I'm not sure I can help you with your syncing issues, but let me throw out one "trick" I highly recommend that I always use when first setting things up. In Outlook I copy all of my critical folders (Contacts, Calendar, etc.) to a separate folder and call them something like Bkp-Contacts, Bkp-Calendar etc. That way I have a backup of everything prior to starting any syncing "testing" and it also means I don't have to worry if I do something stupid like sync the wrong way and wipe out all sets of my data
I found out that syncing categories works the other way around. The PDA does not want all data, the PC does. So selecting some categories to be synced with your PDA blocks the things comming from the PC to the PDA, but the PDA still stores them on your PC. I guess microsoft still sees the PDA as a PC-companion.
If you add a category "shared" and you block all other categories, you stop the non-shared items from entering your PDA. You however can not stop the PDA from storng the data on your desktop.
Maybe I'm not up to speed with my desktop version of Outlook, but...
I too would LIKE to keep data separate (so I don't have company-sensitive information on my home PC, and shopping list entries on my work), but I'm prepared to work around that. The problem I am having is that once the system copies over works appointments to my home PC the home PC gets messed up because it doesn't know the attendees to the meetings (from the company's global address list).
Is this something I can solve, since I'm holding back doing a serious 2-PC sync until that's sorted.
Gah. There's not another release of ActiveSync on the horizon, is there?!
I did a bunch of testing with this, and concluded the same thing Jaap did - your PC wants all the data. When you choose to only sync some categories from Outlook to your PPC this works. Only those categories from Outlook will sync to your PPC. But ALL categories of data will sync from your PPC to Outlook. Example: 1 PPC 2 computers work and home. In my work Outlook I mark everything with the Business category. In my home Outlook I mark everything with the Personal category. I set activesync on my work PC to only sync Business, and in my home Outlook to only sync Personal. I first sync with my work PC. All of my Business category items sync to my PPC. Potentially I have other things in there that don't sync. This does work. I then go home. I plop my PPC in its cradle, and it starts to sync. All those Business category items get copied down to Outlook! Its just a big mess.
The way that works best for me is to sync all categories with both computers and use the views for filtering. Only look at the Business category at work, and only look at the Personal category at home. Items can be in multiple categories - and this is how I sub filter. Business and Active Projects or Business and Client. Personal and Birthday or Personal and Anniversary. It works for me.
I've had a problem getting duplicate events for things like birthdays and anniversaries of contacts. In the past, when I noticed duplicate events, I'd fix them by going into the month view in Outlook on my laptop and deleting the duplicate events. Unfortunately, that meant I had to scroll through 12 months of data and scan the calendar for duplicate events. It was an annoying process, and one reason I always wanted a "List" view of the calendar (the other reason being to find old events that I no longer cared about and delete them).
This thread made me open Outlook on my laptop and check the View/Current View menu, something I didn't know existed. Imagine my delight when I found View/Current View/Annual Events! It will now be much easier to find and purge these duplicate appointments.
This leads me to two questions. First, did the Current View capability exist in Outlook 97? That's what I was using until this year with my Handheld PC and my iPAQ 3650. I only switched when I got Outlook 2002 with my iPAQ 3870.
Second, does anybody know how these duplicate events get created? I'm only syncing with one computer, so I'm not getting the duplicates that syncing with two computers can create.
I'm not sure why I'd get these duplicates, but I've noticed that it appears with appointments that I have edited for some reason. For example, for birthdays where I want to send someone a card or a gift, I add a reminder two weeks before the birthday to remind me to shop for the card or gift. I also make birthdays and anniversaries private so they won't be shared if I use Outlook at work. When I noticed a duplicate event in Calendar or Outlook, one event would seem to be the edited version (two-week reminder, private), and the other event would be a generic one (15-minute reminder, not private).
I tried creating a test contact with a birthday, then going back and editing the contact, then editing the event, then editing the contact again, but I could not get a duplicate created during my test. If anybody knows what causes this, maybe I can avoid the problem. At the least, I can eliminate the duplcate when it gets created, not some time later when the birthday or anniversary rolls around.
Well, to make a very long story very short: Outlook Desktop version creates the duplicates.
