Database Info

Anyone Know What's Going On With 4Smartphone.net?

From their homepage:
4SmartPhone is experiencing technical difficulties. This is causing inflated loads on some of the machines, as a result making our website unresponsive.
Our technical personnel are diligently working towards resolving this issue. Due to these issues, the 4SmartPhone website will be temporarily unavailable.
We are well aware of the situation and so we ask you to not send an email to support. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will keep all of you updated as often as we can.
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Click to collapse
Both the Outlook Web Service, the normal Exchange Service, and the Push Mail Service have all been unavailable for over 48 hours and I'm starting to wonder if they're going to be coming back at all.

AND --- this is the second time this has happened within 2 months.
Drat.
Dwimmerlaik said:
From their homepage:
Both the Outlook Web Service, the normal Exchange Service, and the Push Mail Service have all been unavailable for over 48 hours and I'm starting to wonder if they're going to be coming back at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I stupidly thought that my device was having problems so I removed the 4smarphone settings (which removed all my email/contacts/tasks/calendar entries from my PDA)... Got home and found out OWA and Outlook sync didn't work either. So I'm stuck!
This is pretty bad... they haven't answered my support email and the website notice - simply stating only the 'website' only is down - is highly unprofessional.
I wonder whether it has anything to do with their recent upgrade to Exchange 2007?

It looks like the service is back online as of 5:00 PM Pacific. I received the following in an email message:
Dear 4SmartPhone Customer,
Over the past two days we have experienced a rather serious crash on one of our Exchange Servers.
We are very sorry for any inconvenience this problem has caused you, but we are pleased to report that we have fixed the problem and taken all steps to ensure it will not happen again. Here are some things you will notice in the next few days:
1) Although it is now possible to connect to your mailbox again, it will only contain your new emails.
2) You can now send and receive emails.
3) Within the next few days, we will bring all original emails back on the Server.
4) Pro & Enterprise Clients can use their local copy in Offline Mode, and you must switch to connected mode to send & receive email. We will send a link to help you understand in a following email.
5) In addition, we are taking the following steps concerning the current Exchange 2003 servers: 4SmartPhone is rolling out more reliable Exchange 2007 on a brand new architecture; The fact that Exchange 2007 is more robust and combined with the new architecture, any failure are less likely, simpler and faster to recover from should we have to.
4SmartPhone sincerely appreciates your business. To demontrate our appreciation, your patronage, patience and trust in our service, we would like to extend a free month's service to you. We will automatically add the free month onto your contract. If you have any additional questions, please email us at [email protected] ,
Thank you.
4SmartPhone IT staff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been able to access new mail in my mailbox since around 5:00 PM Pacific, but all of my old mail is missing (as they indicated in thier message). I suspect it'll get populated from backups over the next day or so.

Not only is all the old mail missing, EVERYTHING is missing, CONTACTS, CALENDAR, MAIL.
EVERYTHING!

Anyone got there data back already? I still haven't and I am starting to get worried.

I haven't either.
If you access your accout via Outlook, then you probably already have a backup of your data in your OST file (file used by Outlook to store a local "cached" copy of your mailbox). I've been considering just exporting all of the data from my OST file into a PST file and then importing it into the new mailbox; however, I'm concerned that doing so may complicate the data migration 4Smartphone already has planned since the current mailbox is really only a "temporary" one.
Any Exchange experts want to comment??

