Database Info

Duplicates EVERYTHING

Hi All
My universal and outlook seen to have duplicated everything at least twice.
I have searched the threads and come to the conclusion it is another M$ error, but can anyone please recommend a util (preferably free) to search through outlook or the phone and remove the duplicates?
Thanking you in anticipation
Lee

Unless I'm missing something here, wouldn't it be just as easy to go into Outlook on your desktop and remove the duplicates?? Then, sync the phone again??

and in case it's not duplicated there set activesync to "make my device to match outlook" mode

Hi
Quick replies
Yes it would be easy, but there are hundreds of entries.
And unfortunately the dupes are on both outlook and my universal
Still searching google for a solution

I've had this problem also, my contacts are duplicated 3 timesa and it's hard to delete it. still looking for a solution.

i had that problem before. and i know where it came from. i had yahoo go installed and i had goosync both syncing with outlook. all that syncing messed everything up.

Here is a solution - let the phone sync, and make sure that it's properly synced (not kidding). Then get a tool Anti-Dupe from w*w.anti-dupe.com
It's a desktop tool for removing duplicate entries (TODO, calendar, contacts, memo). Well it's for free, so don't expect too much. It just does it's job.
P.S.: Make sure you let it remove the duplicates one by one (ie first Contacts, then Tasks) and not everything at once. After it's done, the phone will sync and voila
Works for me almost every week (I sync 3 devices with Outlook - WM, PALM, Samsung).

A HUGE thank you

Does it work for you then?

are my contacts gone?

I was having trouble making outlook work. It just suddenly would not start up. All the typical advice, and a lot of nontypical advice, failed. Reinstalls failed. So, I have to move on and I proceed to sync up with a separate machine.. a laptop.
There are already 2 profiles that the phone is synced with, so it tells me I have to delete one. I delete both. They're just profiles, after all, and they don't actually work any more.
Now, all my contacts are gone. I've got a really bad feeling that I just told my phone to delete all my contacts.
I'm a programmer. If that's indeed what just happened, this is such astoundingly bad design that I'm pretty much ready to write off windows mobile as "crap"--especially given the fact that I did all this BECAUSE outlook randomly decided to stop working (the famous crash upon startup).
Is there anything, no matter how technical, I can do to get these contacts back?

I just looked at pim.vol in the phone root, and found some of the information in my contacts list, so it implies to me that it should still be there / recoverable. How can I make the phone / outlook / activesync sort this mess out?

hello i'm afaid i'm not much help. but i think i lost all my contacts as well! very very bad. i upgraded to outlook 2003. i deleted my sync settings and created a new relationship. i ran activesync. outlook/activesync deleated all my contacts!! i wanted my contacts to populate outlook...
i'm sick,
tom

malefactor said:
I just looked at pim.vol in the phone root, and found some of the information in my contacts list, so it implies to me that it should still be there / recoverable. How can I make the phone / outlook / activesync sort this mess out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reinstall the PIMbackup in your phone and restore the Pim.vol or transfer the pim.vol to a miniSD card and get a card reader and backup to your PC.hope it'll do the trick.Secondly,it's been reported that the outlook 2007 is having sync problems with contacts on wm6,install outlook 2003 and check if it works out.
Good luck

I'm able to restore the prior pim.vol, finally. But all the contacts are still gone. The microsoft user groups (and microsoft employees that post in there) are quite silent about this - I even tried posting there.
Meanwhile, I have tried every version of outlook I can find. Nothing will actually run on my machine. It's only when you experience something like this that you figure out just how amazingly bad Microsoftware is; I spent about 2 hours trying to make Outlook work, doing everything from erasing all profiles and contacts, re-implanting / re-registering DLLs, to invoking it in every kind of safe mode.. complete uninstall + reinstall..
No dice. Outlook crashes upon startup without a single word as to why. I EVEN TRIED debugging it with visual studio. I'm not a wintel programmer, but it looks to me like the software branched to a nonexistent address (opcodes were garbage).
It is pathetic that Outlook can crash for 50 different reasons with the same failure characteristics, and it holds the user in contempt.
I won't use software like that if I can avoid it. I hope the googlephone buries windows mobile.

