Please help - problems syncing with Outlook

The P900 treats categories completely differently to Outlook and so cannot maintain them during the synch process. So, I'm afraid, if you're looking to synch with Outllook and use categories then the P900 is not for you.

Though 300 contacts isn't all that many. Outlook's search facility is so woeful, categories are needed to find anything. Personally, I find that the find function in the P900 is so much better than the default Outlook contact search that it renders categories unecessary.

Besides, if you think that's the worst part of the P900's (abysmal) synch software, you wait 'till it starts wiping out half your calendar each time you turn the phone off!

What a joke.

What's the point in offering that flexibility when it doesn't back it up? For goodness sake, my Palm Vx did that years ago without any problem. My 5 year old Psion does it with the aid of a 3rd party phone. Yet my brand spanking new all-singing all-dancing P900 doesn't 😡

Does anybody at SE actually use one of these things? Other than for playing silly games and MP3s? If the calendar loses appointments and the phonebook can't keep my numbers in order then it's useless to me.

They don't tell you all this when they're trying to sell it to you do they?

Any chance of a firmware update to fix these problems or do I have an expensive white elephant on my hands?

Just a thought - doing a system backup/restore - does that cover the files that the phonebook application uses? Ie, could you back up the files and keep the data intact that way?

Thanks for the quick response, not meaning to shoot the messenger, just hacked off with S-E for their incompetence.

Yeah, that would work with one (rediculous) exception. You loose your voice tags when you do a restore. So, if you use your phone with a bluetooth headset and voice dialing, you need to record them all over again.

As I say, categories aren't really necessary on the P900 (though it's probably a pain getting used to not having them if that's the way you're used to working) but the constant loss of appointments is the P900's achilles heal. To be fair, I'm probably particularly down on it at the moment as I spent hours last night making notes, entring contacts and adding reminders for my wedding next month. Synched with the PC at work this morning and lost the lot. Probably about 50 entries - most of which I can remember and re-enter but some of which I am sure I will have missed, but won't know until it's too late!!!!!

I don't think it needs a firmware update. I'm assuming it's the synch software that's at fault (there are several little problems with it). I'm hoping that, when the P910i is released in a couple of weeks, that they will release updated synch software as they did when the P900 replaced the P800. However, there is only a slim hope that they will fix the problems.

It really is almost enough to drive me to an MS PPC - if it weren't for all the other problems that they have with data loss! Better the devil you know (maybe).

OK, I have managed to find a workaround - I'll post it here for the benefit of other poor souls who buy the thing and have the same problem...

Get your contacts in several different contacts folders in outlook. eg:

Contacts - Personal
Contacts - Colleagues
Contacts - Work
Contacts - Useful

Also have a separate Contacts folder just for syncing with the P900. Start with it empty, and sync with P900 (Full sync settings - merge items). This will blank the phone's contacts (doesn't really seem to be merging to me, more copying PC to phone, but we'll ignore that...)

Now, COPY (not move) the first folder (eg. Contacts - Personal) into the Contacts folder to sync with the P900. Sync.

Go to the P900, open the contacts manager. Select "Unfiled", and "Select All", then Move all the contacts to the "Personal" Category.

Back to Outlook.

Copy the second folder (eg. Contacts - Colleagues)into the Contacts folder to syncwith the P900. DO NOT ERASE THE CONTACTS THAT YOU PREVIOUSLY PUT IN HERE or else they will be erased from the phone when you sync! Sync.

As before, go to the P900, open the contacts manager. Select "Unfiled", and "Select All", then Move all the contacts to the "Colleagues" Category.

Continue doing this until you have synced all the folders.

Pros:
Saves you going through each contact separately and selecting a category

Cons:
When you synchronise, your contacts will be sync'ed to the main Contacts folder in Outlook, not your subfolders, so if you ever need to sync them from scratch you will lose the categories, unless you keep your subfolders updated separately (which would be a real hassle 🙄 )

Hope that's of some help, seems to have sorted my problems to a certain extent.

Point of interest - doing a full backup includes contacts and folders, so that's one way to approach it. Is there any way of just restoring one or two files? I used to be able to do it on my Psion (also Symbian), and actually navigate around the file structure of the Psion from the PC, doing what I wanted with individual files. If I could just copy off the contacts data file and keep that backed up I would have more problems. It must be possible as it's the same OS, but what software do I need?

One other problem - the phone numbers that came with my phone from Orange don't seem to sync (they lose their numbers!), and now they have disappeared altogether.

1) Why!?
2) How do I get them back?

My contacts are grouped by categories in P900, and synching with Outlook does not erase the categories on P900.

Restore really erases the voice dials, and that is no good 😞

I've just bought a P910i and straight away I'm having problems with the categories/filing problem using Tasks.

