Hi Chris,
(Seems odd that M/S develops and sells
"MIssing Sync" for Mac users, but has no fix for sync glitches occurring
in Entourage's calendar. It also seems odd that Entourage does not have
a dupe finder/deleter for its Calendar function.)
Well it's a fairly complex issue. The duplications can occur at multiple
points along the way and they're not all controlled by TMS.
It could be the blackberry, TMS, the SyncServices between TMS and the
Truth database (where all system data is stored for the address book and
iCal), the SyncServices between the Truth and Entourage or Entourage
itself.
A couple of things that usually help: make sure *everything* is up to
date and if you can, avoid all-day events that are notorious to
self-duplicate.
Regarding your suggestion that one do a Google search: uh, I did that
before coming here. Lots of results IF what I were asking about had
anything to do with Entourage duplicate e-mails. (Apparently, there are
lots of articles, etc. about that little inconvenience.) But, my issue
is related to Entourage Calendar, as you can see from my initial post.
Well JR is not entirely wrong to be honest. There are about 2-3
questions a day about syncing issues in this group alone, most of which
related to data duplications. I would say that on this specific topic,
the rate of previously already answered questions is near 99%. I sure
understand JR's frustration.
On top of that, since MS implemented a portal for these groups, tapping
into the old nntp newsgroups, the rate of newcomers re-porting the same
questions already answered 100 times has really increased 1000 fold.
I don't use the portal myself so I can't really say much about its
usability, but I fear it doesn't emphasize the search functions enough
(or the search results just plain suck)
So, respectfully, here's my boilerplate:
Please READ before answering. Why? Because it's the polite thing to do.
Well he did and yes, others have posted on the same (or similar/related)
topic before.
Those who come here seeking help should not be dismissed as either
idiots or lazy by experts who lack the motivation and dedication to read
the question and, if uncertain, respond appropriately.
Take a look around and you'll see a) the number of posts all asking for
the same thing and b) the number of posts simply saying either "software
doesn't work, what's up?" or just plain insulting people here, assuming
they are MS folks (which is no excuse). As a reminder, this is a
peer-support group.
On top of that, usability got completely hosed because the portal
doesn't respect the regular newgroup threading, making it a real pain to
track conversations and what's a reply to what. I'm probably missing a
good 50% of the posts dericted to me because this messes-up MacSoup big
time. It doesn't respect the 80-characters/line limit either, requiring
a couple more stepd for me for every single post sent through the MS
webpage. You might not directly care much about these details, but they
give you a good overview of the situation here and they sure explain
quite a bit of the frustration of the long-time users of these groups.
If, however, I misinterpreted your prior response, accept my regrets if
I over-reacted.
No big deal, we're all grown-ups (well, not all, but you get my point
;-) ).
The new MS portal has made things a little tricky on both side of the
aisle and everybody is getting more than a bit frustrated. I myself
decided to stop responding to a lot of posts where people don't make the
effort of searching the group for previous answers, don't even make the
minimal efforts to at least be polite and provide next to no detail we
can start to work with to try and help,
In some of the other groups, if you don't say "hello" and "thank you",
not only do you not get an answer to your question but you get almost
immediately a couple of "slaps on the wrist" by other users reminding
you about Nettiquette: these groups are a community. If newcomers are
not nice, they are not likely to receive a royal treatment from the
others ;-)
Corentin
