Excel files

[ti2gr]

Being fairly new to the Pocket Pc from Palm, I was wondering how one syncs Excel files on the Paocket PC. ON the Palm I used Dcuments to go. Was I wrong in assuming that Excel files would be able sync on the Pocket PC from Pocket Excel to Excel 2002. I can see the document, add items etc, on the pocket PC, but it does not sync with the file on the desktop. Active sync recognizes that the file has changed, and syncs it, but where is it syncing too. The document does not change on the desktop. Any changes made on the desktop also do not sync to the PPC.

What am I doing wrong, or am I doing anything wrong or is this something that teh Palm does better. I never had a problem syncing Excel or Word files on the Palm.

Scott

[Sven Johannsen]

On the PPC, files are sync'd between the files in My Documents in the main RAM of the PPC and a special sync folder on the PC. If 'Files' is selected as one of the things to sync in Active Sync a folder will be created in your PC my documents folder called Pocket_PC My Documents (if you did not change the PPC default name. If you changd it to Bob it would be Bob My Documents) Normally it creates a shortcut on your desktop to that folder. Any file you place or create in My Documents or the PC sync folder will be copied to the other one. If a change is made on either copy, it will copy the changed file to the other location to keep it updated.

The ActiveSync copy process also contains conversion filters to convert .xls files to their pocket excell versions. (Same for Word, Notes, etc.) Be aware that the features of the built in apps are limited. When converting from Excell to Pocket Excell, many items are stripped out. If you then change the Pocket PC version, it copies and converts back to the PC, but cannot restore the stripped items. It is not as sever, but it is kind of like exporting a spreadsheet to csv, and then importing it. You lose stuff. This goes for word and other conversions as well.

You can turn off the conversion and just transfer a plain .doc/.xls to the PPC and Pocket Word/Excell will read it, but I am not sure what editing does to it and if it helps the 'round-tripping'.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Aside from the fact that the Pocket Word and Pocket Excel files tend to take less space then the desktop versions, I haven't been able to discern any benefit of having ActiveSync convert the files.

Personally, I never use ActiveSync to synchronize my files (I always directly IR files back and forth or rely on my removeable media to move files). Thus, I typically edit regular Excel / Word files directly on my PPC. As long as the files don't have any overly complex formatting, there shouldn't be much of an issue.

As an additional note, I've found that my desktop version of Word is capable of reading Pocket Word files (so it's common for me to have random variations of Pocket Word and Desktop Word files). I haven't found the same to be true with Excel (which has resulted in me never relying on pocket word files).

[theonegod]

Use the "pocket pc my documents" and you wont have this problem.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Use the "pocket pc my documents" and you wont have this problem.
You won't have what problem?