Blackberry IPD file

Since the development of the mobile telephone in the 1980s life has never quite been the same. The spread of cellular telephones through the 1990s meant you could remain in constant contact with family, friends and colleagues and reduction in both price and size turned these communication devices into essential necessities that became fashion statements.

With the advent of smartphones these devices have become the hub of our social, work and family lives. Storing our contacts, e-mails, messages and allowing us to connect to others in a multitude of ways from social networking to instant messaging. At the forefront of the smart phone revolution has been the Canadian telephone manufacturer Research in Motion whose range of Blackberry smartphones has made them a market leader. Being one of the first manufacturers to allow e-mail connectivity on the go the Blackberry brand has led the sector in the creation of mobile devices that have become the communication centres of our lives.

Blackberry devices found an early market in the business sector allowing a workforce to remain in constant communication via voice and e-mail whilst away from the office. President Barrack Obama was one of Blackberry’s most notable devotees and used his Blackberry extensively during his 2008 campaign. In recent years the Blackberry has become more widely purchased by non-corporate users with the devices being particularly popular with teenagers thanks to the Blackberry Messenger service and is increasingly seen as a fashion icon of the mobile world.

As smart phones become intrinsic to our daily lives the information which they hold becomes increasingly more valuable. To protect customers from a total loss of stored information many manufacturers allow users to backup their data and allow them to restore this information should their phone suffer a major malfunction.

Modern Blackberry phones hold a multitude of data including contact lists, e-mails, calendars, messages and more; valuable data that Blackberry sensibly backs up to protect their users through the creation of IPD files. The IPD (Interactive Pager Backup) files are databases containing information such as your contact list or SMS messages. To protect their uses RIM (Research In Motion) allow users to backup their valuable mobile phone data using the RIM Blackberry Desktop Manager on their PC. However the RIM software does not allow you to view the data held in the IPD files in a readable human friendly way such as in a spreadsheet or PDF file.

Thankfully software is available that makes viewing and saving Blackberry IPD files a simple affair offering multiple output formats and straight forward operation. Software such as phoneminer allows users to open IPD files on their PC and export them to multiple formats such as Excel Spreadsheets, PDf files or HTML documents.

With the proliferation of smart mobile devices and the increasingly central role they play in our daily lives it is clear that protecting the data stored upon them is essential. However it is also important that as with the Blackberry IPD file users have the ability to view the data contained within them.