Patent ID: 8301197

Claim:
A method for synchronizing contact record data between a source phone book data file and a target phone book data file, comprising: selecting a contact record name and associated contact number in the source phone book for deletion; storing the selected contact record name and associated contact number in a temporary memory; determining an acceptable form for storing the contact record name on the target phone book; dynamically determining a maximum character length for the acceptable form for storing the contact record name on the target phone book; converting the selected contact record name stored in the temporary memory into the acceptable form by performing at least one of a concatenation operation or a divide operation on character strings of the selected contact record name to generate a converted contact name having at least one string with a character length that is less than or equal to the determined maximum character length; comparing the converted contact name to all contact names stored in the target phone book to determine if a match exists; comparing the associated contact number with only those target phone book contact numbers associated with matched contact names in the target phone book to determine if a duplicate contact record exists; deleting the associated contact number from the source phone book; and deleting the contact number associated with the matched contact names from the target phone book only if the duplicate contact record exists.