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Sync Nightmare: Managing Work and Personal on one phone

Urg...this is harder than it should be. Can anyone in the same situation offer any advice?
Situation is this...
* HTC Touch Pro
* Google Apps Mail/Calendar/Tasks
* Lotus Notes w/Notes Traveler
* Other sync apps like Spb Wallet
* Windows XP
I initially had my phone syncing with ActiveSync to my laptop as a backup (contacts etc going to Outlook) and so I could sync things like my password data using Spb Wallet
Coming from Palm devices, I wasn't quite prepared for how crap ActiveSync (or Outlook) actually was. I then changed my mail to sync with Google (using IMAP) and then Contacts and Calendar syncing with Google via their fake Outlook sync setup, and that works pretty well.
Note: Now Google have push email, but I haven't tried it, and my Spb Wallet on my phone and PC are now out of sync
Today I tried Notes Traveler, which syncs my work info over-the-air, kind of like a Blackberry.
This works (I guess) but Lotus' idea of "Sync" seems to be "Nuke everything on your device and overwrite it with your Notes data"
...yep, I did back everything up...
Issues/Questions:
1) Is there any way to get rid of the default "Outlook" mail account in TouchPro 3d? Strangely I did a backup and restore when my phone went in for repair, and now it is called my domain name and has some old mail in it, but it's still not deletable
2) Notes Traveler creates a second (third!) mail account, so my work email is separate (which is great) but it nuked my calendar. Then it nuked my Google calendar, and uploaded all my work appointments to it! To make matters worse, even though mail is separate, meeting invites and responses now get sent back to my personal Google mailbox (since there is only one calendar I guess)
3) Since I'm busy/lazy at work, my work email has 554 unread messages (from the last 30 days), and it fills up at a rate of a couple of hundred a day. This means that the notification circle thingo on the front of the phone is in a permanent state of flashyness. Is there any way I can disable that for mail, and just have it alert me for SMSs etc?
4) Has anyone come up with a good solution for two different types of mail? The only option I can really think of is turning off the Google sync (maybe except for Contacts) and using the web apps...but that seems clunky and no TouchFlow 3D integration. There isn't a native WM6 app for the Google suite is there? Or for Notes? Also the screenshots on the Google help web pages seem much more usable than the screens I actually get (there are tabs across the top to switch between mail, cal etc.)
5) I really use the multi calendar feature of Google a lot, is there any way you can sync more than one calendar to the device?
6) Does anyone know if Android manages this scenario better? I'm almost ready to switch (except that no Notes Traveler for Android)
Thanks in advance for any pointers on any of the items above.
Zilch.

To delete the account you go into Activesync on the phone, then go to Menu...Options...now click and hold on the exchange server to delete it.
You can go to Settings, sounds Notifications to turn off the flashing notification. Otherwise you may need fuze tweak or advanced config.

Android without Google Cloud (or only for Market) - How to?

Hi All,
I did some researches but could not find any detailed answer so I decided to create a new topic.
As mentioned in some other threads, I have been using WinMo for years but since WM6.5 is dead, I am looking for other alternatives. I don't see any future in WM7 and I think that Android OS is the most promising
Unfortunately, I am not very comfortable with the "Google Cloud" for some privacy reasons. I do not want to upload all my contacts and calendar to Google and thus, I would like to keep my private data between my Outlook (both personal and professional) and my Phone (as for WM6).
I know that using Android without Google Cloud will remove a lot of convenient functions but I still prefer going for a longer and slightly less convenient process to sync my contacts and calendar.
I understood from some readings that we can disable the synchronization for Google contacts and Calendar, which sounds good to me! The only function I would keep is Google Market as it seems to be compulsory for a good use of Android.
I am now wondering how I could synchronize my Outlook with Android. I am used to organize my personal and professional data on Outlook with the Contacts, the Calendar, Notes and by using Categories. Do you know any solution that would help me to sync my data from Outlook with an Android phone?
I heard about Android-Sync, is it good? Does it sync the data properly? Does it keep the Categories?
Do you know any other solution to sync Android with Outlook without the use of Google Contacts/Calendar?
Thanks a lot for your expert advices

