[Q/Discussion] Offline sync files and PIM data to/from PC, with *no* cloud, possible? - Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Apparently this is possible with Android, by droidwalling everything PIM related, and using myphoneexplorer as a bridge between the phone and outlook, but noone seems to have found a solution to the same problem on Windows Phone 7, and almost noone seems to care.
To put it simply, I don't usually read my mail from my phone, being a PC person for that, but I heavily use it for work with calendar and contacts, and I don't want any of that data to ever be on any cloud whatsoever, not unless encrypted, and only I know the encryption key, so well, let's just say that I don't want it to sync to cloud at all, period.
Not anywhere on the internet that googlebot has put its eyes on, anyone seems to have a working solution to achieve 2-way syncing between a WP7 device and a PC, and since I was really planning to move to mango from WM as soon as a RTM custom rom is available for my HD2, but discovered this piece of info just now, I feel concerned and surprised since it appears I will have to stick to WM6.5.
Isn't there, to the best of your lurking xda members' knowledge, any way so I can sync data with my pc without the phone sending it over the internet to who knows where?
I would also be content if that was something like PIM backup did, with a scheduled utility that backs up every PIM data onto a compressed file, that is subsequently synced to the pc with a normal file sync, as long as I'm sure that all the data on my phone is updated directly onto my PC, and henceforth no internet foreplay is involved. I would need the PC mostly as a remote backup, because the data I use on the phone, I only ever use on the phone.
I do hope normal 2-way file sync is still possible with WP7 by the way?

The fact that noone has replied yet surely tells me that noone cares Which in turn means that there are probably no methods to get proper offline sync.

No its not possible, sadly. I had to move to O365 because of this. O365 is nice though.

not a viable alternative for me, alas... will have to think it through and see if it's not better to keep wm 6.5, or switch to *cough*android*cough* instead.

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!)

Direct PC integration

Hey all,
I'm new here, but I've been lurking for a fair while (and I've been using the realVGA rom on my HTC universal for about a year - you guys do an astounding job). I've just formatted my PC and gone through the typical process of syncing my mobile, getting all the contacts in outlook and the like.
Then it struck me - wouldn't it be pretty useful to use your phone directly from outlook while it's charging in its dock? Is there any program (or standard option in outlook - I'm buggered if I can see it ) that lets you make a call directly through your mobile, but obviously letting you use the PC microphone and speakers?
Try THIS to make a call from from the PC while the pda is cradeled with the comp.
You can also try SOTI pocket controller pro to remotely manage the PDA from the comp. So you can make a call, send SMS's, make registry changes etc...
Note: you'll not be able to you use the PC microphone and speakers for making and receiving calls, you'll need a bluetooth headset, but i think its close enough to what you want to try...
Cheers, that's pretty close - though I'll have to get a headset for it. I find a real shame (and quite an oversight) that this isn't already integrated with outlook or activesync (or windows sync centre or whatever it's called now )
I also saw someone trying to do something similar in a thread on here with an outlook macro but it's not for working for me. Perhaps it's because I'm on office 2007 or vista? I have to say, I'm sorely tempted to code something like this myself, though I've no idea where to start with activesync libraries. Are there any common resources as such?

[Q] Backup contacts, calendar and files from WM5

I have an XDA Argon running WM5. It has on it all my contacts, calendar etc. plus lots of Excel, Notes and other files. It used to synchronise with my notebook PC, but now whenever I connect it to the notebook either the notebook overwrites the data in the mobile, or vice versa. I have not therefore dared to synchonise it for over a year now, so both devices now have a lot of differences. Also I suspect the root of the problem is that somehow the timestamps (or whatever Mobile Device Center uses to control its sync process) have got messed up.
How do I, without risk of losing any data either in my mobile or in my notebook, get the two re-synchronised?
Either I need to back up both sets of data to somewhere I can restore from before trying to sync, or I need a sync process that will never delete or overwrite anything without asking for permission first. So far I've failed to find either solution. I can back up the files from the mobile to an SD card, but I can't find out how to back up the calendar and contacts. Is there a web service that will do it (without connecting to the PC)? Or can I create a new Outlook account and copy the mobile items to it in some way (without the risk that the PC writes the empty Outlook account into the mobile thus deleting everything)?
Hope someone can suggest a safe way out of this mess...
Thanks - Rowan.

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