How To Series: Transfer Your Phone Call Log From Treo To Computer

One of the software utilities that most Palm OS Treo users will likely want to have access to, is a record of their phone calls, whether incoming or outgoing. Sure, the Treo has the capability to show a somewhat detailed view of the time, date, call duration, etc, but the problem lies in the fact that there is no easy way to transfer this valuable information to elsewhere, like the SD card, or to your computer, where we can use the information to help us understand and analyse and track the costs of the calls (especially helpful for those on contract or self-employed). Again, I often wonder why something that seems very obvious was omitted in the Treo.

In a similar theme to my previous posting on transferring your sms text messages database to your computer, here’s a way, or more specifically a software tool (yay!) to export the Treo’s call log over to the SD card as a CSV file format. Then, you can use a card reader or send it via infrared, bluetooth, email, etc to your computer and be able to utilize the data information.

The great thing about this is that it’s a software program that will do it for you so there’s no need to manually go through a procedure or process to do it (unlike what I demonstrated in the sms to csv conversion). So, you can expect this posting to be much shorter (well, not that short, knowing me. ) And the best thing is that it’s FREE. It’s taken me a while of searching to find this. I was hoping to find another freeware application but this is the only freeware program that will allow you to convert your PhoneCallDB.pdb to a csv format file that can be opened in Excel or similar spreadsheet programs. There are many other third party programs that can do it as well with lots more features, but this is the only one that I’ve found that is FREE. Oh, yeah, there’s also Smaato Cost, which I will also probably do a posting on later (but it doesn’t access the PhoneCallDB.pdb file but instead creates its own database instead). That may not be very helpful if you want to access the log BEFORE you installed the program. As well, I personally think that the program is quite large for what it does. Knowing me, I tend to prefer smaller sized programs that work over anything that “looks” nice. Substance over style always for me, although it’s nice to have some eye candy from time to time.

If you know of any freeware that can somewhat manipulate the call log database into something that you can view and manipulate on the computer, please let me know in the comment below, or via the Contact form and I’ll share it with the rest of the Palm Discovery readers. Thanks!

Call Log Tools is a freeware utility program by Igor Nesterov , the same developer who brought us the YAHM (Yet Another Hack Manager), PalmInternals via myTreo.net, Freewarepalm, Freeware-palm and many others. Isn’t it nice when Palm programmers contribute to the community with freeware applications? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much for supporting developers and I’ve purchased my share of programs (and unfortunately some of them aren’t frequently used either because I’ve found something better or I just didn’t use it as much as I had originally thought) and I strongly support them but with the limited dollars I have, it is nice to find some freeware that will do the job.

The program is very simple. You simply install the program on your Treo. Run it and you will see the exact same screen as in the screenshot image. Tap on the Export button you see at the bottom of the screen and it’s done! You will find a file named CallLog.csv in the root directory of your SD card. Then, you only need to transfer it using a card reader, a card reader software or transfer it via infrared, bluetooth, email, etc to your computer. Or, if you have something like Docs to Go or similar spreadsheet program, you can view it right there. Depending on the format you’ve selected to be exported, the resulting csv file format may vary slightly. The call duration may be in seconds and not in the minutes:seconds (mm:ss) format as shown below.

As usual, I’m providing a short Flash demo/simulation to show how the program looks and works.

Flash simulation of Call Log Tools

Alternative Flash link: Imageshack

So, there you have it! A freeware way to convert and transfer your Phone Call log from the Treo to your computer so that you can use that valuable data for tracking, monitoring, etc.