I agree with you 100%
That is my total turn-off in using android phones.
I do not want and I do not like the "cloud". Firstly for privacy issues and also for roaming charges and/or low internet coverage. I do travel a lot and when I travel my android has 50% functonality working, the other half I cannot use: ridiculous
With android it has to go on the cloud too many of my infos (contacts, calendar, tasks etc) and it seems that almost all good apps want to do the same.
I doubt you will find a good solution with android since all their revenue comes from the cloud, they will sabotage any attempt to put good offline use.
Solution?
Will see what nokia/microsoft are going to do with windows mobile 7. Hope is not cloud based , or at least it has decent offline use

Welcome to life in the clouds! LOL
If you are a VZW customer you can use Backup Assistant to copy all your contacts (not sure if it will copy Facebook or other SocNet sources).
Once you do that go into Settings-Accounts and shut off sync with google.
Now go to GMail, delete all the contacts and then restore from backup assistant.
At that point pretty much all of your information will be on the phone only.
This will allow you to use the Marketplace without issue but by turning off Google Sync none of the phone info will go to Google servers.
You might have to go into Google Cal and delete info there too if you want but do not do that before you shut off the google sync in accounts.
If you are not on verizon, most carriers have another tool that will do the work of backup Assistant. They (and VZW) use those when you ask them to transfer contacts from one phone to another system (that may not be android!) so it is a good way to clear the cloud.
EDIT: I forgot to say that you should then shut off syncing with Background assistant and then go to your verizon account tools and export the contacts to a CSV file. Then delete from there as well.
But I don't consider VZW's server to be as cloud as GMail.

[Q] Sync'ing Google Calendar FROM Phone TO Web

Ok, I've searched for this and the few solutions that I have found do not make any difference for me, so either, something fundamental has changed at Google, or I have set something else wrong.
The Problem;
I have one Google Calendar and one Windows Live Calendar set up on my Windows Phone. (HTC 7 Pro).
Until 2 weeks ago (approximately) every thing sync'd correctly both ways.
Now, events entered as Google Calendar Items on the Phone do not sync with the Online Calendar. Events entered on the Online Calendar sync as expected.
I have tried changing the "Automatically add invitations to my calendar:" setting to "yes" or "yes, but dont send event reminders....." as suggested in other threads, but this does not have any effect. i am aware that this fix will not work on events created before the setting change. It does not work with events created before or after the Setting was changed.
The Windows Live Calendar syncs properly both ways. There is no issue with this, but could it's presence be affecting how the Google Calendar behaves?
Any further advise would be appreciated.

Have you considered that it can have something to do with summer/vinter time. check that you phone and gmail account have the same time zone and both are updated to summer time.

nickallison said:
Ok, I've searched for this and the few solutions that I have found do not make any difference for me, so either, something fundamental has changed at Google, or I have set something else wrong.
The Problem;
I have one Google Calendar and one Windows Live Calendar set up on my Windows Phone. (HTC 7 Pro).
Until 2 weeks ago (approximately) every thing sync'd correctly both ways.
Now, events entered as Google Calendar Items on the Phone do not sync with the Online Calendar. Events entered on the Online Calendar sync as expected.
I have tried changing the "Automatically add invitations to my calendar:" setting to "yes" or "yes, but dont send event reminders....." as suggested in other threads, but this does not have any effect. i am aware that this fix will not work on events created before the setting change. It does not work with events created before or after the Setting was changed.
The Windows Live Calendar syncs properly both ways. There is no issue with this, but could it's presence be affecting how the Google Calendar behaves?
Any further advise would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had the same issue on my Samsung Focus since I pretty much bought the thing. I gave up and finally just moved to the live calendar. I guess I could try again now that I have Nodo to see if that fixed it.

