button, and choose “New Address”.
Fill out all the fields you wish to have completed.
Go down to “Category” and select it.
In the menu, choose “Categories”
Scroll to the category you wish to assign them to and hit your space bar to check that box.
(Note: You DO have the ability to assign multiple categories to one contact).
Save your changes.

ASSIGN A CATEGORY TO AN EXISTING CONTACT ON YOUR BLACKBERRY
Open your Address Book and find the person you wish to assign to a category.
Bring up the menu button and choose “Edit”.
Scroll down to “category” and select it.
Scroll to the Category you wish to assign them to and hit your space bar to check.
Save your changes.

ASSIGN A CATEGORY TO A CONTACT IN OUTLOOK
Open your Outlook and go to your Contacts.
Choose the contact you wish to assign to a category and open that contact.
On the “General” page, towards the bottom right you will see a “Categories” option.
Choose the Category you wish to add them to.
Note: Here, you can also create a newly named category by typing the name of the Category and hitting “Add To List”.

ASSIGN MULTIPLE CONTACTS TO CATEGORIES IN OUTLOOK
Go into your Contacts in Outlook.
Find the first contact you wish to assign to a group.
Press the CTRL button and click on that person.
Scroll to the next person you wish to add, and while still holding the CTRL button, click on them, and so-on and so-on.
NOTE: This is generally easier to do in “Phone List” view Once you have selected all of the contacts, you release the CTRL button. In the Outlook Tool Bar, click on Edit-Categories and select the Category you wish to assign them to.
*SPECIAL NOTE: The more contacts you attempt to assign to a group at one time, the longer it will take your computer to do so, and increases the risk of your Outlook to “Stop Responding”.

ASSIGN CONTACT SUB-FOLDERS TO CATEGORIES IN OUTLOOK
Note: If you already have Contacts broken down into “Sub-Folders” and wish to assign that entire group to a category, open that sub-folder. In the ToolBar, choose Edit-Select All.
Go back to your toolbar, and choose Edit-Categories (Down towards the bottom) and choose the category you wish to assign them to.
*SPECIAL NOTE: The more contacts you attempt to assign to a group at one time using the select all option, the longer it will take your computer to do so and increases the risk of your Outlook to “Stop Responding”.