Contact sync by category = nightmare!

[Capt'n Morgan]

I started another post here (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41209), where I was looking for a way to manage two contact lists on my Dell Axim. Well, when I went to connect my PDA to another profile on my laptop, I noticed that I could setup two "partnerships" through active sync, to allow different settings for syncing.

I also at that time found that I could synchronize only specific categories from my contacts. I thought this would work out great, so I set all my contacts on computer A to category A, and synced (sunk?) those to the PDA. Then I went to computer B ("windows profile" B really) and categorized all my contacts there to category B. Then I did a sync of that category, and all of those contacts were copied to my PDA. Perfect so far!

So then I went back to computer A, selected what categories to sync (category A only) and instead, all my contacts from B came over.

Since I didn't want contacts B on computer A, I made sure that category was not selected to sync, and I deleted those contacts from computer A. I look over at my Palm, and the contacts then disappeared from there too.

:evil: :evil: :evil:

I didn't try it, but I bet if tried to sync back to computer B, it would wipe those out of my contacts on computer B.

Has anybody else noticed this trouble with syncing by category? I'm using Active Sync, and syncing with Outlook.

[Phillip Dyson]

Category syncing (or the lack there of) has long been a thorn in my side with activesync.

Activesync considers this filtering to only be used for minimizing the data transfered to your PDA. It only filters one-way.

Meaning there is no way to stop anything from transfering from your PDA to the PC.

This is a problem for me because I need to prevent my personal PIM data from ending up on my work Exchange Server. So I've been hobbling along with Intellisync. (Perhaps I should coin the phrase Intelli-stink).

Intellisync is inconsistently unreliable. (Yes you read that right). There trouble ticket staff could not identify any problems or solve them.

Here's hoping that AS 4.0 will fix the problem.

[Capt'n Morgan]

sojourner753, it sounds like you are in the same boat as me. I thought about Intelli-sync, as I heard it was better than Active Sync.. but it sounds like it's not much better.

I don't syncing and data entry to be a hassle. I'm looking for organized simplicity. So I think I'll stick with a seperate "list" to maintain my contacts. :|