need help with contact backup/restore

[orangekid]

check it,

so yesterday a friend comes up to me with a "pocket pc" and asks me back up his contacts. I take a look at this thing it looks freaking ancient, like something moses probably used to keep track of his contacts while crossing the desert.

My first ppc was the Diamond (and man did I love that phone) and I am currently on an HD2 so I know all of the tricks, hacks, mods etc... I think this thing he gave me runs winmo 2003 or something, I didn't bother checking the exact version.

I installed activesync but he had some crazy retractable cord instead of an OEM usb and I think it was the reason the computer couldn't recognize the connection. I tried it on 2 different xp machines with AS4.5 and could not get it to sync no matter what I did. So my plan is to use PIM backup to back up his contacts.

This dude is not tech savvy at all, so if he wants to restore he may have a problem, I'd like to turn the pim backup file into an actual spreadsheet or outlook file that can just be imported, but because I've got WP7 on my HD2 NAND I can't use it import the pim file to AS it to outlook either. So here are my questions:


1) is there a way to convert the pimbackup file into something importable into outlook without using AS?

2) is there some driver I might be missing causing the xp machine not to sync with this ppc other than what AS provides or is it probably that stupid cord?

3) is there a free backup ppc app besides pim that can backup the contacts into something I can put on an SD card and import into outlook?

[MrGoodtunes]

If all he wants is a back-up file, why not just copy pim.vol from device root to memory card or desktop PC?

[MrGoodtunes]

Steps to restore:
(1) In device root, rename pim.vol to something like pim0.vol
(2) Copy saved pim.vol file to device root
(3) Soft reset
(4) Delete pim0.vol