Convert Psion file into palm file

[kazbar]

Hi

I am trying to retrieve some data from my mother’s flash card from a Psion 5. She unfortunately closed the boot of her car onto the Psion, which unsurprisingly broke the screen!! The other problem is that the synchronization has been broken for a while. So I have bought a card reader and have downloaded the Psion converter. All is well until I get the following message “Unable to convert while it is password protected” I do know the password but how do you let the system know?

Thank you in advance for any assistance

Regards

Karl
:confused:

[MikeMcC]

PsiWin cannot convert password protected files. The password must first be removed and that can only be done in a Psion.

If you cannot get access to a Psion, you could install the 'emulator' in a PC and remove the password with that. Each of the ER5 SDKs (Software Development Kits) contains a copy of the emulator and the smallest download is the Java SDK

www.psionteklogix.com/teknet/pdk/netpad-pdk/epoc_downloads.htm (http://www.psionteklogix.com/teknet/pdk/netpad-pdk/epoc_downloads.htm)

[kazbar]

Brilliant thanks worked a treat!

She wants the contact details converted for/into her palm

The contact file has a CDB file extension.

How should I go about getting this on to her palm?

Thanks for your help so far

Karl:cool:

[MikeMcC]

If her 'contacts' are in the Contacts.cdb file then she has a Series 5mx and not a Series 5 "classic", which means you are actually in the wrong section, but it doesn't matter :)

Using the emulator, you can "print" the contacts to a plain text file, which lets you get the data out. I don't know how you can then get that data into a Palm. The normal procedure would be to 'sync' the Psion with Outlook in the PC and then 'sync' the Palm with Outlook. This option isn't available to you from the emulator.

There is a little application called "c2f" which writes the Contacts.cdb file to a standard comma or tab delimited text file which can be opened in Excel, but again it needs to be run in a proper Psion (I've just tried with the emulator and it doesn't work).

[Jim Cooke]

Sigh! I wish there was an easy way to convert a contacts file on the PC but there's not. There are two ways to do this. If you don't have very many contacts, you can export each one to a vCard file, which can be imported directly into Outlook or another desktop PIM that understands the vCard format.

Unfortunately, exporting all the contacts in vCard format will still only import the first contact into Outlook. A second option is to download Dawn at http://www.perfectdownloads.com/internet/e-mail-tools/dawn.htm#more . This will convert an entire vCard file to CSV or Outlook, as well as a number of other formats. The user interface isn't great and you need some knowledge of file formats but it will work.

Printing to file is your last choice. It will print a nice list of contacts but it's not in a format that can be understood by any database program. You can massage the data in Excel and finally end up with a CSV file that can be imported into Excel but it's more fun to stick forks in your eyes than go through this excercise. :)

[kazbar]

Thanks for your help

Got the file as a txt file in the end and used find replace to get rid of all the rubbish.

Emailed the resulting txt file to my parents and they can enter the data

You would think that with all the work arounds available that you would be able to convert the file for a palm.

Anyway

Thanks for all your help

Karl