The slightly longer version: It originates from the contacts: when there is a contact with birthday/anniversary there, it will create the appropriate birthday. It will check if the birthday is already there. Unfortunatly, this check is extremely simple, and mostly concludes it isn't there already (because there is one field different). In these cases it will be created as a duplicate. Change one of the identifying fields (file as name, name fields, e-mail fields), and this proces repeats itself.
We do our calendar/tasks the dumb way i.e. I start my task like 'K: Go grocery shopping' and she satrts hers like 'D: Call XYZ @ 1234567'. Not efficient btu works pretty well for us.
on a related topic: I was frustrated for a long time in not being able to view Notes by Category on the Pocket PC. This is possible in outlook, and is possible on the palm (synchronizing from Outlook to Palm via DesktopToGo, for instance).
At last, here is a small tool that puts the category index onto the Pocket PC, and allows you to view Notes by Category.
Notes:
- Tested with Outlook XP, ActiveSync 3.5, and Windows XP
- Requires .NET Framework on PC (see windowsupdate.com)
- Requires .NET Compact Framework on PPC
- does not sync notes in subfolders
- does not do "conditional" sync of categories; all categories of notes get synched to the device
Re: Using Outlook categories to work with your data easier
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
... but wasn't able to get it working. ActiveSync doesn't allow you to select categories for synching data BEFORE the first sync, so everything on your Pocket PC will dump onto the PC, even if you don't want it to.
... Conclusion
Categories are a great way to get rid of those Outlook sub-folders, get all your important data onto your Pocket PC, and work a little faster on it. Give it a try!
I have been attacking the problem from another perpective, but I think the lessons are still applicable.
It appears to me that you can, (at least with activesync 3.5) control the movements of items, but it is so much work, I'm not sure it's worth it. First, you must go to the activesync "options|schedule" dialog, and select "Manually" This will allow you the short window of opportunity between when your two machines detect that there are items that need to be synced, and actually syncing them, where you can modify the rule for syncing.
The biggest problem with trying to control the movement of items based on categories really comes down to this: the default movement of a previously unknown category is "syncronize it". This especially means that in my case, where my wife's tasks are labeled "michele" and mine are labeled "greenup", if a new task is made on my handheld with the categories "greenup, work" (where home is a new category) When this task makes it to our desktop PC, its default sync setting would to be synced down to my wife's handheld.
If I have activesync set to "manual", and take care to examine and fix the sync settings for each item type (contacts, calendar, tasks are the important ones for us), making sure that no new categories have slipped in, I can make sure that our items remain separate.
IF I SLIP UP, though, and my wife DELETES the item (categories "greenup, work"? this doesn't belong here!) that deletion will soon/eventually propagate back to my handheld, and my item will never be seen again. What's more, once an item has traversed to the incorrect handheld, the only way to recover that I have found is to copy it (and any others that may have slipped through at the time) to a backup .pst file on the desktop computer, process the deletion (in any of the other 3 places: either handheld, or the default outlook folder) and then copy from the backup location, BEING SURE TO FOLLOW PROPER SYNC STEPS THIS TIME.
Overall, this is kinda good (that it is possible), because I can imagine that there *may* be a work task that could contain sensitive information (good thing we don't do emails; that's a whole lot more likely) that I technically should not share with my wife (not that she would care the least about what my company considers confidential). But it's also REALLY BAD, because the amount of work that is necessary to make sure it all happens correctly is unlikely to be rigorously done all the time. (basically, it's a pain, and downloading all the crud to both PDAs and managing them there is very attractive)
I'm still fiddling around with getting my work desktop munged into this mess, but it mostly works, so long as I pay close attention to everything.
Overall: I Agree; Activesync is an abomination. I'm pretty close to going out and buying one of the alternatives, but most of them seem to just be "piggyback" products. (still have the underlying ugliness)
Get Pocket Lookout 2.1.1 from http://lookout.vonken.com/ for US$20.00 and sync any or all Outlook sub-folders.
Short of Microsoft making the syncing of Outlook sub-folders native to the Pocket PC OS, there is probably no route even theoretically better than Pocket Lookout. There sure isn't any better existng practical solution.
This sounds like an ideal solution. I looked at the Pocket Lookout site and saw everything that I'd want to do. Are there any shortcomings to using this software to do what Jason is trying to do with categories? Seems like a simple solution, albeit for $20.
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