How to send contacts etc.. from one device to another?

I have an Orbit and an Orbit 2. I figured it would let me sync one device's contacts, tasks, emails etc.. over bluetooth but how? Failing that, how the hell do I get contacts from one phone to the other?! It shouldn't be this hard (or me this stupid!)

sync with outlook or go to contacts and tabHold on a contact and pick Send contact->beam

Rudegar said:
sync with outlook
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not an ideal solution for most people though? As it happens I do have access to a decent Outlook setup at work. I've also tried the one at home using the demo that came with the unit. The problem is that I don't want to maintain the sync (especially at work), but Windows Mobile bizarrely insists on deleting all the contacts from the phone again when I delete the sync relationship.
Rudegar said:
or go to contacts and tabHold on a contact and pick Send contact->beam
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that kinda works with tasks because I can select them all at once. However 100+ contacts done one-at-a-time isn't my idea of fun. I can't believe this is so impossible to do device-to-device. Failing that just a way of getting them onto my PC and then sending them back to my new device without having to set up an ongoing sync relationship. I only want to do this one time, to get all the contacts from one device to the other!

I'm not sure what the problem is here.
It seems to me that you would use ActiveSync to set up a relationship with the computer and Phone A (the one with the data already), initially copying all the information from the device to the computer. You would then have the info all in Outlook on the computer.
Then set up a relationship with Phone B and copy the info from the computer to the device. Then delete ActiveSync from the computer and beam further changes individually as required.
Which part of this doesn't work?

andyturner said:
I have an Orbit and an Orbit 2. I figured it would let me sync one device's contacts, tasks, emails etc.. over bluetooth but how? Failing that, how the hell do I get contacts from one phone to the other?! It shouldn't be this hard (or me this stupid!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got to this link: http://www.jetwaremobile.com/
You can download a 15 day trial of their software. Their software has a phonebook option which allows you to send the entire contacts list via bluetooth to linked devices.

Ka Honu said:
Then set up a relationship with Phone B and copy the info from the computer to the device. Then delete ActiveSync from the computer and beam further changes individually as required.
Which part of this doesn't work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deleting the sync relationship seems to insist on the data that the relationship created being purged. So I had a situation where the data was on my new phone but once the sync relationship was removed, WM insisted on removing all the contacts that had been created using that sync too - which is absolutely braindead. At the minute I'm in a scenario where I've lost all the contacts from *both* phones, *and* Outlook and I'm very upset! Currently trying to recover from deleted items in Exchange...

Sorted, sort of
OK, I recovered my contacts from the Exchange server after an hour of being rather annoyed... And thanks to a plug in which allows multiple contacts to be selected and beamed to another device (http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-ppccontactsmgr-v1-6.html), I managed to get them sent to the new device. I just can't believe a modern WM device isn't capable of sending all contacts from one device to another out-of-the-box. Surely it shouldn't require an PC with an installation of Outlook to achieve what ought to be a reasonably trivial task when moving to a new device?

I hate to say it but you did buy a wm device! I have just reinstalled XP as Vista was ****! XP will soon be redundant and as far as I am concerned so will windows. We all bought into that company.....I agree entirely without outlook we are stuck. It is the one peice of software I buy happily, the rest are being ditched as they run to the end of there technological hold.
Will

I wrote a post few days ago about my impressions with HTC Cruise and Windows. Overall I have no complains, but your "adventure" is the essence of that post. Good hardware, OS with potential, put them together and overall good, but not super.
These are simple things Microsoft should have gotten right from the beginning. Rather than building a system with a "start menu", trying to immitate Desktop Windows, Microsoft should have been brave enough to build an appropriate PDA + Phone OS...
I am not a big fun of overloading the mobile with eye-candy applications, but for example SPB did a nice job with their mobile shell series, big accessible icons, easy access to common functions, configurable and so on. Why Microsoft fails to get it straight is quite disappointing.
Anyway, I am glad you sorted this out, I am downloading that plugin as well, I am sure it will be handy at some point! (Thanks for finding this!)

SOLVED. How to sync contacts from your Nokia phone to your HTC Windows Mobile phone?

