How do I add and edit contacts in Motoblur on my Motorola phone?

Contributed by Chris Gilland
cgilland1@carolina.rr.com

If you are a Motoblur user, one of the things you notice is that the Contacts manager isn't as accessible for you as it is for vanilla android users. Where accessibility is especially broken is in the new contact screen. This post gives you information about how to add or edit a contact in Motoblur as well as how to do some basic contact management.

I don't know how much variation there is in Motoblur, so I don't know how much your mileage will vary. But we tested this information on two Moto blur phones, one running Android 2.1 and another running 2.2, and we found that Both brought up the same screens and responded in the same way. The only differences were minor changes of terminology (e.g., the "add new contact" option in 2.1 is simply called "new" in 2.2, and the given/family name fields of 2.1 are the first/last name fields of 2.2).

Getting Familiar with the Contacts Manager in Motoblur

When you open the contacts manager on a phone running Moto Blur, you land in a list of all your contacts. Here, you can hit the selector to filter your contacts by Groups, Favorites, or All Contacts. By default, you're set to All Contacts.

If you down-arrow you highlight each contact individually as you go, so think of this screen as a vertical list like Settings or any other group of options.

Managing Contacts in Motoblur

To find someone, You don't have to just down-arrow contact by contact. If you start typing part of the first or last name, the phone finds the contact, if no results are found, you get an option that says, "New contact using," followed by whatever you typed. So this makes it really easy to jump to a contact quickly.

To read a contact's details, Arrow to or search for the person and press the selector. That opens up the details for that contact. This is information like Home Phone, Mobile Phone, Work Phone, Other Phone, Email, Street Address, and IM Address. So if you've added a home number and want to find it, down-arrow here to read items like, "Home: 555-1212.

To contact the person, you can move to an item in the Details screen and press the selector. For example, Short-pressing the selector on the phone number calls the person, or long-pressing on the phone number brings up options you can arrow through like Call Contact and Send Text Message.

To make changes in Contacts, start by viewing a contact's details as described in the previous paragraphs; then press the Menu key on the bottom left of the screen to bring up things like Edit and Delete. Edit let's you make changes to a contact's details and works like the screen for a new contact. Delete removes the contact.

To completely delete a contact, you don't have to go into the contact detail's page. There's a shorter way. Out on the main contacts screen, highlight the contact, and long-press The selector. That gets you a somewhat lengthy context menu. Down-arrowing through that list of options gets you to Delete.

Whatever way you delete a contact, you get to exactly the same confirmation screen. You're asked to confirm your decision. At this point you have two buttons. Yes is on the left, and no is on the right. Arrow left or right to the button of your choice, just like you would for any other screen, then hit the selector. Whichever you do, you are then taken back to your contact list.

Adding a Contact in Motoblur: Explained

Some of the instructions in this section seem counterintuitive, but they work, so put on your seatbelt: it's going to be a rough ride.

As I said before, when you open the contacts manager, you land in a list of all your contacts. You can down-arrow through the list of contacts or press the Menu button to access other options.

A word of warning, If you down-arrow to a contact after opening the app, your menu on the bottom left of the screen gets disabled, So don't down-arrow after opening the app. Just go straight to the menu. If it's too late and you already started arrowing, then hit the Back key or touch the bottom right of the screen like you'd do normally to return to a previous screen. In this context, pressing the Back button unselects everything.

So when you're on the main contacts page, before you highlight anything, touch the menu button at the bottom left of the screen. The first option on the top row of your menu here is new contact. Press the selector there.

When you do that, the first thing that happens is that you land in a text box where you can now write the contact's given name. Type the contact's first name, for example, John.

Now, hit your down-arrow one time. That puts you in an edit box. Visually, this is located directly below the given name box. This is for the family name. Type Doe, and by the way, if you need to put Sr. or JR. here, that's fine, do it.

Here is where the road starts getting rocky. So follow along carefully.

After you type the last letter of the last name, down-arrow one time. Now, be aware, Talkback doesn't say anything, Nada, Absolutely nothing. That's okay. What just happened is that you've landed on a green plus sign, which is an Add icon. It's not labeled. That's why Talkback isn't saying anything.

But go ahead and hit the selector. When you do, a box that wasn't on the screen suddenly appears. That's where you can type the phone number. You're not in the box itself yet. you're on a drop down button that says, "Home, dropdown button."

Push the selector on this button, and a context menu comes up. here, you can simply up and down-arrow through labels like Home, Mobile, and Work.

Arrow up or down to go to the label you need, and hit the selector. If you don't like any of the labels in the list, you can make up your own.

To make up your own label, down-arrow to Custom, which is an edit box. Type Skype. Down-arrow to OK, and hit the selector. Boom, we made a custom Skype label.

Now, whether you picked a label or made one up, you're back again at the Label dropdown button, Only instead of Home, you hear whatever label you picked for that number.

the box for the phone number is next to this Label button. Right-arrow one time to get into it; then type the phone number associated with that label for your contact. Type 5555555555 for the area code and phone number, no hyphens needed. You also don't need to press the alt twice before typing. The phone knows it's a number edit field and expects to type numbers.

When you finish adding contact details, press alt+down-arrow to get to the bottom of the screen, where you find two buttons. On the left is Save, and on the right is Discard. arrow to Save and press the selector.

Adding Another Phone Number/Email for a Contact in Motoblur: Explained

Now, if you want to create a contact with two or more phone numbers, the ride gets all-terrain in a big way. You have to follow me exactly for this to work.

