ActiveSync partnership export? - General Topics

Hi
I reinstall my Windows very often. But ActiveSync is a pain in the ass in this category. Everytime I reinstall Windows I have to install Outlook, point it to my old outlook database file. Then I have to install ActiveSync. Then I connect my PDA and... well, I get the "setup new partnership" dialog. I click next a few times and then there's the long wait... (it synces everything and then removes the duplicates).
The downside is that if I remove something from calendar on my PDA (in the mean time of the reinstallation), or a task, it will get synced back (argh...!). But that's not everything. The sad part is, that if I edited some contacts (eg. updated a phone number) in the time between last sync and reinstallation it will get "downdated" back to the old one. (So if someone just gave me his updated mobile number, I will loose it and will have to ask him again - that happened to me more then once).
Is there any painless way to export a partnership from AS, so I can import it again after a reinstallation of Windows?
The best option would be to get Outlook+ActiveSync to "portable" format (like many apps nowadays). Since I do reinstall a lot, I keep all the apps in the portable format, so I don't have to install them each time I install the Windows again. Almost everything I use is "portable" - every reinstallation I just create some shoutcuts on my desktop and voila! - no more painful reinstalations. Unfortunatly that's not possible with Outlook (even it there is a portable version, is's uncompatibile with AS).
Thanks in advance for any kind of help in this matter.
Have a nice day,
NIXin

Related

Active sync synchronization feature...

Hi all
I`m pretty sure many ppl ran into this problem before me, so I hope someone will be kind and shed some light for me on this one
It seems to me that for some reason I cannot keep my contacts and other stuff on my Universal after deleting a AS relationship with my PC.
This is what I did:
Initially I sync my desktop PC to my Universal via active sync 4.5. (the synchronization includes: contacts, calendars, appointments, notes from outlook 2003)
So far so good the relationship created between the PC and the Uni fine and Now I have my contacts etc on my phone.
Now I decide I don`t wish to necessary break the relationship between the PC and the Uni, but I do not want to sync my contacts anymore.
On the AS i hit tools>options and try to remove the check from say the contacts. at that point AS welcomes me with this: "To proceed, AS must remove all Contacts on your PocketPC. Do you want to continue?" niiice.... so at this point if you say no nothing happens if you say yes guess what... all your synced contacts are gone... Now I want to keeeeeeeeeeep them.
If i try to delete the relationship from the AS, then next time I connect the Uni AS REMOVES everything that was used to set to sync without asking...[contacts,notes,calendar,tasks] I have to add that when you are deleting a relationship it does tell you that it will remove all this from the uni next time you connect it....
I tried this from my uni > active sync settings "delete" the PC from the list (aka remove the relationship) and it immediately removed all contacts etc..... even if i just try to stop the contacts from being syced with the PC it warns me that if I do this it`ll remove all contact from the uni..... ???
???
at this point I`m just sad about this because it`s not a bug certainly. Its just bad design IMO.
here are a few details about this show:
PC: MS Windows XP PRO SP2 with all updates as of now.
PPC: T-mobile MDA PRO running ROM:2.02.00 WWE -- thanks Jay...
AS: Active Sync 4.5.0 (build 5096)
Outlook: MS Outlook 2003 Standard with all the updates as of now.
Is that really possible that they actually thought this way of synchronization was a good idea???
I like to figure out a way that would allow me to keep all the data on the phone even after I deleted the AS synchronization relationship.
...going once....
Maybe not that many people got stuck with this then....
I`ll try a few things in the meantime....
WIZARD82. I have the same issue. Did you ever find a solution?
Wait a minute.. are you trying to let the PC be connected with ur Uni via AS but not sync anything? I tried doing that before... I think the trick is with Outlook since AS does not provide any other option. You have to like break the connection between AS and Outlook or something.. I'll play around it when I get home.
Edit:
Hey I got it... I tried it here at the office. Just delete the current relationship and create a new one without checking anything in the list of items to be sync'ed. You still get to keep all the data on both PC and PPC!
1. Make sure the PPC is unplugged.
2. On AS, go to File -> Delete Mobile Device and just say Yes to the question.. you won't lose anything (as far as I know since I still have all my contacts)
3. Plug in ur PPC.
4. Create a new relationship without checking any options on the list of items.
That's it! Hope this helps.

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!

[Q] Making life easier post-flash

I have a little question. My PIM databases are enormous (been growing since 1997 in fact!), and synching up after a flash is just so annoying.
The obvious alternative would be to use PIMbackup or similar to simply write those back after a flash. BUT! The problem is that since Activesync considers it a NEW device, once you sync, instead of realizing the PIM data is all there, it thinks that it's "foreign" data and you end up with double everything - double contacts, double meetings, and so on.
I am sure there's a reg entry somewhere that "remembers" the partnership with your computer, so that Activesync recognizes PIMbackup-restored data as your original PIM data.
In fact, if I use for instance SPB backup on a clean ROM, that's exactly what happens, Activesync/Outlook is sure it is exactly the same phone, and doesn't give me any duplicates.
I thought you might know what that would be? I am sure it is MORE than just the "Owner" settings in the registry.
I'd be grateful for any info you have.
Thanks and all the best!
Laz
You can back up active sync partnerships with the backup tool in sk tools. It's much more than just one reg entry, and it's totally worth it to backup/restore the AS partnerships. Over-writing pim.vol with a copy from your sd card is also a lot faster than syncing, although sometimes it doesn't take the first time (you need to soft reset after doing it).
I made my life a million times easier when i used google's free exchange server to sync my contacts, calender, and mail.
First thing i do whenever i flash a rom before restoring anything else, is go into activesync and establish the server. (use ssl, username is your email, address is m.google.com - only sync calendar, email, and contacts, nothing else).
Voila, all your contacts will be synced up. Takes me about 5 minutes and all of my contacts (complete with picture id's and every detail) are back on my phone. And as an added bonus, i can access my address book via http://contacts.google.com
From what i understand, there is even a way to save these settings to your XDA_UC folder on your storage card making it a part of the UC process (don't know if UC is built into FUZE roms, i upgraded to a Tilt2 a month ago, it wasn't the last time i was browsing the Fuze roms....)
But yeah, I found ActiveSync to my computer a total waste of time - duplicates are a PITA, data is lost, or in my case 2 years ago my phone was stolen - and activesync failed the last time i had synced my phone - loosing about 30% of the contacts I had gotten since my last sync!
Farmer Ted said:
You can back up active sync partnerships with the backup tool in sk tools. It's much more than just one reg entry, and it's totally worth it to backup/restore the AS partnerships. Over-writing pim.vol with a copy from your sd card is also a lot faster than syncing, although sometimes it doesn't take the first time (you need to soft reset after doing it).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hah! I knew there was a simple way to sort it out! Thanks Farmer Ted!

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