Hello,
I had a Nokia 6620 and I synced all the contacts with my laptop running Vista through Nokia PC Suite. I have a folder named "Contacts" in Vista now, which is also linked to the Windows Live Mail. Windows Live Mail is supposed to be the updated version of Outlook Express. When I opened Windows Mobile Device Center to sync all the contacts and calendar items to my HTC Fuze, the options to sync my contacts and calendar are disabled. Am I doing something wrong here? How do I sync all the data, which was stored on my Vista system by Nokia PC Suite, with my HTC Fuze, without opening a Windows account? Is there any other application I can use for this, other than Windows Mobile Device Center?
Thanks,
Keith

I am really stuck with all my contacts in Windows "Contacts" folder and not being able to sync them with my HTC Fuze. I would really appreciate if someone can point me in the right direction or help me out. Thanks.

Now I could be way off here so apologies if that is the case. I think WMDC only deals with Outlook (not Outlook Express). If that is the case then try importing your contacts into Outlook and then re-setting up your sync settings. That might help.
Another thing to consider is to go into Activesync on your device and then options. Look at what it thinks it is syncing. If contacts are already set to sync with something, then uncheck this and run the WMDC connections wizard again. You may find that this time you can select the contacts folder this time.
As I said, I could be way off as I am not a computer guru by any stretch of the imagination. All the best.

Sorry, 1 more thought. You may want to try and uninstal Nokia PC suite-it could be that WMDC sees the contacts being synced with Nokia PC suite and thus wont allow it to sync with your HTC. If you do unistall just remember to back up your contacts etc otherwise you could end up loosing them all. Not good me thinks!

Nokia Suite maintains its own database which is independent of Outlook's. Both can reside on the PC without conflict, however, the OP needs to have the data (Contatcs/Tasks/Notes/Cal, etc) in Outlook to sync to WM devices.

@incisivekeith
Easiest way to deal with this is:
Export out of the PC Suite to csv format (comma separated)
Import into Outlook
Sync with addressbook in outlook (combine records)
Sync with phone using active sync

Thank you everyone for your responses, but I have been struggling with another major issue here now. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was not able to select contacts and other data in Windows MObile Device Center, so I unstalled WMDC as well as the device driver update. I restarted my system and when I installed both the WMDC driver update and WMDC istself, my system doesn't recognize my Fuze anymore. Not only that, I don't have many options in WMDC now, and, the WMDC window doesn't open most of the times. I have tried uninstalling both of them again, installing their versions from Microsoft's Web site, but to no avail. So now, I have the following problems:
1. I don't have functioning WMDC
2. When I connect my Fuze, it is not recognized, although the system makes a sound that there is something connected on the USB port
3. Vista has Windows Mail, not Outlook or Outlook Express
In response to suggestions about Activesync, I just learned that Activesync is installable only on XP, not Vista. I have been struggling with these issues since today morning. This shouldn't be this difficult, after all.
I will try connecting my Nokia 6620 to my system and try to export the contacts to csv format. When I opened Nokia PC Suite without connecting my Nokia phone, the contacts list showed empty on the Suite, maybe because it doesn't store them on the system, and pulls them out only from the phone? I will find that out too.
If someone can, please let me know how to unistall WMDC properly and reinstall it so that it functions the way it did the first time. Are there any other free software to accomplish this? All the help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Connect Fuze to WMDC
Start - Settings - Connections - USB to PC
If the "Enable adv..." is checked, uncheck or vice versa

tyguy said:
Start - Settings - Connections - USB to PC
If the "Enable adv..." is checked, uncheck or vice versa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that somehow helped, I am not sure how, but it did. When I cheched that option off, it again recognized my Fuze as a new device and installed the driver and WMDC, which works fine now, but still doesn't allow me to select contacts, calendar items, etc.
I followed a method here: http://manish.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/importing-contacts-to-windows-mobile-without-ms-outlook/
That method imported all data, with all contacts named "Unknown" and missing the details (phone numbers, address, etc.) of most of the contacts. So, I installed Outlook 2007 and tried to import the csv file in Outlook, but it gave me an error saying its translator was not able to read the csv file (the clipping of the error is attached). I have the following questions now:
1. How do I overcome the importing error
2. How do I sync contacts from Nokia phone directly into Outlook instead of Windows Mail, so that I can have the contacts in Outlook and then, I can just sync Outlook and Fuze.
3. Or, is there a way to have the contacts synced between Windows Mail and Outlook?
Again, thanks for all the help.

