Lotus Organizer

[skipper]

Hi

Is anyone using Lotus Organizer in preference to Outlook to synch with their Psion?

If so, I'd be grateful to know what is the latest version that will work with psiwin 2.3.3? Is there other software in existence that will synch the Psion successfully with the latest version of Organizer.

Thanks
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

Since I do support for Lotus, I sync with both Organizer and Outlook. The latest version of Organizer is 6.1, which is minor update to 6.0. You can sync with either Organizer 5.x or 6.x by downloading the Organizer update at the Psion web site. PsiWin can sync with Organizer versions going all the way back to 2.11 although I'd recommend either 5.x or 6.x due to the increased feature set of these versions.

The only other software available that syncs Organizer with the SR5 OS, including the 5mx and the Revo/Mako, is Intellisync for Symbian. Intellisync sits on top of PsiWin 2.3.3 and uses the PsiWin sync engine. My experience with Intellisync is that it is very much slower and is more prone to creating duplicates than PsiWin running under Win2K or WinXP. You can download a free 30 day trial if you'd like to test it yourself at www.intellisync.com .

[skipper]

Thanks Jim

I've downloaded a trial copy of Organizer 6 plus the patch from the psion site.

I've synch'd Agenda OK except that I need to put in daily repeat tasks as events otherwise Lotus lists them as 6am appointments.Contacts is OK except it hasn't converted the cell/mobile numbers from the Psion in to Organizer. I need to resolve this because I make a lot of calls to mobiles.

I haven't been able to synch TO-DO though and am not sure if this is because I don't show them in the Agenda view on the Psion, so I will have to try changing that option on the Psion.

I've found a couple of older posts of yours on similar subjects, involving Lotus synch issues which have helped.

As I regularly use Agenda, Contacts & To Do on the 5mx, I would like to be able to mirror the data as closely as possible on both machines.

Thanks again for your advice.

Regards
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

<<I've synch'd Agenda OK except that I need to put in daily repeat tasks as events otherwise Lotus lists them as 6am appointments.>>

Correct. The Organizer calendar section has no untimed appointments. All untimed appointments are inserted at 6:00am. By changing the untimed appointments to events, they will be placed in the Planner section, which you can show through in the Calendar section.

<<Contacts is OK except it hasn't converted the cell/mobile numbers from the Psion in to Organizer.>>

PsiWin will convert the Mobile number in the Personal Info tab of Contacts to the Mobile field in Organizer. It does not convert the Work Mobile field in Contacts so you need have your mobile number in the correct field in Contacts.

<<I haven't been able to synch TO-DO though and am not sure if this is because I don't show them in the Agenda view on the Psion, so I will have to try changing that option on the Psion.>>

I'm not sure what your problem is here. Assuming you've set the to-do's to sync in Psiwin and haven't changed the name of the to-do tab in Organizer, this is usually a no-brainer. You should be able to go to the to-do section in Organizer and see the to-do's from the Psion with the category being the same as the name of the to-do list in the Psion.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[skipper]

Hi Jim

Thanks again.

I've found the mobile nos. "hidden" in the Edit section of Lotus Contacts. They are not displayed in the default contacts view. Presumably, this is down to my lack of knowledge with how to set up views on Organizer, than a synch problem?

However, I can't get the To-Do synch to work. The synch. stops with the "there may be errors message". If I untick To-Do option of the synch, everything else works fine.

I have multi-lists of To-Do (with different titles) on the Psion, could that be the problem?

Regards
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

No, it's not you.:) For reasons known only to Lotus, Organizer defaults do not include the mobile phone number in the address card view. If you change an individual address card to show the mobile number then it will remember the setting next time but you have to to this individually. A better view to use is the List view, where you can specify the columns you want to see, including the mobile number. You can make any number of custom list views as well so you could have one list that only shows mobile numbers, for example.

The to-do's not finishing normally usually indicates a problem in one of the to-do's on the Psion. I don't know how many to-do's you have but, if it's not many, you might want to recreate them in Organizer and then sync. If you have a lot of to-do's, tidying them to a different file and then merging them back into your original Agenda file can also help to remove any corruption in the to-do's.

[skipper]

Jim

Thanks for Contacts info - it saves me wasting time trying to achieve the impossible!

To Do - I've tried removing all the To Do's from the Psion (there are 150+ spread over several lists) and entering a few on to Lotus before synch'g.

This has been partly successful but for some reason some tasks don't get replicated on to the Psion.

