N
Nick
Thanks for the responses on my last post (Perfectly Syncing Entourage
with a Palm Handheld - a Myth? - 29 Jul 2003). It seems I may have got
it working since then and can propose a way of getting the handheld
and Entourage to sync quite nicely. Rather than offer a step-by-step
‘foolproof' procedure I will describe how I got to the situation of it
functioning correctly and hope this will assist others who have
syncing problems. I acknowledge that some lucky people may have got it
working with little effort but I hope this is useful to those who
haven't.
When I first got my Palm I was hoping that syncing the handheld and
Entourage would be easy. I installed the Entourage conduit, placed the
handheld in its cradle, and pressed the Hotsync button.
Before I move on to what happened I just want to point out an error in
Microsoft's documentation on how to set-up the Palm and Entourage for
syncing. This is just to clear up any confusion people have when there
are told one thing and another happens and to make sure the right
files are in the right place. No 'unused conduits' folder is created.
You must create this folder yourself and move the unneeded conduits
into it. This should be obvious from their title and new generic icon.
The syncing procedure seemed to go well until I got to the
calendar/date book where I got the message saying: 'The connection
between your handheld computer and the desktop was lost. Some of your
data was NOT backed up. Please check your set-up and try again'. This
was referring to the problem of transferring certain dates from
Entourage to Palm. For some reason Palm doesn't like some events
created in Entourage and therefore the sync process fails on the
calendar/date book transfer. If you look at the technical support
article on Microsoft's website
<http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311125> about this problem it will
tell you to change any 'offending' dates to having no end date.
This, of course, is not a practical solution, especially since it is
difficult to tell which events are causing the problem and changing
every event from having 'no end date' will completely mess up your
calendar in Entourage. I am speculating that this problem is caused by
the handheld not liking Entourage's preset holidays (perhaps the 'auto
calculating' events which differ from year to year such as Easter).
However, there is a way round this which I will come to later and many
dates for where the 'no end date' radio button is selected have no
problems in transferring and syncing.
At this point I gave up with the idea of syncing my Palm and Entourage
and decided to use Entourage for emails and Palm Desktop for the rest.
To transfer the data to Palm Desktop I imported a text file from
Entourage. This needed a lot of tweaking but eventually things started
to look neat and tidy. The syncing worked find between Palm Desktop
and the handheld.
However, as time went on I realised I missed using Entourage and it's
integration with the rest of the MS Office. I therefore decided to
give the syncing another go. Since the data was nicely formatted on
the handheld I realised that if I overwrite all my Entourage data with
my handheld data this may solve any syncing problems. In effect it
would 'cleanse' the Entourage data so that no 'rouge' information
would be present to mess up the syncing procedure. This seemed to work
and the two were syncing everything properly. However, I needed to
tidy up whatever new data was placed in Entourage such as events,
duplicate address records and categories.
Here is how to tidy up the data. For the events, create each one in
the normal way either on the Palm or Entourage and don't worry about
the 'no end date' radio button being active. Don't import or use
Microsoft's holiday events files. Even though I haven't tried it I
feel it is safer to create them manually and many, for example
Christmas, you only need to do once. For address records, create them
as usual on both the Palm and on Entourage and add as much data as you
like on Entourage. For example with email addresses, although you run
out of fields for several of them on the handheld they are placed at
the end of the record anyway. The same goes for any secondary work or
home addresses depending on what address gets put in the address
fields on the handheld, as set in the Entourage Conduit options. For
duplicate address records on Entourage make sure you keep the one
which has come from the handheld (this is usually partially
incorrectly formatted and therefore needs correcting) and delete the
'correct' one which was originally on there. For the categories, as
long as you don't exceed 15 of them and they are identical on both the
handheld and Entourage you shouldn't experience any problems. Don't
forget the 15 character limit or they get cut off. Remember that (new)
categories themselves don't get transferred between Entourage and the
handheld and have to be matched manually. All this may seem time
consuming but if you correct each record as you use them it shouldn't
seem to take as long and you only need to tidy up your Entourage data
once.
My concluding advice would be to get all the data properly sorted out
on the handheld and then overwrite it with everything in Entourage
(thus 'cleansing' the Entourage data) especially (in my case anyway)
the calendar/date book events. Then sort out your data as normal in
Entourage (getting rid of any duplicate records - delete the old ones
and keep the Palm ones) making sure you add all calendar events
manually either on Entourage or Palm (don't use Microsoft's holiday
files). Don't forget the category limitations (e.g. 15 categories, 15
characters, create (new) ones on the Palm first, make sure they are
both identical on the handheld and Entourage). Print out a copy of
Microsoft's 'how to sync your Palm with Entourage'
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/office2001/using.aspx?pid
=usingoffice2001&type=howto&article=/mac/products/office/2001/entoura
ge/Palm/Synchronizing.xml> and follow the advice. Make sure you have
applied all the relevant latest updates and patches to Office, Palm
and Mac OS. Finally, if you're having start-up problems (in my case
conflict with other start-up items) turn off any automatic/start-up
syncing/Palm Desktop options and do all the syncing manually.
I'd also love to get my Palm to sync via the infrared port on my
Powerbook but that's another story
.
