I'm not even sure whether Sync Services allows you to set which
categories of addresses, events, notes, and tasks get synchronized. I'm
willing to bet SyncServices is more limited than the current Handheld
Sync Conduit.
I hope they'll reverse this decision at some point in the future...
JR
All of the below was tested using Entourage 2004. I am waiting for my
Office 2008 upgrade to arrive.
I've been playing around with Sync Services today on my current
machine (MacBook Pro) where I sync my Treo 755p. And also on my
fiance's Mac mini, where she has a Treo 650 that I am getting it setup
for her. This is nice, because it allows me to change some things
without messing up any of the crucial data that I need to sync to on
my Treo 755p.
I noticed that Sync Services does not pick up a lot of fields when
moving data to the master database that Address Book and iCal
communicate with. It basically left out a lot of fields that it
thought were duplicate, like additional email addresses that are
marked as "Home" And any of the Contacts under Entourage that were
assigned to a category came into Address Book all over the place (I
had previously created a group under Address Book for each category I
had under Entourage).
I found an application that did work very well: e2Sync 2.8. So far,
this app only works with Entourage 2004 and under Tiger. They have a
note on their web site that they are working on a Leopard version.
Nothing so far about Entourage 2008, but I sent them an email asking
them if they plan to support it soon. Awaiting a response from them.
This product links into iSync and syncs just about every field from
Entourage to Address Book. It also works with Entourage calendar and
task items to iCal, which I have not tested yet. For Address Book, it
syncs all Entourage contacts and their categories to the Address Book
group with the same name. When synced to the Treo, it will not change
the category, but once you change the category on the Treo, future
syncs will keep the category set on the Treo.
Regardless, I know this doesn't currently help anyone with Entourage
2008, but this is a preparation of getting the data over to Address
Book so iSync can see it all properly if/when Entourage 2008 decides
how it wants to communicate with the Address Book and iCal databases.
The key would be to find out what's changed with how Entourage 2008
uses Sync Services vs. how Entourage 2004 uses Sync Services.
I agree with other comments that MS and others really should have done
more testing with this, instead of just assuming it would work. Makes
me wonder what kind of handhelds that people had that were beta
testers for this product, let alone the ones that Entourage developers
and testers use. Did they even try syncing to their phones/handhelds?
- Marty
