MAJOR FLAW / DISASTER synchronizing Palm Treo with Entourage

[youthherder]

I experienced a MAJOR failure of the Entourage conduit tonight that I
want to share so it does not happen to anyone else. The lesson that I
learned from this nightmare is to BACK-UP my Entourage data regularly
(which I had never thought of doing--stupid me--and now I'm paying the
price!).

I am running Entourage 2004 for Mac on my 15" Mac Powerbook (OS
10.4.5). I purchased a Palm Treo 650 a couple of weeks ago. I
downloaded some software to the Treo tonight that caused it to go into
a terminal loop, so I had to do a hard reset of it (which erased all of
the data on it). At the moment, I did not think that was too big a
problem, since I had hotsynced the Palm immediately before it locked
up. I just connected it again and proceeded to sync my computer with
my Palm, which caused the nightmare.

I did not think to check any special boxes in the Entourage Conduit
before performing the Hotsync operation to restore my data. I presumed
that it would synchronize the data between Entourage and the Treo,
which should mean that it would see that there was almost no data on
the Treo (other than the 2 standard contacts that Palm inserts) and
therefore pump data almost exclusively one way, from Entourage to my
Treo. That's how I would interpret synchronizing data: leveling out
information to higher level of the two sources. But that's not how the
Entourage Conduit interprets synchronization.

You've probably already figured out what happened, and you're right.
To my shock and abject horror, the Entourage Conduit decided to
overwrite Entourage with the dearth of data on my Treo. The end result
is this: I lost ALL of my contacts, ALL of my calendar items, ALL of
my memos, & ALL of my tasks & projects. And the last back-up point
that I have on that info is about 6 months ago, and I have made major
revisions since then! Ouch!

Summary:
1) The Entourage Conduit has a serious flaw with synchronizing data
when
you're trying to restore data onto your PDA as I was. I believe that
is a SERIOUS design / programming flaw that should have been addressed
before now. If it had, I would not be living this nightmare right now.
2) If you are going to try to restore data onto your Palm as I was, be
sure to check the "Entourage overwrites handheld" boxes on the
Entourage Settings dialog box.
3) Back up your Entourage data on a regular basis. There are a few
ways that I've now discovered this can be done, but the easiest seems
to be using the "File, Export" option within Entourage.

And if anyone out there knows of a way to recover those lost contacts,
calendar items, memos, tasks, and projects, then please let me know!!!!!

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I am running Entourage 2004 for Mac on my 15" Mac Powerbook (OS
10.4.5). I purchased a Palm Treo 650 a couple of weeks ago. I
downloaded some software to the Treo tonight that caused it to go into
a terminal loop, so I had to do a hard reset of it (which erased all of
the data on it). At the moment, I did not think that was too big a
problem, since I had hotsynced the Palm immediately before it locked
up. I just connected it again and proceeded to sync my computer with
my Palm, which caused the nightmare.

Ouch... I know exactly what you are talking about. It happened to
someone I know after he upgraded the Treo 650 base software (which also
resets the data). Hopefully we had nightly backups.

When you reset the data then sync, Palm software (or The Missing Sync)
simply sees the Treo as the last being modified and syncs everything
accordingly: it wipes out everythign from Entourage. It's not really a
*bug* per se, but the lack of warning of the awful things that can
happen in these situations.

You've probably already figured out what happened, and you're right.
To my shock and abject horror, the Entourage Conduit decided to
overwrite Entourage with the dearth of data on my Treo. The end result
is this: I lost ALL of my contacts, ALL of my calendar items, ALL of
my memos, & ALL of my tasks & projects. And the last back-up point
that I have on that info is about 6 months ago, and I have made major
revisions since then! Ouch!

well it's the default setting that was set there. The same thing can
happen to any other type of data. The way I see things, the Palm
software should give you a warning for ALL the conduits after a data
reset.

After a data reset, you have to set the first sync to replace data on
the Treo by data from Entourage then only really "sync" after that.

I deeply sympathise...

Corentin

 

[youthherder]

Thanks for the input. Your response reveals that I had deeply flawed
and idealistic views on how entourage synced with my palm. What I
thought, in my ignorance, was that when the syncing process was going
on, that the conduit would be comparing the records in entourage with
the records on my palm, and where there was a difference between the
two, replacing the older record with the record that has been more
recently updated. And if one had a record (or records) that the other
did not have, then it would add those records to the place that was
missing.... But now I see that I was very much so mistaken!

This new revelation leaves me very uneasy about the sync process
between palm and entourage. I now see why some people who post here do
not ever do a 2-way sync.....