There's nothing for NoDo to "fix" on your phone. I've been using Google Calendar on my Focus since day 1, and it has always worked (both pre- and post-Nodo) once I got it properly configured (using the "Automatically add invitations to my calendar" setting). I just tested it to make sure.
I wonder if your Google account on your phone has become corrupted somehow. Have you tried deleting the account from the phone and recreating it?
But, I am puzzled that you say that the events were syncing correctly before. If you didn't have the "Automatically add invitations to my calendar" setting enabled, I don't see how that could have worked. WP7-created events are only sent as invitations to Google, and without that setting, they can't show up in your calendar.

Thanks for responses.
I'm fairly certain that this is not a DST issue. I have checked clocks and all seems correct.
Apologies for confusion, robodad.
I switched the "automatically add invitations..." setting to NO about the time it stopped working, but didn't notice until the last couple of days that it had, stopped working.
On noticing, I researched and discovered how this setting should be set to YES due to the way that Google handles new events from WP7.
Now that this is switched back to YES it is still not sync'ing.
A response to the same question on Google's forums has suggested that the ICS is broken. I do not know what this means but it appears that this is at Google's end.

Hello,
I've exactly the same problem with my Trophy 7.
i had the setting on " yes, but don't send.." , the appointments came into google calendar with a question mark.
All of a sodden it stopped working, so i changed the setting to "yes", but it doesn't make a difference.
The strange thing is that it does work both ways on my iphone, so there is no problem (i think) from googles side as you suggested.
This is very frustrating because i use google calendar as my main calendar, i hope someone has an other solution.
Thanks for any help.
Monique

Update
Well, from the Google Forums where this has been posted (OPs:-Am I allowed to link to that from here?), Google have now taken some sort of ownership of this and are apparently looking into it.
They have contacted (seemingly) everyone that has posted on their Forum for details as to the problem.
Maybe something sorted out soon.

Latest from Google
This posted on the Google Help Forum as a work around.
Hi everyone,
Thanks for keeping us updated here with what's worked for you and what hasn't. Andrew has been working with me off-thread and has been super helpful, and we think we might have a workaround for now. Do you guys mind trying this out and letting me know if it works for you?
1) Delete the "Google" account on your device
2) Add an "Outlook" account
3) Be sure the email address is correct the first time it asks you
4) Device will say "Check your information and try again" and give a more
detailed form
5) Be sure that both email address and username are correct in this form
(domain can be blank or a dummy value like "goog")
6) Device will give "We couldn't find your settings", choose "Advanced"
7) This time device will give a field for server, enter "m.google.com"
8) Now it should sync.
9) Configure the account as desired and you should be able to add a
calendar event successfully
10) Keep using this account or, optionally, delete this account and add a
"Google" account (either way is the same)
Cheers,
Alice
This appears to have had limited success. Certainly hasn't worked for me. But does appear to have worked for at least one other contributer there. If intermittently

nickallison said:
Ok, I've searched for this and the few solutions that I have found do not make any difference for me, so either, something fundamental has changed at Google, or I have set something else wrong.
The Problem;
I have one Google Calendar and one Windows Live Calendar set up on my Windows Phone. (HTC 7 Pro).
Until 2 weeks ago (approximately) every thing sync'd correctly both ways.
Now, events entered as Google Calendar Items on the Phone do not sync with the Online Calendar. Events entered on the Online Calendar sync as expected.
I have tried changing the "Automatically add invitations to my calendar:" setting to "yes" or "yes, but dont send event reminders....." as suggested in other threads, but this does not have any effect. i am aware that this fix will not work on events created before the setting change. It does not work with events created before or after the Setting was changed.
The Windows Live Calendar syncs properly both ways. There is no issue with this, but could it's presence be affecting how the Google Calendar behaves?
Any further advise would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please tell me how did you sync your phone calander with windows live account? I can not do it.