Oh my gosh that sound horrible! 48 hours plus down! I have given 4smartphone.net a couple of trials in the past but always ended up going with other services, mainly due to the lack of a control panel with some extra user settings at 4smartphone.
Thank goodness I did not sign up!
Although I have used a fair few Exchange services I am definitely not an expert. This is critical stuff and I would not want to give incorrect advice. But to attempt a little reassurance, 4smartphone state in their FAQ that they run a full real-time "mirror" back-up of all data, plus an additional daily tape backup for long term protection.
It is almost certain that ALL data will be restored to your accounts, but they are a big company and with a lot of data. If they were down for 2 days this could take several more (at least) to fix and fully restore everything.
Also, most email servers keep attempting delivery for about 2 days, so messages that could not get through should still arrive... hopefully. Worst case they will bounce back to the sender with a message saying they couldn't be delivered so people know there was a outage and will hopefully resend.
Once you have data back I would suggest looking at other services... and I would try and pick one that specifies they have co-location if possible i.e Datacenter 1 is in Phoenix, Datacenter 2 mirrors everything in Norway or where ever.
I have used 1 and 1. I would not call them "good" and customer support is extremely weak. But they do have servers in the US, the UK and Germany. It would be quite hard for them to lose all their systems as they are just so huge. But I am sure there are much better services. I guess another reason I might pick 1 and 1 over 4smartphone is 1 and 1 let you have Outlook right away and it doesn't interfere with your right to cancel if you are dissatisfied. They also bill in just 3 month blocks. 4smartphone make you pay for the full year before you get Outlook. Many handhelds still only come with Outlook 2002 so many people really need at least the 03 version or it is not possible to check out the account properly (You have to have 03 at least to fully use the features of Exchange)
Take this is a reminder to have your own independent back up stategies. For example, I do not have my various domains registered with the same companies that do my hosting... I have an account with a domain reg company seperately. That way, if the hosting crashes, I can quickly set up another account elsewhere and point my DNS records at the new nameservers.
I also do not use Exhange as my primary account. My email accounts are hosted elsewhere and forward to Exchange for Direct Push. So I just have it for Push and as an archive. I have everything on my PC too.
Actually, I go one step further, I don't actually use Outlook for email (other than Push. It is probably a great email client at this point, but it has not always had a stellar history. I prefer Thunderbird. That's just me.
I also always retain offline data on my local PC and back it up every day or so (if only by dragging a copy of outlook.ost to another folder and dating it).
I also use a back up program on my handheld and use it daily.
If my Exchange hosting crashed with a total loss, all I would lose is the ability to use direct push temporarily. I would not lose a grain of data.
End of the day, there is only one person who really truly cares about your data and can take charge of protecting it.. YOU! Don't leave that solely to anyone else!
Sound like hell. Sympathies to all involved. Hope it is fully resolved very soon.
Edit: Here is the link to the list of MS Hosted Exchange Partners on their website. Might be useful to anyone considering looking at other providers:
http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/catalog.aspx

Thanks for you detailed answer.
Actually, I DO have a backup. A REAL backup, not just the OST file. The last few days will be missing tho. I guess I will survive.
4smartphone ain't half bad WHEN it works. And even this crash would not have been so bad, if they just had kept us informed. They have not responded to 3 mails I sent. I understand they will have been inundated with mail, but then they should just post some kind of LATEST NEWS or UPDATE or whatever on their site.
Anyway, they just sent me a mail stating that all data WILL be restored, but that it could take another 48 hours.
Thanks again.
flamingcrumb said:
It is almost certain that ALL data will be restored to your accounts, but they are a big company and with a lot of data. If they were down for 2 days this could take several more (at least) to fix and fully restore everything.
---
Take this is a reminder to have your own independent back up stategies. For example, I do not have my various domains registered with the same companies that do my hosting... I have an account with a domain reg company seperately. That way, if the hosting crashes, I can quickly set up another account elsewhere and point my DNS records at the new nameservers.
I also do not use Exhange as my primary account. My email accounts are hosted elsewhere and forward to Exchange for Direct Push. So I just have it for Push and as an archive. I have everything on my PC too.
I also always retain offline data on my local PC and back it up every day or so (if only by dragging a copy of outlook.ost to another folder and dating it).
I also use a back up program on my handheld and use it daily.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Mail2web also down!?!?!
Last night mail2web was also down. I had experienced huge delays (of hours!!!) and some message skipping.
Something weird is going on in the mail service providers kingdom!

