synchronizing 5mx to Outlook

[barrym]

When I sychronize my MX5 Contacts to Outlook (in Win 98 & PSIWIN 2.3.3) after making some changes in the Psion Contacts, the changes don't always show up in the Outlook program. Shouldn't everything new or changed in the Psion get added to or changed in the PC's Outlook program? If so, does anyone have a suggestion on how to do it? I too am very disappointed in Psion for going out of the PDA business as there is no question that they made the best devises ever and now everything else I look at is inferior except for the new color screens. Why hasn't a bigger company licensed Psions basic technology and come out with an improved PDA so us old time users can trade up and keep working with the finest machines instead of having to regress? Thanks very much. Barry Mason

[PlutoPants]

Hi Barry,
So many people on this forum echo your sentiments about Psion. There is some hope (POS rumoured to be producing an updated machine, the Symbian Netbook Petition etc) but lots of us feel let down as we have no clear upgrade path.
Abandoned we perhaps have some right to feel, as it is our past purchasing of Psion products that has fuelled where they are now. However, in this world of balances, they obviously have taken the decision to focus upon the sector that can be more profitable. I guess the largest change is the fact that when Psion abandoned the consummer handheld market, there was en enormous amount of new competition, which wasn't so strong when they started out, having arguably invented the handheld PDA/ computer themselves.

One thing that doesn't seem to change though is the old synching with Outlook. If you do a search for 'outlook' in this forum, you will find an enormous number of similar situations to yours. I won't repeat the advice given therein, but it is worth reading.
I used Outlook97 and Windows98 for a long time with my Psion. However, once I had moved out of an office environment, I found that the only editing of calendars I did could be on the Psion. I eventually realised that I had no reason to synch with Outlook at all - just for backup purposes.

This was after many times scrubbing the out of date agenda/ calendar on one machine completely and doing a complete synch from fresh. Indeed, I reverted back to PsiWin2.1 eventually because of frustrations with certain things and on my setup, it seemed a bit more stable. (PsiWin2.3.3 is still acknowledged to be better than its predecessor, which caused all sorts of problems).
I always found that backups were useful here, as data sometimes gets corrupted. Ever since I confined myself to making changes ONLY on the Psion and synching, the problem hardly recurred.

I guess you could also use the EPOCSDK Emulator to open and edit your Agend files copied onto your PC. Desoite just being released by Psion Teklogik as a developers tool, it's free, but many of us use it as an effective Agenda & contacts utility on a PC and no file conversion or synching are needed - just copy your Agenda file between the 2 platforms via PsiWin (any version manages this)

Just some thoughts - remember the Search feature on this site, it's invaluable for finding out further information and probably getting better explanations than the drivel I've been writing to you ;0)

Rest assured - You are not alone.
George :D

[Jim Cooke]

Barry,

When you syncronize, do you have the Agenda and Contacts as part of one sync task? If so, the first thing to do seperate them into two tasks. There are two reasons for this. The fist is that changes to the Agenda tend to be much more frequent than changes to Contacts so you can sync faster if you know you haven't made any changes to your contacts. The second reason is that it's easier to troubleshoot problems like you're experiencing with single sync tasks.

Contacts seems to be the most problematical of the zpsiWin components. My experience is that trouble starts when you make a change to the same contact on both your 5mx and PC. PsiWin is generally, but not always, able to resolve both changes. It will sometimes report if it's unable to resolve the changes but sometimes it hust goes on its merry way and then subsequent syncs start getting balled up on other contacts as well.

There are two things to do. The first is to empty oput either the Contacts in the 5mx or in Outlook, using the one that's the most current to sync to the empty Contacts folder in Outlook or the Contacts app on the 5mx. This resets the sync data should bring everything across. Just remember that a contact in Outlook can much more data that in the 5mx Contacts app so, unless your Outlook contacts are far out of date, it's usually better to sync Outlook Contacts to an empty Contacts app on the 5mx than the other way round. As usual, do a backup of both Outlook and your Psion first in case something goes pear shaped.

The second bit of advice is to never change data in the same record on both your Psion and Outlook between syncs. PsiWin's weakest area is its ability to resolve changes made on both platforms to the same record. This is almost always the cause of things like duplicated appointments and duplicated contacts.

[barrym]

Thanks very much for your suggestions. Prior to reading your answer a read another about downloading a contact synch update which I just did. I only synch the contacts program. I will try your suggestion of resynching with the Outlook program into the Psion, but how do I delete the contacts data in the Psion? Thanks for the help. Barry

[Jim Cooke]

Barry,

To delete the contents of the Contacts file, got to File, More, Delete all contacts. It will give you a warning - answer yes. Depending in the number of contacts you have, it may take several minutes to delete everthing so don't get impatient. When it's done, you'll have a nice empty Contacts file to work with.