FAQ: How To Perform Seppuku & Delete Your Whole Address Book

by Ronen Halevy on Mar 15th, 2010

This little hidden feature in the BlackBerry address book can either be your best friend or the beginning of the worst prank ever. For example, I have been having an issue with my device where my BES contacts are duplicated on my device twice. A few quick keystrokes later I can force a re-sync with the Exchange server. On the other hand a prankster can use it to delete your whole on device address book within a few seconds… Definitely a double edged sword so use it with caution!

The process requires you to follow these simple instructions listed below. Just PLEASE make sure to make a backup using desktop manager if you do not know what you are doing.

Click on the address book homescreen icon
Press the menu button
Select options from the menu
Type the letters rset
WARNING: If you proceed you may lose your whole address book. We take no responsibility for any issues that may arise. Please make a backup first!
Select yes to the prompts to delete your on device address book if you wish to do so. If you are connected to a BES server it will then remove all contacts and re-sync your Exchange address book to your device.

It will then ask you if you want to delete your whole address book. If you are on a BES server it will ask you twice. Once for your BlackBerrys default address book and one for the BES address book. This should sometimes clear your BlackBerry of address book issues but you will be starting from square one or an old backup. I found this helpful sometimes when I had issues synching Outlook with my BlackBerry so I would just delete all my BlackBerry contacts and sync them back from Outlook again.

Let us know if it works for you!

Thanx Jose & JohnnyB for reminding me about this shortcut!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 5:00pm EST and is filed under Advanced Topics, BlackBerry FAQ, Tips & Tricks.
Tags: Address Book, Advanced Topics, Clean, Duplicate, Purge, Remove, Sync, Tips & Tricks

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9 Comments to “FAQ: How To Perform Seppuku & Delete Your Whole Address Book”

Comment by: Sith_Apprentice
Not Registered
March 15, 2010 at 5:39 pm EST

This will reload any wirelessly synced address books (BES) from the server. A great way to clear duplicate entries. Also works on Calendar

Reply to Sith_Apprentice
Comment by: steve
Not Registered
March 15, 2010 at 6:34 pm EST

Hey ronen, this is off-topic but you once posted a tip about contact auto-complete when composing emails. Do you know how or where that setting is? The new leaked OSes may have removed it I cant (i did before) find that option anywhere!

thanks!!

Reply to steve
Comment by: Tom (View Profile)
Enthusiast - Posts: 286
March 15, 2010 at 7:48 pm EST

One more caution… If you use this method to re-sync contacts from the BES server, all group contacts will be lost on the device as groups do not sync.

Reply to Tom

Private Message Tom
Comment by: globaldanish86 (View Profile)
Newcomer - Posts: 21
March 15, 2010 at 9:25 pm EST

Omg this is scary yet sooo fing cool

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Private Message globaldanish86
Comment by: Mike
Not Registered
March 16, 2010 at 10:03 am EST

What’s next? How to rape and spell check an email?

Ronen, you’re an idiot for completely unnecessarily adding a Japanese word to your title that has nothing to do with this topic. Your douchebaggery has offended me this morning.

Have a nice day.

Reply to Mike
- Comment by: Ronen Halevy (View Profile)
  Senior admin - Posts: 4051
  March 16, 2010 at 10:11 am EST
  
  Hi Mike I’m sorry to hear you getting all wound up by me mentioning a published RIM debugging command. I chose seppuku because that’s exactly what I feel like whenever I perform it…
  
  Reply to Ronen Halevy
  
  Private Message Ronen Halevy
  - Comment by: Mike
    Not Registered
    March 16, 2010 at 10:19 am EST
    
    Let’s get things straight…I’m not wound up over your debugging command. I think you’re a douchebag for trying to be kewl by using a word out of context. Perhaps you should act on your feelings and actually go through with it.
    
    Reply to Mike
Comment by: Randy
Not Registered
April 12, 2010 at 12:28 pm EST

WOW. Thanks so much for this great tip. I have been very frustrated by the dups and now they are gone! No problems.

Reply to Randy