mail2web down as well??!! That is freaky. Is this a 2007 upgrade induced horror that is going to bite us all? Hopefully I am just being paranoid (I do tend to be!).
nispen, I do apologize if it sounded like I was wagging my finger like you didn't know to back up your stuff! Of course you do - and that wasn't what I meant. I was sincerely symphathesing and that was about the only half-constructive thing I could throw in
I completely agree that communication from the company is key. ANY service, can have a crisis, no matter how good their continency plans. If they do a really good job keeping customers in the loop when it happens it could even leave me feeling positive about them. It would be more like, "wow this is bad, but these guys do care and I can see they are really breaking a sweat to fix this and it makes me trust them to resolve a crisis... which will inevitably happen to every company sometime".
But the generic "sorry for any inconvenience " notices would tick me off. I would want to hear regular updates with more specifics. Wouldn't even matter if I didn't understand the tech jargon involved. I just want to know that hour by hour they know what they are doing and are making specific progress.
Good to hear your data is going come back. Best of luck

No worries, no fingerwagging detected!
flamingcrumb said:
nispen, I do apologize if it sounded like I was wagging my finger like you didn't know to back up your stuff! Of course you do - and that wasn't what I meant. I was sincerely symphathesing and that was about the only half-constructive thing I could throw in
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

mail2web has been down since last Thur, and the outage continues, just got a reply from [email protected] saying they are still "trying" to fix the problem. So if 4smartphone is down and mail2web is down at around the same time, may be both of them have upgraded to MS Exchange 2007 at around the same time. If so, that say so much about Ex 2007 and WM5 push email, it is far from a mature and stable product.
Blackberry then has nothing to fear for the rest of this year.
For the non-Blackberry folks, IMAP IDLE is the way to go, it is fast and reliable, and almost free.
And for the less time discerning/sensitive folks, POP is the way to go. Just set the auto retrieval to every 5 min or 10 min.

Mail2web/4Smartphone vs. Blackberry vs. Idle vs...
I am also here strugling with mail2web. After my subscription, the first two weeks were ok, but then last week (or maybe in the end of the week before) it all started to fail.
The service is intermitent now. And delays of up to 3 hours are common.
I've used BB Connect but could not make it work in WM6 roms (I now there is a how-to-hack available, but I could not handle it alright). Also, I do not like much that BB Connect steals my GPRS connection and that whenever I want to use other network applications I have to disconnect from blackberry.net APN and connect to my operators'.
So I prefer to make a redirection of my work emails to another account.
That account could be an IMAP idle capable I have, but the problem is that poutlook does not handle idle and I didn't like much to have poutlook AND another client such as the good flexmail (which is a complete but also heavy app).
So I am now stuck here with not many options, except hoping that mail2web staff manages to overcome the difficulties they currently have. If the service works alright, I believe I would certainly upgrade my free subscription and begin using only mail2web as my 2nd email address...

Some very valid points being raised here which are worthy of more discussion. May I suggest we maybe think about breaking this up into separate threads though for clarity? This thread is essentially an immediate check in as to which Exchange servers are giving people grief (and it sounds like a rough ride, many sympathies to those affected).
Blackberry does seem robust, but I am not clear about it's full capabilties when used on WM devices. Be gr8 to discuss it more so I can learn!
Exchange has has some very powerful features (if it is working) but there is just as much I dislike about it! Only being able to send from one email address and frequent false positives for Spam when it's mail is received by some Linux based mail servers are among my gripes!
IMAP IDLE is cool. My experience is limited to vgsmail/ppc and Webis Flexmail. vgsmail is still sold I believe but not longer developed and I have found it very incomapatible with my more recent devices. I also bought Flexmail but found it very buggy at the time. To be fair it is being actively developed still further and supported and is sure to get better - may have done so already. I have also found that there seems to be slightly different deployments of IMAP IDLE and not all servers appear to give equal results... that is all way beyond my technical grasp though.
Then again there are also Exchange alternatives (not sure how they do on push) like - I might have these names wrong, Zimbra, Open X-change (or something like that. Plus there is SyncML and Funambol ( I know I have that spelled wrong.. someone please help me!).
What do you good people think! Should we maybe split this into threads (or even make use of existing ones and share the links around so we all know where to look?). I would really like to be able to review the options, but it would also be good to keep this forum fasirly organized and readable!

