maikii
05-09-2006, 03:58 AM
Strange problem, started occurring recently with AS 4.1 (WM 5 PPC), and continued after upgrading today to 4.2 beta.
As you know, the titles of Notes in Outlook are not set in a separate Subject field, as with e-mail or appointments. The first line of text in the Note becomes its title. I always put a good title for the note first. It has worked for me for years, with no problems.
Now sometimes though, after syncing with AS4.*, part of the title gets cut off. For instance, "Shopping List" becomes "ping list", or even just "st". If I open the Note, the text is just as before "Shopping List", but the title is cut off like that.
This doesn't just happen with one note, but with many. (Not all, though.) There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, why it happens with many notes but not others. The characters are always deleted from the beginning of the title, but it is not always the same number of characters deleted.
Sometimes this has just happened to the notes on the PC after syncing, sometimes to both PC and PPC. If only to one, then I end up with duplicates on both the next time, the note with the full title, and the one with the shortened title, as AS now looks at them as different notes. It also ends up putting (1) after some notes. I've also seen extraneous characters added to the beginning of titles in some cases.
I found if I edited a note, even just added a character and then deleted it, closed the note, the title would be fixed. (Speaking of the PC. On the PPC the note is a file, so the title can be fixed by renaming in a file explorer.)
I thought today I would try to fix this problem. I corrected the notes manually, using the methods described in the paragraph above, for both machines. I deleted duplicates manually. (I tried one of the duplicate remover utilities, it didn't help at all, so did it all manually.) I removed extraneous characters from titles as well, such as the (1) at the end of many notes, and some characters at the front of one note. I fixed it so both machines had correctly named titles, the same notes with the same titles (same as first line of text of note) on both the PC and PPC.
I then uninstalled ActiveSync 4.1 Furthermore, I deleted the profile for the connection, under application data/Microsoft/ActiveSync on the PC. I rebooted. Then I installed the latest build of the ActiveSync 4.2 beta preview. I was hoping that 4.2 would solve the problem.
On connecting after the installation, I received a message that Notes hadn't been synced before, which should replace the other, or combine. Although the notes were the same, and up to date on both, I chose for the PC Notes to replace the PPC. (Actually, I was surprised only to receive that message about Notes. Since I had deleted the profile before installing 4.2, I thought I would get asked that question about all data types.)
Since all the notes were now correct on the PC, AS had been uninstalled, existing profiles wiped out, and new version installed on the PC, I chose for it to replace the notes on the PPC, with those on the PC. I thought they would now be synchronized correctly, same notes on both, correct titles.
But ayyyyyyy!!!!!! After all that work fixing the titles on both machines, the upgrade process described above, etc............after that last sync, I looked at notes on both the PC and the PPC, and both had screwed up titles, as described earlier. There don't appear to be duplicates, and the title alterations seem to be the same on both. (Of course, I didn't check all carefully. If any alterations are different, that will of course result in duplicates in the next sync, as AS would think they are two different notes.)
What a pain after all that work, to have the weird truncated titles again!!
Has anyone else experienced this very strange phenomenon?? What could possibly be causing it? Any way to really fix it?
And, of course, the big question--when is Microsoft going to really fix this incredibly buggy sync app, ActiveStync?? Or better yet, come up with a totally different (and much better) sync app?
As you know, the titles of Notes in Outlook are not set in a separate Subject field, as with e-mail or appointments. The first line of text in the Note becomes its title. I always put a good title for the note first. It has worked for me for years, with no problems.
Now sometimes though, after syncing with AS4.*, part of the title gets cut off. For instance, "Shopping List" becomes "ping list", or even just "st". If I open the Note, the text is just as before "Shopping List", but the title is cut off like that.
This doesn't just happen with one note, but with many. (Not all, though.) There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, why it happens with many notes but not others. The characters are always deleted from the beginning of the title, but it is not always the same number of characters deleted.
Sometimes this has just happened to the notes on the PC after syncing, sometimes to both PC and PPC. If only to one, then I end up with duplicates on both the next time, the note with the full title, and the one with the shortened title, as AS now looks at them as different notes. It also ends up putting (1) after some notes. I've also seen extraneous characters added to the beginning of titles in some cases.
I found if I edited a note, even just added a character and then deleted it, closed the note, the title would be fixed. (Speaking of the PC. On the PPC the note is a file, so the title can be fixed by renaming in a file explorer.)
I thought today I would try to fix this problem. I corrected the notes manually, using the methods described in the paragraph above, for both machines. I deleted duplicates manually. (I tried one of the duplicate remover utilities, it didn't help at all, so did it all manually.) I removed extraneous characters from titles as well, such as the (1) at the end of many notes, and some characters at the front of one note. I fixed it so both machines had correctly named titles, the same notes with the same titles (same as first line of text of note) on both the PC and PPC.
I then uninstalled ActiveSync 4.1 Furthermore, I deleted the profile for the connection, under application data/Microsoft/ActiveSync on the PC. I rebooted. Then I installed the latest build of the ActiveSync 4.2 beta preview. I was hoping that 4.2 would solve the problem.
On connecting after the installation, I received a message that Notes hadn't been synced before, which should replace the other, or combine. Although the notes were the same, and up to date on both, I chose for the PC Notes to replace the PPC. (Actually, I was surprised only to receive that message about Notes. Since I had deleted the profile before installing 4.2, I thought I would get asked that question about all data types.)
Since all the notes were now correct on the PC, AS had been uninstalled, existing profiles wiped out, and new version installed on the PC, I chose for it to replace the notes on the PPC, with those on the PC. I thought they would now be synchronized correctly, same notes on both, correct titles.
But ayyyyyyy!!!!!! After all that work fixing the titles on both machines, the upgrade process described above, etc............after that last sync, I looked at notes on both the PC and the PPC, and both had screwed up titles, as described earlier. There don't appear to be duplicates, and the title alterations seem to be the same on both. (Of course, I didn't check all carefully. If any alterations are different, that will of course result in duplicates in the next sync, as AS would think they are two different notes.)
What a pain after all that work, to have the weird truncated titles again!!
Has anyone else experienced this very strange phenomenon?? What could possibly be causing it? Any way to really fix it?
And, of course, the big question--when is Microsoft going to really fix this incredibly buggy sync app, ActiveStync?? Or better yet, come up with a totally different (and much better) sync app?