MAJOR PROBLEM SYNCING Palm Treo to 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.

That has been mentioned before... The problem is that when you
completely reset the data on the Treo, or update the firmware (which
resets the data) and then sync, a regular sync will wipe out your data
in Entourage.
The instructions on the PalmOne site warn you against that. The regular
sync takes the most recent state and applies it. In this case, the most
recent state is the Treo being reset.

When you perform such reset, you MUST set the sync to replace data on
the Pam with data from Entourage. You can re-enable normal syncs for
subsequent syncs.

It's not a bug as far as I am concerned. It's the way your syncs are set
in the Palm application :-\ (though it's very very easy to get caught).

Corentin

 

[Anne]

Yikes! I feel your pain. Please go to your finder and look for the
Database Utility. I too learned the hard way when I had a hard drive
crash and thought that a saved DB on a CD was enough. NOT.

The Database Utility is unimaginably rarely referenced in Help manuals.
You may be able to open a file but it does automatically update when
you close Entourage. You might get lucky and find more than one
version.

But, for the future, the DB Utility is the magic pill for all Entourage
users because it can straighten ou many bugs that you won't discover
until it's too late. Before I do any messing around with Palm, I run a
backup with this program.

Check it out.

Anne

 

[Pete]

yes got o database utility you may find multiple versions of your
database there - i have and god (and bill gates' engineers) only know
how they got there but they can save your a**.

i also use a hard disk to back up my mac. it only cost $100 and two ro
three sleepless nights would have cost me that in worry. it autobacks
up every night at 3 am. and if it doesn't do it every night i am still
most of the way there...

item: call palm tech support they may be able to point you to a saved
copy somewhere - and yes this is most definitely worse than a biug -
it's adesign flaw. fundamental weakness that brings down the system.
amateruish is the only way to describe it. swtich to apple mail!@

 

[Pete]

yes got o database utility you may find multiple versions of your
database there - i have and god (and bill gates' engineers) only know
how they got there but they can save your a**.

i also use a hard disk to back up my mac. it only cost $100 and two ro
three sleepless nights would have cost me that in worry. it autobacks
up every night at 3 am. and if it doesn't do it every night i am still
most of the way there...

item: call palm tech support they may be able to point you to a saved
copy somewhere - and yes this is most definitely worse than a biug -
it's adesign flaw. fundamental weakness that brings down the system.
amateruish is the only way to describe it. swtich to apple mail!@