Exchange email - lookup contacts from corporate address book?

Is it possible to look up contacts from the GAL with the email client?
Thanks

moosic said:
Is it possible to look up contacts from the GAL with the email client?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe this thread could be about all Exchange issues / tips ?
Would be cool.
I don't have answers to the OP here just some points:
1. I read either on here or another forum that your customized folders in Exchange did not show up on Captivate. Can anyone deny / confirm?
2. I don't see why contact GAL lookup won't work, it worked on my Aria. But then again also my Exchange customized folders showed up just fine on Aria.
3. Dialing from Calendar entry on Captivate no worky? Really? Sounds unlikely but can anyone confirm / deny?

You are able to do lookups within the email client on the gal. Simply press the search button, this will take you to a lookup field.
My folders all synced with my exchange account. Its more like a fake sync.it pulls when selected.
I have not been able to lookup phonenumbers through the gal.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

The default email client leaves a lot to be desired when dealing with Exchange support. Yes, you can have customized folder but navigate them isn't that easy. For example, I have more than a dozen folders under my inbox folder, they all showed up as tabs along side the Inbox. There is no way to configure which folder to sync and which doesn't.
The calendar also showed my meetings wrong. I have a few repeating events with a few exceptions, e.g. I delete a few meetings in certain weeks. After sync, the calendar on my phone ignores all those exceptions/deleted meetings.
I'm going to investigate other Exchange support apps. The stock app really stinks.

bwolmarans said:
Maybe this thread could be about all Exchange issues / tips ?
Would be cool.
I don't have answers to the OP here just some points:
1. I read either on here or another forum that your customized folders in Exchange did not show up on Captivate. Can anyone deny / confirm?
Customized folders do show up, along the top bar of the main email client window. Swipe or tap to change folders.
2. I don't see why contact GAL lookup won't work, it worked on my Aria. But then again also my Exchange customized folders showed up just fine on Aria.
Compose or reply to an email. Below the TO and CC fields are four buttons. One is SEARCH. That does a GAL lookup.
3. Dialing from Calendar entry on Captivate no worky? Really? Sounds unlikely but can anyone confirm / deny?
Works just fine for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some other tips.
Make messages easier to read and MUCH easier on the battery by going to Menu/Display Mode and picking "Positive Mode". Wish Gmail would do this too, white background is not AMOLED friendly at all (uses MORE power than an LCD would use).
Check your signature...you may or may not want to advertise you're "using an i897 on AT&T 3G Network". Account Settings/Signature.
Check message size, it's probably set too low by default, unless you're really trying to conserve a few kb of data. Advanced Settings/Email Size.

What format are your telephone numbers in your calendar?
888 123-4567
8881234567
Don't work for me. They are in the body of the calendar entry.

Rizz67 said:
I have not been able to lookup phonenumbers through the gal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not been able to lookup people by phone number (useful when you get a call from your office that you don't recognize the number) since I got rid of the first gen blackberry I had many years ago.
And that's including a year that I had the tilt (A Windows phone you'd think they could make their own stuff work together.) And I still can't with the Aria I have now (until next week Wed. when my Captivate arrives, and then I won't be able to with my Captivate. )
Sad that Exchange integration was better with the blackberry 6 years ago than it is with today's latest Android devices.

sadly the gal search only provides me the email address, not the phone number or any other gal information. Or does it for you? Am I doing it wrong?
It must be that somebody at Android and or Samsung owns stock in Touchdown / Nitro ???