I've spent quite a bit of time on this now and as Agenda and Contacts are working fine, I'm probably going to accept defeat on this (temporarily!).

I will have one last try at deleting the info on both machines and entering a few in to organizer to see if they copy across OK from 1 list to another.

Two last questions on this (I promise) - do you happen to know if there is a way in Lotus of having repeat to-do's but only showing the next one in Calendar. This can be done on the Psion with repeat a entry but in Organizer it shows them all.

Would Lotus Notes be more synch friendly?

Thanks again for all your help on this.

Regards
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

I can't imagine what's causing the to-do problem. Just as a test, try opening a new Organizer file and entering some to-do's there. Create a new Agenda file and then set up a new sync task in PsiWin to only sync the to-do's in the new Organizer file. If that works correctly, we'll at least know the problem lies somewhere in either your prestent Agenda or Organizer file.

Organizer by default shows all instances of a repeating to-do. You can create a filter that only shows to-do's for today or something like within two weeks of today and apply that filter but there's no built in way to only show the next occurance of a repeat to-do.

Lotus Notes is orders of magnitude more difficult to set up and sync with any PDA, let alone a Psion. People who are tortured with Notes in a work situation don't have any other choice but I'd certainly not recommend Notes to an individual user.

[skipper]

Hi Jim

The test using new organizer & agenda files worked - the to-do's replicated. What do you think I should try next?

Regards
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

OK, that's a bit of progress then since we now know that PsiWin is working correctly. I'm assuming that you intitially had a brand new Organizer file so the makes your Psion Agenda file the likely suspect.

Try tidying the to-do's from your orginal file to a new Agenda file. Merge this file with the to-do's only into the Agenda file that's presently known good for syncing with the new Organizer file. Sync the Agenda file again to Organizer and see if all the to-do's come across correctly. If so, I'd then tidy the remaining entries from the old Agenda file to a new file and merge those with the to-do Agneda test file. Sync that again to the Organizer test file. If everything now comes across, you should have solved your problem. Delete the orginal Agenda file and the orginal Organizer file and continue to use both of the replacement files.

[skipper]

Thanks Jim

I tidied the to-dos on the Psion and then tried copying across the tasks from Organizer but some didn't copy across.

I then deleted all the tasks on the organizer and tried again using the tidied to-dos from the Psion. This only part worked, as not all the tasks were copied across.

Also, when I deleted a few tasks and synch'd, the deletions weren't consistent on the Psion.

I then deleted all to-do's on both machines and re-entered 30 odd to-do's into agenda on the Psion. This seems to have sorted it, as they have been mirrored in Organizer and subsequent amends seem to be OK as well. All I need to do is re-enter the remaining to-do's I've deleted and hopefully, I will be up and running.

Perhaps my original to-do file was corrupt and caused Organizer to malfunction?

Thanks again for all your help.

Regards
Skipper

[Jim Cooke]

Skipper,

It does seem as though there was something about at least one of the to-do's that you had on the Psion that PsiWin didn't like. This can be certain non-english characters or invisible control characters. Sometimes, the easiest solution is to what you've done - recreate the to-do's rahter than trying to figure out which is the one that's wrong. This isn't a very good solution for something like apoointments where you may have thousands of entries but it's usually the best course for smaller sections like the to-do's.

[OMMAS]

hi my name is sammo
i have aadhd the forgetful brain disorder
i use lotus to organize my lifes easy to fogetfull things



i am completly lost finding information on how to upgrade, find plug ins , find a lotus organizer message board .

would sombody please take pity on me an find some hyperlinks that i can go to that can help use my organizer to its fullest potential.

im still using lotus 6.0 on my pc
yea
i think theres more i can do with it, for the love of god help me at least find an mp3 plug in for lotus 6.0 .

part of the ADD disorder is that we suffer from low self esteem when isolatedand tend to be wall flowers that cant shut up.
can somebody please go out of their way to help me find the bells and whistles to the lotus organizer versions i have 5.0 and 6.0 i know i need to upgrade but im not sure i can use any upgrade trial versions without wiping out my current files .

youre help may make a big difference in my life please help.
i like the lotus organizer 6.0 , i know how to use it , i dont have time to learn newer better other oganizers. thank you for tolerating my spelling and grammar errors. and thank you very much if you take the time to reply. even if its just to offer support
sincerly sammo
i think the right organizing software could set me free :confused:

[Colin Messer]

This is a Psion PDA forum. so you may not get very much help.

These are the official self-help pages

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/smartsuite/support.html

If there are any user groups they were hiding - I couldn't find any

Colin