14 Restore Your Device
Hopefully, you'll never need to actually use this task, and you're just reading it now to be thorough. Or maybe you've been conscientious about making regular backups and your commitment to preserving your data has paid off when you needed it most. Either way, restoring backed-up data to your device is an important and often necessary part of being a BlackBerry user. Just keep in mind that your ability to restore data is limited only by your willingness to back it up on a regular basis. I apologize if I sound a bit preachy in regard to backing up regularly, but I've been burned before. And I can tell you it is a terrible feeling to know that you lost some valuable information only because you didn't take the time to back it up.
- Open the Backup and Restore Window
With your BlackBerry device plugged in to your desktop PC and turned on, click the Start button on the Windows taskbar of your desktop PC to open the main Windows system menu. Then select All Programs, BlackBerry, Desktop Manager. The BlackBerry Desktop Manager application appears.
Double-click the Backup and Restore icon in the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. The Backup and Restore window appears.
- Initiate a Full Restore
Click the Restore button to get started fully restoring your BlackBerry device. The Select file for Full Restore window appears and prompts you for the name of the backup file from which you'd like to restore.
- Specify the Backup File to Be Restored
Navigate to the folder on your desktop PC where you store your device's backup files, and then click to select the backup file from which you'd like to restore. Click the Open button to accept the backup filename. The restoration proceeds and copies all the data from the specified backup file to your device.
In addition to performing a full restore, in some instances you might need to take greater control over the restoration of device data from backup files. From the Backup and Restore window, click the Advanced button to open the Backup/Restore window.
- Restore Specific Information Only
A full restore is a quick and easy way to restore all the data on your device, but in some circumstances it can be overkill. For example, you might want to restore only calendar events so that you don't change other data on your device. Or maybe you've made some AutoText changes you want to roll back to their previous settings (see 17 Customize the AutoText Feature). The Backup/Restore window enables you to specify individual pieces of information for a selective restore.
In the Backup/Restore window you'll find the current PIM data on your device next to the data available in the backup you selected for restoration. The right pane in the Backup/Restore window shows the current data on your device, whereas the left pane shows the data in the specified backup file. Depending on how old the backup file is and whether you performed a full backup to the file, the left pane will more or less match the right pane.
To perform a selective restoration of a certain piece of information, click the entry in the left pane and then click the Restore button (the large right arrow) between the panes. You can use this technique to selectively restore a subset of the backup file to your device. Using the calendar events and AutoText examples from earlier, if you want to restore only calendar and AutoText information from a backup file, just hold down the Ctrl key and click AutoText and Calendar in the right pane; then click the Restore button.
Click the Close button to exit the Backup/Restore window and return to the main Backup and Restore window. To return to the main BlackBerry Desktop Manager window, click the Close button once more.