thomkamp

Just took delivery yesterday of a new 2013 RX and can't figure out how to manually enter phone book entires and/or speed dial entries. I can download my address book from my IPhone 4s but have over 2800 entries and the RX maxes out at 1000. No one at the dealership has encountered this before and has no answers.

Thanks in advance

BertL

Congrats on your new ride. We'd all love some pictures when you get to it!

On the 1000 entries limit, we did a thread on this a couple months back and I put in rather detailed instructions (I can't seem to find it now ) -- net is, you need to set up a contact group on your Mac (or via iPhone) designating up to 1000 contacts you want to sync over to the Lexus vehicle. Then go to Bluetooth setup on the iPhone once you've paired it, and you'll see an option where you can sync only a specific group to the truck. You're in control that way, e.g. in my case, in this special group, I eliminated all my overseas contacts and such that I know I'll never receive or call while driving in the vehicle. Works well for me.

Oh, and if you're running Windows, I believe "groups" in the Apple world are called "categories" in Microsoft's address book as well as Outlook -- both will sync through with iTunes. It's been a few years now since I've had a Windows machine, so can't be more precise in that regard I'm afraid.

TexasRxh

Bert, I'd love to figure out how to sync only certain contacts/groups from my iPhone 4S. I'm on a WIndows PC. I tried splitting up the contacts into folders in Outlook (which worked fine). I do see them on the iPhone on the Groups screen but I don't see them in the BT sync screen. My only choices are still None or All. I'm pretty sure I had the car "forget" my iPhone and reconnected it with still no luck. If you were able to make this work I'd sure love to see how!

(I also have Outlook Categories assigned but those don't carry over to the iPhone.)

My dealer Tech Rep says Lexus is considering changing the 1,000 contact limit to 3,000 because there's plenty of room on the HDD. I think he said they are presently using only one third of the space.

One other thing to keep in mind: a contact in the vehicle can have only 3 phone numbers. If you have contacts with more than 3 it creates a duplicate for the next 3. If you have the sync set to update every time you get in the car you can't guarantee what order it will create the duplicates. That can make it a little obtuse when you're trying to phone home via voice command and none of the first 3 contact numbers it gives you are for home. If you execute the same voice command again it then gives you the next 3 numbers. Sheesh!

BertL

John, sorry, but it's going to be impossible for me to be more precise given I eliminated the last of my PC (Windows) machines in my home and business life after just-shy-of 40 years in 2011, and I only have Mac / Apple products these days. Here's what I'd suggest, assuming you have previously paired your iPhone AND have your truck on or at least in Accessory mode... I just tried this with my 2013 RX450h and iPhone 4 running latest iOS 5.1.1. Note that the following options won't appear on your iPhone if the truck is not on and previously paired:

- Your truck must be on or at least in Accessory mode, and paired with your iPhone
- On your iPhone
- Go to Setting
- Select Bluetooth
- Your RX should show as "Connected" -- if not, wait until your truck finds your iPhone
- Select the Bluetooth connection for your RX by pressing the blue arrow on the right
- On that next screen, scroll down until you see the section called "Other Groups"
- The default is "All Contacts", which is your issue as you have more than the 1000 contacts/phone numbers on your Windows machine that Lexus supports
- You can select a "group" of those contacts that should be connected to your Lexus (which is what I have done, and I don't use "all contacts", to limit the number of entries sync'd from my iPhone to RX)

All of that I would suspect is pure iPhone/Apple stuff and just Bluetooth pairing to your RX -- beyond basic Bluetooth pairing, it does not involve Lexus. Assuming you can get that far, the question is then, how do you on a Windows-based machine create a "group" of your contacts that iTunes and your iPhone can then sync to your RX... If so, your research has to be with how whatever you're using to maintain your address book on Windows (Windows Live, Outlook, or whatever it is these days) can designate what Apple and therefore iTunes and the iPhone calls "groups" can see and use. You can do a bunch of Google searches as I have on that -- I just can't really suggest more given I can't recreate your Windows environment and it's connection to the iPhone.

Good luck!

galicianer

I am a Mac user, so the above wasn't too difficult. I created a group in Mac Address Book called "auto".
I selected that group on my iPhone 4s in Bluetooth settings as you instructed.
For some strange reason my rx transferred all the contacts in my iPhone favorites. Which is sort of okay. But not what i requested.
How does one control this thing?