I can live with not using Outlook categories, as long as I can use the 'filing' on my P910i, i.e. Business, Personal, DIY, Projects etc.

However, if I make any changes within Outlook, the task then becomes 'unfiled' on the P910i after syncing. I've tried this several times and it is repeatable. But there must be a further problem because I spent ages yesterday editing and 'filing' all the tasks on the P910i and about 80% of them after syncing are now 'unfiled' again. I don't fancy checking the repeatability of this today?

Other comments - syncing seems slow and is not 'live' as on an iPAQ for example.

Looks like SE have got some work to do on the syncing software??

Martin

> Looks like SE have got some work to do on the syncing software??

Ha! You wish! It's been like this for nigh on two years and they've done nothing about it. I wouldn't hold your breath.

I don't know whether the guys who write the software monitor this forum, but they really do need to get their act together (or tell me where I'm going wrong please?):

Here are the results of an experiment I carried out this evening:

1. Changed a Task on the P910i and filed it where I wanted it, under 'Projects'.

2. Synchronised with Laptop.

3. At this stage everything is fine, the Task is filed under 'Projects'.

4. Synchronised again.

5. Didn't even touch Outlook.

6. Checked the Task on the P910i - it's been moved from 'Projects' to 'Unfiled'.

I occassionaly burn the midnight oil to get the job done - these guys need to do the same I think!! How about a Version 3.0.1 of the PC Suite??

Martin

The problem of tasks being moved to 'Unfiled' after synchronisation seems to have been resolved in Version 3.1.1 of the PC Suite. Correct synchronisation with 'Categories' in Outlook still needed?

Martin

martin1977 wrote:
I occassionaly burn the midnight oil to get the job done - these guys need to do the same I think!! How about a Version 3.0.1 of the PC Suite??

Martin

I think you can forget about this. Unfortunately the norm these days seems to be to rush out the implementation, provide a couple of basic bugfixes for the worst problems, and then start working on the next Big Thing forcing the users of the old Big Thing to upgrade, whereupon they are faced by new problems because it has all been rushed out again 😡

I totally gave up on my P900 as a PDA after a week or so. I have gone back to my old paper diary for that and To-dos, it's a lot less hassle, doesn't get corrupted and lost, and I'm not constantly worrying about losing the whole shooting match when I sync.

I use the phone for phoning (obviously!), internet access, contacts, and messaging.

However, on the last 2 it is still proving inadequate. God help you if you ever have to restore your contacts from scratch and keep them in categories (as I stated when I started this thread). I have 100s of contacts in various groups that are a necessity for my work. Yet the P900 has no way of preserving these on syncing. A 3rd party developer managed this in iContacts on the Psion 5mx, so why can't the vast resources of S-E? That's right, they've already got your money so they don't care!

As for messaging. I like to keep a record of all my SMS/MMS messages, as a lot of them are work related. On my old Nokia/Psion combo although I could not get at my MMS messages for reasons best known to Nokia, I could back up my SMS messages via I/R.

However, on the P900 there is no apparent way to backup SMS/MMS messages. I can only do a full system backup, although I still can't get to my messages! It has got to the stage that my phone is saying its internal memory is full, yet there is nothing installed on it except messages!

The most irritating thing is that Symbian is more than capable of letting me access individual files either on the phone or within the backup file. I know, as I can do this on my Psion and my old Psion backup files. But that was too much hassle for S-E 😞 The whole idea of "only being able to put files in certain directories" and even then "if it's the wrong file type you're not allowed" is a joke.

This is supposed to be S-E's top end business phone, but it's a joke. No way would I recommend this to anybody as a PDA. For a normal phone with net access it's fine, but it's no more than that.

Sorry for the long moany edit, but I am so disappointed with this phone 😞

How on earth will the dominance of Microsoft ever be defeated if guys like Palm and Symbian cannot produce the goods!

Unfortunately there are two problems.

The first being that the original synch software was just useless. Bearing in mind the phone was delayed for over six months due to hardware issues (that's the P800) so they had loads of time to get it working, it was just rubbish.

Problem two is that ever since then, Microsoft has kept moving the goalpost. They constantly change and tweak the storage formats making it very difficult to keep up so Palm and it's various 3rd party synch writers have a hard time keeping up.

However, point two doesn't alter the fact that SE have made no attempt to keep up and just sit back with a piece of synch software that, when it works (not all that often) actually corrupts your data!

So, it's partly down to MS using their desktop monopoly to gain an advantage in another market (does that sound farmiliar?) and partly down to SE seemingly not caring. Or maybe most people who buy the P Series phones don't use the synch software so they don't see the need?