Latest from Google Forums
This from Andrew who seems to be doing a lot of work on this.
"I've spent quite an enjoyable an hour on the phone with a mobile-software chap from Google, who has access to sync logs. What's happening in my case is that although I set up the sync with my gmail address, the phone is sending events with my live.com address as "Organizer", and those events are being rejected. This happened again when I connected with a test Google calendar account as well -- my phone used my live.com address.
Steve then tried to sync his phone with a test Google calendar account, and events created on the phone were synced correctly. He then tried his phone with *my* Google calendar -- that is, set up my gmail account on his phone -- and the event was created with his live.com address (and consequently was rejected).
So: the issue can be reproduced using my Google calendar account and any phone, or my phone and any calendar. But no phone should be leaking live.com addresses to Google.
Investigation continues. I'm now going to look for a way of reporting the problem to Microsoft..."
I fear that this may be bringing the issue back full circle to NoDo. We shall see.

Automatic?
erfansaberi said:
Can you please tell me how did you sync your phone calander with windows live account? I can not do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
erfansaberi,
So far as I am aware, i never had to do anything other than set up the account, to sync my Live Calendar across from Phone to Desktop to Cloud.
I use Outlook Connector with Outlook 2007. This syncs the Desktop.
To be honest i don't use web apps at all (other than Google where i have no choice at present) as I am invariably on a Mobile Data connection and at least Outlook only transfers the relevant data, and not all the gubbings required to render a web page, in a browser.

I also have this google thing problem... It is quite annoying.
Did anyone here try to delete the account and create an outlook account trick? Does it work? I guess it also removes the contact list, doesn't it?

Work around?
Not sure if someone has come up with a good work around yet, but this is annoying as heck! I actually lost some calendar events after creating events on the phone and syncing to google calendar. Darn you google!
Anyways, after playing around a bit, I think I've got something that works (for me anyways). I created a contact with my own google email address that I use with Google cal in it (it happens to not be an @gmail.com address). So this is pretty much my own contact card with my google cal email address. Now every single calendar event that I create, I have to go to "more details" and "add someone". I add myself under "required" and making sure to select the google cal email. Strangely, after syncing with google cal (manually or just wait a bit) it will show up in google cal.
The setback is that you'll get an email notification in gmail and all the events will have a little "?" next to it in google cal since you're supposed to confirm you're going or not to that event. But at least now we can backup our events to the cloud instead of losing every god dang thing if our phone goes to the crapper.

SOLVED (well sort of)
Posted at the Google Calendar forums thread that has been going on on this topic by Shaun_G
[
I have been having this issue for the last month and have found something that works for me:
On your Windows Phone do the following:
1. Open Settings
2. click email & accounts
3. click your google account
4. Under Content to synchronise make sure that Email is ticked (this was not ticked orginally for me).
5. Add a new event to you calandar
6. go back into Settings -> email & accounts and click and hold you Google account until the menu appears and select synchronise
7. you should now see your newley created calandar event in your google calandar web
]
This seems to work for me, I do not have to re-sync from the settings>email area either as it happens automatically.

[Q] WP7 Contacts

I finally got a Windows Phone 7.
However my first gripe was the fact that when you use your live ID, it automatically decides to import all your contacts from MSN etc which is kind of stupid. So I ended up fixing that by creating a new account just for my phone.
Microsoft really need to add an option there, Do not sync live contacts!
As I handle all this through my Exchange service. Only use my live account for MSN.
Anyway so I decided to link my facebook account to my phone. That went great right up until I saw it importing all my facebook contacts! So I finally found the setting to only sync with contacts in phone, so now it's linked my phone contacts to my facebook by only whats on my phone.
However this is where I have an issue. I go to type a text message or email and look for a contact and it's showing ALL my contacts from facebook, yet they don't show in the People Hub. I specifically have the setting "Only add facebook information to existing contacts" checked.
My next issue is the fact Birthdays from Exchange to the Phone are not syncing up correctly.
Some will sync up correctly and others will be out.
The information is there on the Exchange and correct, and same in my Outlook. But WP7 sometimes decides that a contacts birthday will be out by a day. So far one day ahead.
E.G
Contact 1 Birthday 16th July on exchange, shows up as 17th July
They are also not appearing in the calendar
I have checked and regional settings on phone and exchange are correct. It can't be the exchange as it was syncing fine with WM 6.1.
Help!!!!

