Lotus 6 Contact synch is not working

[mcampos]

I have just installed Lotus 6 on my Windows XP Pc. I had been using Lotus 97 without a problem and synching it with my 5mx. I had not upgraded to Lotus 6 as I had been unable (even with the Psiwin patch) to get Lotus 6 to properly transfer information to my 5mx.

After several reinstalls (of PSIWIN), I am now able to synch my agenda. However, I have not been able to transfer the Contact information in Organizer to the Data application on the Psion. When Psiwin begins the synch process, it reads fromthe Psion and then ends with an error message stating

Snchronizer

Organizer 5.0 / 6.0

Unable to open contacts

I have tried to synch with the Lotus data file closed, open, Organizer 6 running, not running with the same results.

Any suggestions?

Thank in advance,

Manuel

[Jim Cooke]

Manuel,

What is the tab name of your contacts section in Organizer? The name PsiWin expects to see is Contacts. If you have changed the tab name, check in PsiWin and make sure that the correct Organizer tab name is shown.

[mcampos]

Jim:

Thanks for the response, as alwyas, very helpful. The tab is the default one, contacts.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Manuel

[Jim Cooke]

Manuel,

It's never the easy ones, is it?:)

The next step is to see if there is a corruption in the Organizer file. With your Organizer data file closed, go to File, Compact and run the file through the compact routine and then give it another go.

If that still gives no joy, open a NEW Organizer file and then save the file under a name like "Test". Set up a new sync task that only syncs Psion Contacts with Organizer Contacts in this new file. If things now work correctly, it's probably a sign of a corrupted Organizer file that's too corrupted to be repaired by the compact routine. If this proves to be the case, write back and we can go through some additional steps to fix the file.

[mcampos]

Jim:

Thank you for all your help. The compacting routine did not work, which shows that the file is corrupted.

In the meanwhile, what I had been doing was doing a global copy and paste of the Contact section to a new file which in turn was synched to Data. However, I spent a good two hours today trying to do the same thing to no avail, upon pasting the data on the new organizer file, organizer locks up.

Because of the above, I am now looking to you to try those other "measures" that you mentioned in your last posting. I have not tried pasting individual contact entries little by little into a new file, which may do the trick.

Once I have everything in a new Organizer file, Would it be sufficient to synch the old file with agenda (from the past 1.8 years) and then synch the psion with the blank calendar on Organizer? Would that do the trick? Would I lose the holidays that are reflected now in the file?

Thank you and best regards,

Manuel

[Jim Cooke]

Manuel,

The next step is to export each section from Organizer. You do this by going to File, Export. Choose ASCII Text as the file type and accept all defaults. Do this in turn for each section. e.g., Calendar, Contacts, etc. When they have all been exported, open a NEW Organizer file and import each exported section (File, Import) back into the appropriate tab in Organizer. Once you've done this, save the file under a new name. Compact the new file just to make sure that the compact operation succeeds. Exporting and importing each section will usually stip the corruption from the file. You usually won't lose any data or at most a record or two.

I would next set up a new Agenda file and delete any entries that are currently in Psion Contacts. Set up new sync tasks for the newly created Organizer file and let Organizer populate the Agenda and Contacts files through PsiWin. With any luck, this should give you a good sync and solve the problem.