It's probably due to the limitation of Exchange ActiveSync protocol.
P.S. dialing from calendar doesn't work for me either when the phone number is in event body.

foxbat121 said:
It's probably due to the limitation of Exchange ActiveSync protocol.
P.S. dialing from calendar doesn't work for me either when the phone number is in event body.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The GAL lookup fubar is not the EAS protocol. It works on other platforms just fine. I think it is a Samsung issue - i will test later on my Moto phone and see what they return in a GAL lookup.
As for calendar dialing - I want to see some proof of someone doing this with an Exchange entry. I have tried new entries in Exchange and Google with a phone number in body and location - nothing works. URLs don't work either.
The entire calendar entry is treated as an unelectable blob.

alphadog00 said:
The GAL lookup fubar is not the EAS protocol. It works on other platforms just fine. I think it is a Samsung issue - i will test later on my Moto phone and see what they return in a GAL lookup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't remember if it works in WM or not (never tried even though I've been using WM exclusively in the past). But according to posts above by bwolmarans, it didn't work for his Tilt either. Remember BlackBerry doesn't use EAS at all. You need to setup BES server in order to communicate between Exchanger server and BB.

foxbat121 said:
I don't remember if it works in WM or not (never tried even though I've been using WM exclusively in the past). But according to posts above by bwolmarans, it didn't work for his Tilt either. Remember BlackBerry doesn't use EAS at all. You need to setup BES server in order to communicate between Exchanger server and BB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It works fine on iPhone - they licensed EAS, and I am pretty sure it worked on my WinMo phone. I have another Android 2.1 phone I want to try it on.

As further information, I could not get my GAL to work in the stock email client. After reading another forum thread, I installed "Swift Contacts" from the market. This unlocked the GAL functionality in the stock client as well.

[Q] Nuevasync not free anymore

Hi friends,
today is a very sad day!
I just received a mail that anounced "New Services" on nuevasync.com.
http://blog.nuevasync.com/blog/nuevasync/entry/new_services
http://www.nuevasync.com/nuevasync-personal.html
If you don't switch to the Basic 15$/yr / Premium 30$/yr Service it will stop syncing.
We have 5 days to switch to an alternative Service (web-based or installed Application).
Well i used nuevasync for syncing 9 GoogleCalendars and my Contacts to my TouchHD and everything works great.
Now I'm on a search for an alternative solution to get this job done.
I so far found ActiveGcSync. But I have to say it crashes pretty much, so it's no fun.
Do you have any other proposals?
kind regards
fwt

I'm in the same boat, just recently started using it again and was happy with it.
Not happy they have decided to stop being free (but that happens) and even worse only gave five days notice.
Not sure what to use instead... I'd pay $15 for life, but not each year.

anybody no of any alternatives, because I want to sync my contacts and multiple calendars to my windows mobile phone

The same here, I'm syncing contacts and 4 calendars at the moment. Any alternativies?

any word on alternatives?

I'm hoping this thread holds some hope:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=793683
Until then, I am using gmobilesync, doesn't do contacts but that's fine for me.

I'm currently working on an alternative service. I dont have too much time to work on it, but I have some great ideas. If anyone wants to help me, feel free to join!

xemiw said:
I'm currently working on an alternative service. I dont have too much time to work on it, but I have some great ideas. If anyone wants to help me, feel free to join!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got lots of ideas too, unfortunately no capability to go anything technical to assist!

Send me a PM and let me know what you need done. I can help with some things, others I can't. I'll let you know what I can do to assist you though.

I tried gmobilesync but it double all my events. I think I will stay with normal sync described: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138636&topic=14299
but I will need to copy events I need to have in phone to my main calendar :/

MusX said:
I tried gmobilesync but it double all my events. I think I will stay with normal sync described: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138636&topic=14299
but I will need to copy events I need to have in phone to my main calendar :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never experienced doubling up (touch wood), had you already synced up?
As my main calendar is used very little compared to our shared one, I'm not going down the copying route.

grayme said:
had you already synced up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes :/
there were also forecast and holidays copied to my main calendar while using it :/

Thank you for your help. I wrote a small exchange server which can synchronize my google calendar with my phone. It was easier than I thought. I dont know how much work it needs but I think I can publish it in 1-2 weeks. Meanwhile you can write your ideas here. If anyone could lend me a server for this, that would be awesome.