actually the birthday issue has been there since wm6.5 for me and still a mystery to me hehe.

danbriant said:
I finally got a Windows Phone 7.
However my first gripe was the fact that when you use your live ID, it automatically decides to import all your contacts from MSN etc which is kind of stupid. So I ended up fixing that by creating a new account just for my phone.
Microsoft really need to add an option there, Do not sync live contacts!
As I handle all this through my Exchange service. Only use my live account for MSN.
Anyway so I decided to link my facebook account to my phone. That went great right up until I saw it importing all my facebook contacts! So I finally found the setting to only sync with contacts in phone, so now it's linked my phone contacts to my facebook by only whats on my phone.
However this is where I have an issue. I go to type a text message or email and look for a contact and it's showing ALL my contacts from facebook, yet they don't show in the People Hub. I specifically have the setting "Only add facebook information to existing contacts" checked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
As for your Facebook contacts, they will continue to display in your messaging/mail auto-complete regardless of the setting you choose in the People hub. That setting simply hides them from view in the People hub, it does not remove them from your phone. You can still do a People search and find Facebook contacts (and other services if you have them sync'd), and when you compose a new sms/email, you can still use auto-complete to find a Facebook contact. Just because you don't have them as a specific contact in your address book does not mean you will not contact them ever, and so the phone surfaces that information in the case you ever need to. You simply have to ignore the other contacts, and continue on your normal contacts.

prjkthack said:
It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
As for your Facebook contacts, they will continue to display in your messaging/mail auto-complete regardless of the setting you choose in the People hub. That setting simply hides them from view in the People hub, it does not remove them from your phone. You can still do a People search and find Facebook contacts (and other services if you have them sync'd), and when you compose a new sms/email, you can still use auto-complete to find a Facebook contact. Just because you don't have them as a specific contact in your address book does not mean you will not contact them ever, and so the phone surfaces that information in the case you ever need to. You simply have to ignore the other contacts, and continue on your normal contacts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is really stupid. I choose to not show them for a reason as I don't want hundreds of contacts in my contacts list for messages and emails.
Does Mango solve this issue?
Also I'm guessing there's no way to choose what info gets imported for each contact, as some contacts on facebook input invalid phone numbers etc and well they are now clogging up my phone with useless info.
Kind of stupid to not have options to control what can and cant be linked and displayed!

prjkthack said:
It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android does at least give you the option to disable syncing contacts with google though.

danbriant said:
That is really stupid. I choose to not show them for a reason as I don't want hundreds of contacts in my contacts list for messages and emails.
Does Mango solve this issue?
Also I'm guessing there's no way to choose what info gets imported for each contact, as some contacts on facebook input invalid phone numbers etc and well they are now clogging up my phone with useless info.
Kind of stupid to not have options to control what can and cant be linked and displayed!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess that all depends on how you look at it. I filter my People list to ones only in my Hotmail contacts, sync Facebook info with those only in my People list, and enjoy it when the messaging app allows me the flexibility to still contact those who have contact information but are not displayed in my People list. Again Windows Phone 7 is a socially connected phone designed to help keep you in contact with your Windows Live and Facebook contacts in addition to your regular phone book contacts (and just wait till Twitter and LinkedIn are finally available). So if you don't like that, then the phone is probably not for you.
Mango does not solve the "issue" since its by design, and therefore not an issue at all. I don't expect to it change anytime soon either since Facebook Chat is also integrated and the phone won't simply just exclude the people in Facebook Chat who don't exist on your phone, as that destroys the convenience of chat.
Just gonna be something you need to deal with I suppose, until the feature to further filter your contacts can be added.

[Q] How does google contact synching work?