@incisivekeith
Haven't had a Nokia for some time but AFAIK the latest PhoneSuite allows you a full sync with outlook.
CSV can be tricky because it may fail at custom fields. Check the CSV file using Excel if you have all headers.
Worst case - take a deep breath and read what google has to say ...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...k&btnG=Google+Search&aq=1&oq=import+csv+file+

OP, do you have OL installed? Otherwise, get OL and setup your Nokia PC Suite to sync with OL, then you can bring your contact & calendar from the Nokia into OL, then sync to your WM device thereafter. If you are not going to have OL soon, then dump your Nokia contacts onto the SIM and drop the SIM into the WM, but you still need to find a way to "scrub" the data.

Almost the same reply but putting the contacts on the SIM usually truncates add info like long names and multi phone entries. Through outlook would be the best and easiest way IMO.

tyguy said:
Almost the same reply but putting the contacts on the SIM usually truncates add info like long names and multi phone entries. Through outlook would be the best and easiest way IMO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, hence the "scrub" I threw that in b/c it appears the OP doesn't have OL readily available.

PHEW , finally!! It took me the whole day to just figure this out, and now I am thinking why I didn't think about this earlier. But I know why, probably because I didn't want to install Outlook just for the purpose of syncing. Anyway, tyguy, you were right that there should be/was a provision in Nokia PC Suite to sync that contacts with Outlook. I had checked all the settings, but I was checking the settings with Windows Mail chosen, I could find that I could choose Outlook only when I decided to create new settings. I synced Nokia phone to Outlook and then Outlook to my Fuze. Almost all the contacts and calendar items are as they are on my Nokia phone, so I am extremely happy. Some of the contacts, very few, are missing the phone numbers, but I can do that manually for that less a number of contacts. Thank you everyone for helping me out. I really appreciate it.

I remember I had to do a lot of work to solve this, and now I want my E90 back, cause all issues of this bad phone. It is not "safe": does not always ring the alarm, appointments gestion is very very bad, contacts sucks.
I have now the trial version of outlook, now it is over on 31/01 and I have no idea hot to do. I can' t syncronize anymore cause I will not pay for Outlook.
The reality is: wm sucks, i' m waiting for android.
PS: I saved contacts then copied one by one in outlook.
(forgive my english)
alessio

incisivekeith said:
PHEW , finally!! It took me whole day to just figure this out, and now I am thinking why I didn't think about this earlier. But I know why, probably because I didn't want to install Outlook just for the purpose of syncing. Anyway, tyguy, you were right that there should be/was a provision in Nokia PC Suite to sync that contacts with Outlook. I had checked all the settings, but I was checking the settings with Windows Mail chosen, I could find that I could choose Outlook only when I decided to create new settings. I synced Nokia phone to Outlook and then Outlook to my Fuze. Almost all the contacts and calendar items are as they are on my Nokia phone, so I am extremely happy. Some of the contacts, very few, are missing the phone numbers, but I can do that manually for that less a number of contacts. Thank you everyone for helping me out. I really appreciate it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And well, WM contacts only support 1 mobile number. Lots of contacts i have to register twice! It sucks!

sync w/ new laptop,,, contacts gone!

Hello all,
My hard drive crashed on my old laptop. I bought a new one but haven't installed MS Office. I set up the sync connection to tether and now most of my contacts and calendar are gone.
What could have happened?
Any way to retrieve them?

I have been reading around on the net for a few hours and this looks to be a very common problem after switching computers and setting up a new partnership. It also looks like if you dont use an exchange server and do not have outlook installed on the desktop to catche deleted items then you are out of luck.
I cant believe WMDC is suppose to act this way! It says you have to delete a partnership and since your other PC is gone you delete the partnership. You expect that the device will populate outlook on the desktop or if outlook is not on the desktop then nothing will be touched.
But NO,,, microsoft is set up to delete all your precious data from your phone without warning!!!
THANKS microsoft!!!