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!
Related
I have a strange problem here, haven't seen it mentioned yet on the forums.
Calendar: creating and editing appointments gives "An unexpected error has occurred in this program".
Tasks: when I create a new task, it appears OK, but if I close and restart Tasks, the changes vanish! When I tick-off a task, I get the error "No program memory available".
Contacts: creating or editing contacts gives "No program memory available"
I am able to view entries without problems, but completely unable to create or edit...
There is plenty of memory available, 25MB storage + 50MB program. All other applications working ok, including Notes.
I have guessed that the problem might be in the Outlook databases.
I have tried:
1. Soft reset - no change
2. Restoring ROM backup - no change
3. Deleting the ActiveSync partnership and overwriting the device databases - no change
4. Hard reset - fixes the problem, But comes back as soon as I restore from ActiveSync backup. Sadly the only backups I kept were after the problem arose.
5. Deleting the Outlook databases using PHM PowerToys - but half of them I couldn't get rid of because "another application was using them", though apparently nothing else was running. Deleting the ones I could gave no change.
I DON'T want to do a hard reset and start again from scratch, because I lose a lot of data that will be hard to restore. E.g. a few very important progs that I haven't got the installers for, my SMS messages, the phone call history + timers, GPRS and network settings, and a huge number of program configurations, including photo contacts database, transcribe settings etc. (don't know of a way to back these things up).
I have an XDA2 (Himalaya/xscale/128MB) running PocketPC Windows Mobile 2003 Phone Edition. Please help! :x
Forgot to mention, I am able to create items on Desktop Outlook and sync them across. (I'm using ActiveSync 3.7.1)
I have also tried ScanPST.exe on Desktop Outlook, which finds no problems.
Not sure if it help, but I would recommend to export the files from Outlook on the PC, then delete Contact, Calendar and Tasks on the PC and synchronize - which should delete the data on the XDA as well. Then re-import the data on the PC from the exported files and sync again...
I have just lost my entire calendar from my TyTN. My appointments, tasks and contacts. I am absolutely devestated.
I was just syncing for the first time to my new laptop which I have been setting up today. I installed Office 2007 an hour ago and installed Widnows Mobile Device Center 6.1 for vista. Before I synced, I did see the "Manage a Partnership" settings and thought it would be fine to leave the "if there is a conflict" option as "replace items on device" rather than "replace items on computer" (because, well, there wasn't yet anything on the computer to possibly conflict and replace items on my phone with, right?)
I have not had a computer for the last three weeks as I have moved countries, so until now I have had to trust my phone to hold my essential information and just wait until I get my new laptop. I have heavily inputted a lot of essential tasks and appointments for my work over the last three weeks while overseas. I have not had access to a computer to sync it with until now. I have just lost so much information I feel like my house has been burnt down. I've lost important drafts and whole reports and essential reminders for the next few months and now I have lost it all. I trusted my phone would be ok for three weeks, was obviously worried (made sure it wasn't stolen or anything), and hanging out until now to safely back them up on the computer. Instead, it deletes the lot!!
I use Agenda One on my phone which is a really easy and intuitive way to input tasks and appointments on the calendar. It synced fine with my old computer which had vista and outlook 2007, just like now.
Can the information be recovered from my pocket pc in any way?
Does anyone know how the appointments, tasks and contacts are stored on the phone, and if it can be recovered, if written over? If anyone can tell me how to do this I will seriously give them US $100 right now. Or £100, whichever you like! With paypal, wire transfer whatever. This is so important to me. I am distraught. Please help if you have any ideas.
Thank you,
frenchglen
pim.vol
Ok, so the file pim.vol in root directory of the device memory contains the infomation.
But I suppose now that that information was overwritten in the file with the new nogthingness from outlook. So do I have no hope, because pim.vol just doesn't have the old PIM information in it any more? Or could it still be in the file?
I think you're lost. The phone and computer shoulld've synced, but unless you have a backup, or your documetns and such were on an SD card, I don't really think there is anything you can do. I've been through data loss before, so I know how much it sucks. All you can really do is start inputting data again and backup,backup,backup!
Yeah, I think I'm stuffed. Dang it. I know to use PIM Backup now! I didn't know it was stored in one file only (more susceptible to data corruption and harder to recover if the data is meddled with like in my case!)
Actually, I think I have some hope of recovering a lot of the data: a week ago I synced it all to a friend's computer cause they weren't using their outlook. This was as an extra precaution, in case my phone was stolen, etc. during my stay there.
Now I did delete my data from their computer when I left, for obvious reasons. However, I think it could still be in their "archive.pst" file. I hope archiving wasn't unticked in their settings.
Fingers crossed! They're on holidays for the next week so I have to wait until then to see if my data is still archived on their computer!
Cheers
frenchglen
I think that the archive is for more long term, but I sync to an Exchange server that's set up in dual raid 1's across two servers, so I don't worry about losing my data to much.
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.
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
I'm screwed, I can't believe this happened. I reformatted my PC. Installed fresh and clean version of Outlook. Installed MS ActiveSync. The very FIRST thing I did was set the ActiveSync options to have the PHONE replace OUTLOOK, thinking this will put all my contacts, calendar appointments, etc back in outlook. For some unexplained reason, that setting was ignored, and when I synced it, it deleted everything from my phone. A years+ worth of information I can't get back. So my question is:
Is there any way to recover all my lost phone numbers, appointments, etc? Or am I really SOL? I'm praying perhaps there's some file recoverable file on the phone or... I don't know. Help!
Did you ever make any backups, like w/ Sprite or SPB or PIMBackup (or myphone or Windows Live)? If not, you're probably SOL. You really need some failsafes; one backup isn't enough for important data.
Sadly no, i didn't, i was stupid enough to think outlook was my backup of the phone, or the phone was a backup of outlook... Stupid programs ended up erasing each other...
Well, maybe try poking around the active sync folder on your pc; i guess it could've backed up your contacts on your phone before it deleted them (c:\program files\microsoft active sync, or something like that).