I currently use Gmail as my main email account but obviously needed a windows live account which I set up using my gmail address.
I havent really bothered sorting my contacts out before but not I have a decent phone I'm doing it so I deleted them all from Gmail and added them all to Windows live and synced to my phone no problem.
I realise I can export my windows live contacts to a CSV file and upload to Gmail which is fine.
What I really want is for all my stuff to be in Gmail on an ongoing basis.
If I therefore set google contacts to sync to my phone will they only update one way i.e. if I add someone on my phone that will sync to windows live and not gmail? If so that will be very irritating as I will need to remember to go into gmail and add all the info and duplication is what I want to avoid.
I guess this is also the same with google calendars?

Pravind said:
I currently use Gmail as my main email account but obviously needed a windows live account which I set up using my gmail address.
I havent really bothered sorting my contacts out before but not I have a decent phone I'm doing it so I deleted them all from Gmail and added them all to Windows live and synced to my phone no problem.
I realise I can export my windows live contacts to a CSV file and upload to Gmail which is fine.
What I really want is for all my stuff to be in Gmail on an ongoing basis.
If I therefore set google contacts to sync to my phone will they only update one way i.e. if I add someone on my phone that will sync to windows live and not gmail? If so that will be very irritating as I will need to remember to go into gmail and add all the info and duplication is what I want to avoid.
I guess this is also the same with google calendars?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if it didn't sync both ways, it wouldn't be 'syncing' at all then now would it? XD
Syncing stuff with a Google account works the same way as it does with a Windows Live account. Any changes you make to the account will be sync'd both ways. I use Windows Live for my contacts, and Google Calendar for my calendar and it works fine.
Just, in regards to Google Contacts, you gotta watch out for those custom fields in a contact, as they don't seem to sync properly with the phone.

Ok thanks, well if I make them both match from the start (windows live and google contacts) and set the contacts to sync with google then in theory everything should match up and be the same in all 3 places regardless of if I add a new person on windows live, google contacts or the phone.
That what you mean yeah?
What are these custom fields you speak off? I've not spotted anything in there.
Sorry I'm not very clued up on all this technology business, I presume you mean fields in google contacts that arent within windows phone 7 or windows live meaning info will be missed when synced.
Are all the fields in windows live replicated in google contacts? (I know this is a lazy question)

Pravind said:
Ok thanks, well if I make them both match from the start (windows live and google contacts) and set the contacts to sync with google then in theory everything should match up and be the same in all 3 places regardless of if I add a new person on windows live, google contacts or the phone.
That what you mean yeah?
What are these custom fields you speak off? I've not spotted anything in there.
Sorry I'm not very clued up on all this technology business, I presume you mean fields in google contacts that arent within windows phone 7 or windows live meaning info will be missed when synced.
Are all the fields in windows live replicated in google contacts? (I know this is a lazy question)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The custom fields are fields you can define in Google contacts. For example, you can add a ton of numbers for your contacts and rename the label to whatever you want, Windows Phone only recognizes the first couple of numbers with common labels (work, home, mobile), and after that won't sync the rest. Stuff like that.
Also, while you can link an existing contact to more than one contact syncing service (for example, to both Gmail and Windows Live) on your phone, when you create a new contact on the phone, it only makes that contact in one of your services (so either Gmail or Windows Live, your choice). Because it only syncs to one service, you'll eventually have to remake the same contact on the other account in order to keep all 3 in sync if that's your plan.
Windows Live and Google Contacts share the same basic fields, its just that Google allows you to make custom fields as well and Windows Live does not.

Thank you.
From what I've seen it will always sync back to windows live if you create one on your phone as there is no way to change what you sync to windows live which means I'm always going to have to manually add things back to google which is a real pain.
It looks like the only way round this is to make them match from the start and then periodically export them and upload to google which I guess doesnt take too long but still annoying.
They should really fix that and look at upgrading windows live as its so slow and clunky to use, takes ages to browse around it when adding contacts and editing them etc