Duplicate contacts in Blackberry smartphone Using Blackberry Enterprise/Professional

For those of you supporting Blackberry Enterprise/Professional Servers, chances are you might come across a device that has duplicate contacts. These can be a pain to resolve especially if the only way you know to resolve it is to wipe the device and re-activate it. Or worse yet, manually delete the duplicates, only for them to come back when the device gets synch'd.

Note, I am assuming that your email account does NOT have duplicate contacts. If this is the case, then you will have to export all your contacts to PST (with the option of not exporting duplicates). Then delete your contacts from your Outlook and re-import from the PST just created.


If the duplicate contacts are only in your blackberry, then do the following.

1. Go into Contacts and then press the menu to get into Options
2. type rset (you will not see it being typed since there is no place to type it. Ensure you have got multitap enabled and not suretype as this makes it easier to know what is being typed)
3. You will get a prompt asking you to confirm that you want to wipe the contacts and repopulate from the Blackberry server. Confirm this.
4. All your contacts will be deleted (time to panic ... not :) )
5. Contacts will then slowly start downloading off the Blackberry server and will appear back in your device's contact list.

The above has been taken from http://bluescreensolutions.blogspot.com/2009/12/duplicate-contacts-on-blackberry-using.html

Hope this helps those in need.

The 'Microsoft Information Store' returned 'Backup is already active.

While backing up Exchange Stores on a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server for a friend using the ol' faithful Windows NTBackup, I came across the following error.


Backup Status
Operation: Backup
Active backup destination: File
Media name: "exchange_backup.bkf created 18/07/2011 at 10:33 PM"

Volume shadow copy creation: Attempt 1.
Backup of "ExchSrvr01\Microsoft Information Store\First Storage Group"
Backup set #1 on media #1
Backup description: "Set created 18/07/2011 at 10:33 PM"
Media name: "exchange_backup.bkf created 18/07/2011 at 10:33 PM"

Backup Type: Normal

Backup started on 18/07/2011 at 10:33 PM.
The 'Microsoft Information Store' returned 'Backup is already active.

' from a call to 'HrESEBackupSetup()' additional data '-'The 'Microsoft Information Store' returned 'Functions called in an invalid sequence.

' from a call to 'HrESEBackupClose()' additional data '-'
The operation was ended.
Backup completed on 18/07/2011 at 10:33 PM.
Directories: 0
Files: 0
Bytes: 0
Time: 1 second

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The operation did not successfully complete.

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Failing to remember any solutions off hand, I consulted the Oracle, (Google is the almighty I am talking about). In return for my search, I got hundreds of matches. I opened the first one, as it was from Microsoft Support http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820272. This said that I had my Exchange Server Databases installed on the same drive as my operating system. Due to this the backup was failing. This did not fit my situation so I trawled further.


Persistence and bullheadedness is the recipe to success and Viola! I found my answer. To be quite honest, when I read it, I thought it to be too simple to work. I said to myself, if this works, I will be a monkey's uncle. And as it stands, a happy monkey has just inherited me as their uncle :)

The problem was due to the simple fact that circular logging was enabled on the Storage Group. I disabled it, restarted the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service and tried NTBackup again. To my hearts joy, it worked :) (exact article can be found here http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1182209&page=1


Have a great week.