Categories, Address Book and Sync

[BruceGR]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: Exchange

If I assign a Category in Entourage it is removed after syncing with the Address book on my Mac. From what I have read this is correct. Therefore I should never assign a Category in Entourage in order to not get duplicates? I am looking for clarification on this. Any help is appreciated.

Bruce Robinson

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

If I assign a Category in Entourage it is removed after syncing with the
Address book on my Mac.

Indeed. Categories don't sync.

From what I have read this is correct. Therefore
I should never assign a Category in Entourage in order to not get
duplicates? I am looking for clarification on this. Any help is
appreciated.

When you assign a category to an event and let it sync, it keeps it in
Entourage. The event is synced with a centralized repository called the
Truth database (I hate this name). iCal just reads the data from the
Truth to display it.
The Truth is not category-aware. When an event gets duplicated in the
Truth, the copy doesn't have any category assigned to it and will sync
back as such to Entourage.

If you list all events in Entourage, only the ones you created yourself
(and assigned a category to) will have a category. All the other ones
were created either through iCal or due to a duplication.

If you create all your events in Entourage and assign a category
systematically, you can identify duplications in a split second: they
are the ones without a category.

Corentin

 

[BruceGR]

I was referring to a category in contacts. Not an event.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I was referring to a category in contacts. Not an event.

Well same deal.
Categories in contacts don't sync either.


Corentin

 

[BruceGR]

That is what I thought. And if you add a category in Entourage it creates a duplicate. Correct?

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

That is what I thought. And if you add a category in Entourage it creates a
duplicate. Correct?

Nope. That's not at all why I said. I said assigning categories could
help identifying duplicates.
I never use it for contacts anyway since the System Address Book has a
Find Duplciates command that you can use to identify and merge
duplicates.

Corentin

 

[BruceGR]

So what creates my duplicates then. I removed all the duplicates in my Address Book. Synced Entourage which matched. Assigned Categories in Contacts (Entourage). Now I have duplicates and in some cases triplicates?

Bruce Robinson

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

So what creates my duplicates then. I removed all the duplicates in my
Address Book. Synced Entourage which matched. Assigned Categories in
Contacts (Entourage). Now I have duplicates and in some cases
triplicates?

Well no one knows. That's the problem.
For events, there is a pattern. All day events tend to duplicate for no
reason.
For contacts, middle initials in the System address book make contact
duplicate when syncing with Entourage, but that's not the only cause by
far and I haven't found any additional pattern.

On my Mac, updating the System to 10.5.4 and Office to 12.1.1 cleared
the contact duplications entirely.
Events... are a different beast.

Corentin