Expanding Fields

[Global]

under Contacts or Calendar, is there any way to expand the
data shown by the field on the first screen. for example,
under Home2 tel, the following appears:

South Africa +27-82-82...

this is even though there is more room on the next line.

if you can't expand, you have to go into Edit, then scroll
down to Home2 tel and scroll across the entire entry to
find the rest of the number (while being careful not to
erase the blue highlighted words).

this is very cumbersome.

any way to show more text on the first screen even if text
will take up 2 or more lines?

is there a patch, download, freeware which will accomplish
this?

second question:

how does the program determine order of fields. on some,
Work tel comes first, on others Mobile tel, even though
there is data in the Work tel field. any way to order the
fields according to user-defined rules?

last question: the fields in Outlook and fields in
Outlook CE don't always match and info not always
synchronized because the 2 fields are not determined to be
corresponding. any way to set "partnerships" between
fields on the 2 programs?

a prompt reply will be appreciated. tx and brgds.

[Jason Dunn]

First, it's difficult to help without knowing what type of Pocket PC you have (Pocket PC 2000, 2002, or 2003). But I'll do my best...

under Contacts or Calendar, is there any way to expand the data shown by the field on the first screen.

No.

if you can't expand, you have to go into Edit, then scroll
down to Home2 tel and scroll across the entire entry to
find the rest of the number (while being careful not to
erase the blue highlighted words). this is very cumbersome.

Indeed, it is, but there's no way around this. It's bad deisgn on Microsoft's part.

any way to show more text on the first screen even if text will take up 2 or more lines?

No.

how does the program determine order of fields. on some, Work tel comes first, on others Mobile tel, even though
there is data in the Work tel field. any way to order the
fields according to user-defined rules?

It's hard coded - when you click EDIT you can see the order of all the fields, but the regular view doesn't show the blank data fields. There's no way to change this.

last question: the fields in Outlook and fields in
Outlook CE don't always match and info not always
synchronized because the 2 fields are not determined to be
corresponding. any way to set "partnerships" between
fields on the 2 programs?

By my count, there are 29 fields on the Pocket PC. I don't know how many there are in Outlook, but I do know there are more than 29. :-) If the field names match, the data will match - I've never seen or heard of the fields not matching. If you've created custom fields in Outlook, they will not be synchronized. If you stick to the paired 29 fields, you won't have any problems.

[Global]

tx, jason, for the replies.

if i knew how to find the version of windows ce, i would tell you. i'm unable to fina a help-about screen and don't know how to find. no matter. my own experience with ce is it is very awkward and poorly described in any documentation i have seen. this is just one example.

since you are mvp, and presumably microsoft listens to you somewhat, perhaps if you are so inclined you could help users like us by "agitating" for ability to expand the fields and more customization ability generally, to combat the "poor design" you quite appropriately described of microsoft. maybe you participate in a mvp forum or mvp meeting where they actually take note of comments from the field and act on them promptly.

hopefully, there can be a patch which remedies this soon.

tx for any assistance.