Do what I discussed in the previous section only don't save the contact yet, so you're on the New Contact screen, and you have a first and last name and a phone number for this person.

It helps if I explain what the screen looks like at this point. If you were to down-arrow, you'd get another icon which Talkback doesn't read. This is to add a field for an email address. It works on the same principle. You press the selector to open a dropdown box for your email label; then after finding the one you want and selecting it, you right-arrow to get to where you type the actual email address.

However, we're not going to do that quite yet. You just typed the last digit of the first phone number, and you want to add a second phone number. To the right of this phone number field, you have two buttons: The first is a green plus sign for adding another number, and the second is a red minus sign for clearing the phone number edit field. It works this way on all the other fields on this screen, so keep that in mind as you read this post.

Because accessibility is broken, you can't just arrow once to the right to get to that green plus sign, after you type the last digit of the first phone number. You're going to have to do something different. It's tricky but not that tricky. The important thing is to ignore Talkback as you do the next part to keep from getting thrown.

after typing the last digit of the phone number 5555555555, up-arrow one time. this lands you to the right of the letter e in Doe. In other words, you're right after the last character in the family name/last name field.

Then right-arrow once. This puts you on a button where if you hit the selector, you get more fields like middle name, phonetic name, etc. don't hit enter on that.

Instead, down-arrow once. I know, you're thinking that'll land you in the phone number box. No, it won't. It puts you on an unlabeled image button.

Hit the selector. Boom! You did it! Now you're on the dropdown label for your next phone number. Set it, move to your right, and type the next number.

Need a 3rd number? okay, cool. up-arrow to the family name box, then right-arrow, then down-arrow, then hit the selector.

It's important to understand that the first phone number you enter is at the bottom. In other words, every field you add, regardless of the detail type, gets pushed down and the new one goes on top. So if the first number I added is a home number and the second is a mobile, the mobile number shows up above the home phone.

When you finish adding phone numbers, down-arrow to move to another icon that Talkback doesn't read. This is to add a field for an email address. It works on the same principle: press the selector to open a dropdown box for your email label; after finding the one you want and selecting it, right-arrow to get to where you type the actual email address; finally, if you want to type additional addresses, up-arrow, right-arrow, and down-arrow, pressing the selector on the unlabeled image button with the green plus sign to bring up a new Label option, and so on.

In other words, to get to the plus symbol that adds another of the same contact detail for any given item, like phone, email, etc. you have to up-arrow to the previous field, then right-arrow once from the previous field, then down-arrow. Last, you hit the selector to open the Label dropdown list.

I know it's totally cock-eyed, but That method works.

Finally, when you finish adding contact details, press alt+down-arrow to get to the bottom of the screen, where you find Save (on the left) and Discard (on the right). arrow to Save and press the selector.

Adding a Contact in Motoblur: Step by Step

Let's repeat what we did to add a new contact only this time I'm giving you a step-by-step description of the process.

1. Open contacts, and press menu at bottom left of screen.
2. Arrow to and press the selector on new contact.
3. In the given name field, type John, and down-arrow once.
4. In Family name, type Doe, and down-arrow once.
5. There is absolutely no spoken feedback where you land. Press the selector anyway to get to the Label button, and press it again to open the dropdown list of labels.
6. Down-arrow to the label you want and hit the selector to choose it.
7. Right-arrow once to an edit box, and type the number with area code, 5555555555 (no hyphens).
8. Down-arrow once from the phone number to add an email address.
9. There is absolutely no spoken feedback where you land. Press the selector anyway to get to the Label button, and press it again to open the dropdown list of labels.
10. Down-arrow to the label you want and hit the selector to choose it.
11. Right-arrow once to an edit box, and type the email address, john.doe@gmail.com.
12. Save your changes by pressing alt+down-arrow to get to the bottom of the screen. Arrow to Save and press the selector.

Adding Another Phone Number/Email for a Contact in Motoblur: Step-by-Step

Let's repeat what we did to add a second or third contact only this time I'm giving you a step-by-step description of the process. We'll add some hone numbers first, then some email addresses.

1. Follow steps 1-7 of the previous section to start a new contact and to type in his or her name and phone number.
2. After the last digit of the number, add another phone number by up-arrowing to the family/last name, right-arrowing once, then immediately down-arrowing once, and pressing the selector, not enter, on an unlabeled image button.
3. You're now on the Label button. Press the selector to go in, arrow to the phone label for the next number, and hit the selector again to pick it.
4. Right-arrow to the Phone edit box, and type the number.
5. Repeat Steps 2-4 for each additional phone number.
6. After finishing Step 4, add the first email address by down-arrowing once to a silent item, hitting the selector twice to bring up and open the Label dropdown list for email, navigating to the label you want, choosing it with the selector, right-arrowing to the Email edit field, and typing the first address (Steps 8-11 of the previous section).
7. Add a second email address by doing the following:
a. Up-arrow once to the edit field of the last phone number you find. If it's not the last one you typed, don't panic. Remember that, when you're adding fields to a contact detail, the new field is going to pop up above, not below, the last one.
b. Right-arrow, then down-arrow, once. This is just like adding more phone numbers.
c. Hit the selector, NOT Enter, on an unlabeled image button, and boom, now you're on the Label dropdown for the 2nd email address. Arrow to your label, and press the selector on it.
d. Right-arrow once, and type the second email address.
8. Save your changes by pressing alt+down-arrow to get to the bottom of the screen. Arrow to Save and press the selector.

Mission accomplished. The process isn't as convoluted as it sounds.