Hope you find this useful,
Nick
with a Palm Handheld - a Myth? - 29 Jul 2003). It seems I may have got
it working since then and can propose a way of getting the handheld
and Entourage to sync quite nicely. Rather than offer a step-by-step
‘foolproof' procedure I will describe how I got to the situation of it
functioning correctly and hope this will assist others who have
syncing problems. I acknowledge that some lucky people may have got it
working with little effort but I hope this is useful to those who
haven't.
When I first got my Palm I was hoping that syncing the handheld and
Entourage would be easy. I installed the Entourage conduit, placed the
handheld in its cradle, and pressed the Hotsync button.
Before I move on to what happened I just want to point out an error in
Microsoft's documentation on how to set-up the Palm and Entourage for
syncing. This is just to clear up any confusion people have when there
are told one thing and another happens and to make sure the right
files are in the right place. No 'unused conduits' folder is created.
You must create this folder yourself and move the unneeded conduits
into it. This should be obvious from their title and new generic icon.
The syncing procedure seemed to go well until I got to the
calendar/date book where I got the message saying: 'The connection
between your handheld computer and the desktop was lost. Some of your
data was NOT backed up. Please check your set-up and try again'. This
was referring to the problem of transferring certain dates from
Entourage to Palm. For some reason Palm doesn't like some events
created in Entourage and therefore the sync process fails on the
calendar/date book transfer. If you look at the technical support
article on Microsoft's website
<http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311125> about this problem it will
tell you to change any 'offending' dates to having no end date.
This, of course, is not a practical solution, especially since it is
difficult to tell which events are causing the problem and changing
every event from having 'no end date' will completely mess up your
calendar in Entourage. I am speculating that this problem is caused by
the handheld not liking Entourage's preset holidays (perhaps the 'auto
calculating' events which differ from year to year such as Easter).
However, there is a way round this which I will come to later and many
dates for where the 'no end date' radio button is selected have no
problems in transferring and syncing.
At this point I gave up with the idea of syncing my Palm and Entourage
and decided to use Entourage for emails and Palm Desktop for the rest.
To transfer the data to Palm Desktop I imported a text file from
Entourage. This needed a lot of tweaking but eventually things started
to look neat and tidy. The syncing worked find between Palm Desktop
and the handheld.
However, as time went on I realised I missed using Entourage and it's
integration with the rest of the MS Office. I therefore decided to
give the syncing another go. Since the data was nicely formatted on
the handheld I realised that if I overwrite all my Entourage data with
my handheld data this may solve any syncing problems. In effect it
would 'cleanse' the Entourage data so that no 'rouge' information
would be present to mess up the syncing procedure. This seemed to work
and the two were syncing everything properly. However, I needed to
tidy up whatever new data was placed in Entourage such as events,
duplicate address records and categories.
Here is how to tidy up the data. For the events, create each one in
the normal way either on the Palm or Entourage and don't worry about
the 'no end date' radio button being active. Don't import or use
Microsoft's holiday events files. Even though I haven't tried it I
feel it is safer to create them manually and many, for example
Christmas, you only need to do once. For address records, create them
as usual on both the Palm and on Entourage and add as much data as you
like on Entourage. For example with email addresses, although you run
out of fields for several of them on the handheld they are placed at
the end of the record anyway. The same goes for any secondary work or
home addresses depending on what address gets put in the address
fields on the handheld, as set in the Entourage Conduit options. For
duplicate address records on Entourage make sure you keep the one
which has come from the handheld (this is usually partially
incorrectly formatted and therefore needs correcting) and delete the
'correct' one which was originally on there. For the categories, as
long as you don't exceed 15 of them and they are identical on both the
handheld and Entourage you shouldn't experience any problems. Don't
forget the 15 character limit or they get cut off. Remember that (new)
categories themselves don't get transferred between Entourage and the
handheld and have to be matched manually. All this may seem time
consuming but if you correct each record as you use them it shouldn't
seem to take as long and you only need to tidy up your Entourage data
once.
My concluding advice would be to get all the data properly sorted out
on the handheld and then overwrite it with everything in Entourage
(thus 'cleansing' the Entourage data) especially (in my case anyway)
the calendar/date book events. Then sort out your data as normal in
Entourage (getting rid of any duplicate records - delete the old ones
and keep the Palm ones) making sure you add all calendar events
manually either on Entourage or Palm (don't use Microsoft's holiday
files). Don't forget the category limitations (e.g. 15 categories, 15
characters, create (new) ones on the Palm first, make sure they are
both identical on the handheld and Entourage). Print out a copy of
Microsoft's 'how to sync your Palm with Entourage'
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/office2001/using.aspx?pid
=usingoffice2001&type=howto&article=/mac/products/office/2001/entoura
ge/Palm/Synchronizing.xml> and follow the advice. Make sure you have
applied all the relevant latest updates and patches to Office, Palm
and Mac OS. Finally, if you're having start-up problems (in my case
conflict with other start-up items) turn off any automatic/start-up
syncing/Palm Desktop options and do all the syncing manually.
I'd also love to get my Palm to sync via the infrared port on my
Powerbook but that's another story
.Hope you find this useful,
Nick