xemiw said:
Thank you for your help. I wrote a small exchange server which can synchronize my google calendar with my phone. It was easier than I thought. I dont know how much work it needs but I think I can publish it in 1-2 weeks. Meanwhile you can write your ideas here. If anyone could lend me a server for this, that would be awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, no programming capabilities, nor a server I can share.
However, some ideas:
- Ability to pick which calendars sync
- Ability to pick sync schedule (or always connected or only manually)
- Two way syncing (can't get gmobile syncing to go from WM to google), keeping to the correct calendar.
- Ability to pick one way syncing (either way required)
- Ability to pick the default calendar (for me, this is a shared family calendar, not my main google calendar).
- Ability to pick colours for each calendar (or take the same colours as set in google).
I may come up with other ideas, but that seems to be it for now. Personally I am not interested in syncing contacts or email. Contacts I want to keep separate from those I call and those I email, email works better on imap than activesync.

[Q] Is There An App For Pushing Global Contacts OTA?

Hello All,
I am relatively new to the Android Scene but I have been messing with my Epic, rooting it, running custom ROMs, and absolutely loving it! So I have decided that I want to move our entire company over to Android phones from WM6 phones.
One thing that I am looking for that I was never able to find for our WM devices was a way to pull a Company Phone Book out to our phones Automatically OTA.
We have about 140 lines on our cell phone pool currently, and when we have a new person start, we send out an email telling everyone that a new person has started and to add their number to their contact list manually. Most people just ignore the email and never do it, so they never actually get the new contact on their phone. So I am looking for a way to automate the process for our people.
We currently have a Public Folder on our Exchange Server that is called "Company Cell Phone List" that holds the contacts for all of our phones with the Employee Name/Number/Picture.
When a new employee starts, I create a new account on the Exchange Server, and log into that users account in Outlook, and Copy/Paste the contacts from the Public folder to their "Contacts" folder and sync the phones OTA with the Exchange Server and move the contacts that way initally.
I know with BlackBerry you can push address lists to the phones through a BES. With WM I never could find a solution, and with Android I am hoping there might be something that I can use to accomplish this.
Is there an App out there that can actually sync this information to the phones automatically instead of having the end users add the contacts manually, or me having to log into 140 outlook accounts and add a new number to their "Contacts" folder each time someone new starts?
Any help would be greatly apperciated. And thanks for letting me be long winded ;-)

HTC seams to support this with their sense cusomized mail app

Is there somewhere that you saw that posted? I am looking at going to Droid 2 Phones wth Verizon so trying to find something that will work on that Froyo platform.
Sent from my Epic 4G using XDA App

you should be able to set up a company google account for this. have all the work phones sync to the contacts backed up on google's server and it'll pull them automatically as changes are made. you can also edit the contact list manually on their site somewhere. not the most secure / professional but it's the simplest method I know of.

Yeah I thought of that method too. At that point I could just set up a common Exchange account and have all of the phones pull from that account and we would have a little more control over it.
I just don't want people sending E-Mail's out of any account other than their specified Exchange Mailbox. So putting a second E-Mail account that has anything with our Company Name associated with it is kind of risky being that there is not much accountability if someone is to send out a non work appropriate E-Mail.
Just too risky to me.
So if there is something Server Side we can do I would do it, else if there actually was an App that could tunnel down to those public shares OTA would be the best.
But again, a common account is a good idea in theory, just worried that someone would send something from the account and cause me all kinds of headaches

[Q] Calendar Sync

So, as heaps of you already know, Google has killed off Google Calendar Sync, as of 01.08.14 (that would be 1st August).
I find this pretty irritating - call me mean, but I resent that these people can play with us like this, but I guess it's their commercial prerogative. (Not exactly a goodwill winner though is it?)
From my research today there are a few apps available, but none are really free - examples include:
Sync2
gSyncit
DejaOffice (CompanionLink)
OutlookGoogleSync
AkrutoSync
OGGSync
SynqYa
Go Contact Sync Mod
Local Sync
Outlook4gmail
I'm about to test Local Sync
It seems like the going rate for anything worth a look is about $20.00AUD.
Is there anything worth a look that is truly free?
What experiences have you had with free / paid solutions?

