Tip of the Day #5 – 3/12/09

Level: Beginner

Tip of the Day #5 – Adding BlackBerry Messenger Buddies – Most of you will probably think this is a waste of time, but many new BlackBerry owners do not even know what BlackBerry Messenger is after months of owning the device.  Now there are 2 ways you can do this;  you can add a fellow BlackBerry users PIN to their contact information and add them, or you can just enter their PIN in your BlackBerry Messenger.  I would recommend entering it in the contact’s information so in case you lose them or delete them, you can just re add them.  Here is how you do it:

Step 1. Send a text or an email to your friend and ask them for their PIN (the phones personal identification number).  If they do not know how to get their PIN, simply have them reply back to your message with the text “mypin” and then hit space and it will show up in the form pin:24A010AA (but the letters and digits will be unique to each device).

Step 2. Copy their PIN and paste it in their specific contact information by going to Contacts, then the persons name, press Menu, then Edit, then scroll down to the space for PIN and paste it.  If you don’t know how to copy or paste, see this post.  If you do not want to store it in their Contact info or if you don’t want to add them to your Contacts, then simply open up BlackBerry Messenger (which will be the little icon that looks like a dialogue bubble) and press Menu, then Add a Contact and paste the PIN in there and press enter.

Step 3. If you chose to add it to the Contact info, open up BlackBerry Messenger, press Menu, then Add a Contact and type the person’s name in and press enter.

You have now sent a request to them to accept your offer.

Note: When you back up your device, it will automatically back up your BlackBerry Messenger contacts as well.  So if you get a new phone and restore it with a previous backup, you will not have to re-add all your buddies.

Hope this helps.