BertL

Only thing I can think of is to ensure only the "auto" group is checked on your iPhone Bluetooth panel... I don't know if you could accidentally have multiple groups selected, so more is transferring than you expect. The other thing I don't know is when the transfer from your phone to truck happens if it just adds/overwrites specific entries already there (meaning you may end up with more in the truck than what you specified on your phone) or if you have to first clear the entries on the truck so only the subset of contacts ends up being there. In my case, if I remember what I did a few weeks ago, I cleared all phone conatcts in my truck before allowing my phone to resync only my subset of contacts which I had selected. Other difference between us is I'm still on a iPhone 4, but doubt that is an issue if we're running the same level of iOS (5.1.1 in my case). Make sense? Hope so! Good luck.

galicianer

Thanx!
Before I started I:
deleted all contacts seeing 1000 0f 1000 free,
and
checked again and have only the "auto" group checked on.
Having my favorites in the phone book is actuall a good thing.
The reason for wanting to control it is, how do I add more contacts? To the "auto" group or favorites on the iPhone. At this point I'd have to say probably to favorites. But this seems to have worked only when checking on the auto group. I didnt experiment yet, but at this point I'll bet that checking on any of my other groups will give me the same result and show only the favorites.
Thanx again.

BertL

I've done sort of the opposite of you and have only a couple of favorites on my phone and they are also in the group of my contracts groups checked. In my case, everything in the group syncs with my truck, including the 2 or 3 favorites that are also part of it. I look forward to hearing about the results from your future experimentation!

mikeohla

I am having the same problem. Cannot even manually input speed dial for my wife. Have 2000 phone numbers because sync samsung s4 outlook with work address book. For car bluetooth only 200 or so numbers needed but bt on lexus doesnt allow to sync only by category. Whole phone book first 1000 numbers is all icant even do the tedious manual entry. Any work around?

mikeohla

I think I spent way too much time on this today. My iea was to delete hundreds of "device" listings on my samsung (but keep them as microsftexcahnge nubmers since I may want to look them up when I am not driving), Deleted a few hundred. But when I went into my car deleted bt addresses, uploaded again, those names popped up again. Apparently the BT looks at all addresses on your phone.
(My phone is a samsung galaxy s4).
I am trying to let go off this. I love the car (asn ES 300h) otherwise. I guess I can always pull over to find the number I want to call (but that is not an easy or good idea a lot of times, plus a big time waster) or, if I wan to call my wife, find where she called me in History and call her back or dicate the number which I have memorized (for her and some frequent business callers). But this seems so stupid. Like 1997 technology. I am contacting Lexus and may ask around for some IT guys or other experts. Maybe there's an app to fool the BT into just uploading the few hundred numbers I might want to call hands free.

BertL

Sorry you're having problems. Unfortunately, I have an iPhone and not a Droid, so can't help you more directly. As you saw in the thread, I was able to fix the issue with my iPhone using groups to bring down a subset of entries to the RX -- I just don't know how to do that on a Droid, since I've never owned one. Be sure to check all the settings though related to the Bluetooth connection for your car that is on your phone -- that's where I specify the "group" subset to be automatically sync'd with my iPhone. Also, from what another person determined with Lexus and the RX, and I've since validated as well, there is a 1000 phone book upper limit on the RX that can be automatically sync'd from any one phone, so no getting around that if you have 2000 phone numbers (boy, that's more than I ever had in my business days!)

I suggest you do a couple of things -- first, you are in the 3rd Gen (2010-2014) RX Forum -- Have you checked the ES Forum on this subject? While I doubt it, I'm unsure if there may be some difference between models, but that would be a more appropriate place to probably check, just in case... Second, check out this site http://www.lexus.com/MobileLink/ and see if it provides anything that helps when you input your ES300h and phone type. Thirdly, give a call to Sales at your local dealership and make an appointment with the Technology Specialist. They are there to try and help you get something like this going with your Samsung and your ES. Good luck!

dshap84

Have you tried adding to your favorites on your vehicle interface? I did that with the dozen or so people I call the most. Also, the voice recognition works pretty well to dial somebody. Although maybe you won't be able to do either of those things if they aren't in those 1000 contacts. I'm curious to know if that's the case.

OnlyMe

This is ridiculous! On such a sophisticated machine, I cannot simply enter a new number into the phone book??! What are the people at Toyota thinking of? I do not want to sync. I just want to add a cotton-picking number!

Moreover, I already have certain contacts in my iPhone (which is already paired) but I still do not see the numbers that I want on the Lexus. So, the syncing part is not working, specifically, of phone numbers.

Now what?

TexasRxh

As mentioned previously the vehicle will download only the first 1,000 contacts.(Note: a contact can have no more than 3 phone numbers. If you have more than 3 another contact "slot" is required.) I have 2,500 contacts so I can only voice dial about a third of them...annoying.

BertL has suggested the only mechanism I've found that allows you to select the groups of contacts to download. However, (and this is a biggie for me) that implies your contacts will not update OTA; you have to manually sync contacts with your source (ie, Exchange/Outlook in my case) to keep them sync'ed. That a No-Go for me.

It's kind of humorous when I try to voice dial someone who is not in the downloaded contact list because the system guesses the closest name to the one being requested, which is sometimes not even close in my book. I end up just going to the phone and dialing it manually.

Given that the tech guy at the dealership told me only about one third of the drive space is being used I figured they would expand the allocation for contacts...that was 3 years ago, nothing has happened since. Sigh.