gbossley said:
So, as heaps of you already know, Google has killed off Google Calendar Sync, as of 01.08.14 (that would be 1st August).
I find this pretty irritating - call me mean, but I resent that these people can play with us like this, but I guess it's their commercial prerogative. (Not exactly a goodwill winner though is it?)
From my research today there are a few apps available, but none are really free - examples include:
Sync2
gSyncit
DejaOffice (CompanionLink)
OutlookGoogleSync
AkrutoSync
OGGSync
SynqYa
Go Contact Sync Mod
Local Sync
I'm about to test Local Sync
It seems like the going rate for anything worth a look is about $20.00AUD.
Is there anything worth a look that is truly free?
What experiences have you had with free / paid solutions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just found another one...
Calendar Sync for Outlook and Google Calendar
calendar-sync/index.html (I can't post urls...pppindia.com is the site)
Free and paid versions...

Imhawaii - you joined in 2007 so took seven years to post for the first time, and got a Thanks straight up!!!:laugh:
I'll have a look at that website and explore that option too. First glance looks good - have you tested it or any other options?

MyPhoneExplorer is good for syncing calender and also contacts

gbossley said:
Imhawaii - you joined in 2007 so took seven years to post for the first time, and got a Thanks straight up!!!:laugh:
I'll have a look at that website and explore that option too. First glance looks good - have you tested it or any other options?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh heh... yeah, i know... just mostly a browser for years - but this is a hot topic for me now.
I did test it out. It 'appeared' to work. I had a weird thing happen - some of the appts ended up at different times. I.e. a 10:00 appeared at 9:00. I'm not sure if it was my email client and how it connected to google. I was using eM Client for windows because it connects directly with google cal and contacts w/o a tool (Outlook 2013 didn't like my big mailboxes0. So, I'm still trying to figure out if it was something else.
On a positive note - It didn't screw things up too bad.... i was able to 'fix' some of the issues. However, I'm not ready to fully commit.
Here was my set up WorkPC(OL2010) > sync with tool from pppindia > gmail account > home pc(eM Client).

LocalSync
I'm using this - I think the tool has potential, but it's all very manual, and the QR Code option doesn't seem to work for me - so based on how I've been using it (and it could be "operator error") I find it clunky.
You need to open the software on your PC, then open the app on the phone. Then hit the Sync button.
I'm looking for something that syncs automatically, and will pay if I have to. But as I said, I resent paying for something that really should be free!

MyPhoneExplorer
Well I downloaded the Windows client for this app last night, and woke up to a PC with "BlockandSurf" to annoy me. I can't of course be 100% certain that the source was the MyPhoneExplorer download, but it's likely. Not the best start.
However, it looks like a comprehensive (Donate if you like) app. How much or if I donate will depend on further evaluation.
First syncs seemed effective.
Now to see if it runs in background effectively...
EDIT - Dev's response - to be fair I didn't notice the option to deselect the Adware option.
Hi Gordon
MyPhoneExplorer is free but i have to pay alot of bills regarding MyPhoneExplorer, because of this you will get a additional software offer in the software - you can easily disable the installation of the ad-ware tool with a click on "Decline". The donations helps alot, but its not enough to organize all tasks related MyPhoneExplorer. There are alot Freewares which do it this way. I am not fully happy with the ads, but its the only option to handle it.
Best regards FJ

One more to add to the list
Another one to check out...
Outlook4gmail
19.99 for a license...

pppindia
FYI,
Calendar Sync from pppindia is getting updates just about everyday. Looks like they are catching the bugs very quickly. One of the issues I mentioned above has been fixed.

Try Calendar Sync +. Best replacement for Google Outlook Sync
Hi,
You can use Calendar Sync +. It is an open source utility, completely free. More features are being added with every release. You can also make suggestions to include a feature.
It syncs
- Outlook-> Google
- Google -> Outlook
- Outlook <-> Google (Bidirectional, with option to select master calendar)
Future plan includes contact and task sync.