Syncing a Palm OS device to Entourage AND to Palm Desktop

[John Chacona]

Brethren --

I already know the answer to this question, I think, but humor me.

I have been running my life out of Palm Desktop for eight years (right, it
was Claris Organizer then). My life -- personal as well as professional --
is inconceivable without this program.

I have a little PDA that I sync to my personal laptop, the repository of my
life and work. Now we have converted to Entourage at my day job, our sysop
encourages everyone to use the calendar function. Fair enough.

I know I can sync my Palm to this app, but I have two reservations:

1. What do I do with the "private" items in the file, and
2. If I sync to Entourage, I can no longer sync to Palm Desktop on my
personal laptop (something I want to do)

Or can I?

I mean, this is the old management training canard, "Never keep two
calendars," isn't it?

I was using Palm Desktop years before I arrived at this company (and before
this company arrived at Entourage), but I want to be a team player.

Is there any way out of this conundrum?

BTW, for those of you who read the Palm board, my apologies for the imminent
x-post.

Pvt. mail is fine as I'm billable and reading this n/g is a dicey use of
Time, even when it's to resolve work issues.

jc

 

[Stephen Adams]

John Chacona wrote:

[...]

I know I can sync my Palm to this app, but I have two reservations:

1. What do I do with the "private" items in the file, and
2. If I sync to Entourage, I can no longer sync to Palm Desktop on my
personal laptop (something I want to do)

Or can I?

You can but not without some manual conduit manipulation on your part.

The Palm can sync with only one calendar/date book, to do list, and
address/contact book at one time with its conduit system. If you're
syncing to Palm Desktop, you can't sync at the same time with Entourage
or Apple's iApps, etc.

If you want to sync to Entourage, put its conduit in the "Conduits"
folder and move the Palm Desktop's Date Book, Todo, and Address Book
conduits into a "Disabled Conduits" folder. When you want to sync with
Palm Desktop, move the Entourage conduit into the "Disabled Conduits"
folder and move the three Palm conduits back into "Conduits".

This will basically work. Note that if you go into HotSync Manager and
check the conduits, you'll see that the "last sync" date will revert
back to "never" when you perform such manual manipulation. I don't know
how much of an impact this will have for you personally, but that's what
I found happens.

Also, you run the risk of having duplicate items (calendar, contacts,
todos) creep into the works. It didn't happen all the time, but when it
did, it was a PITA to clean up.

I mean, this is the old management training canard, "Never keep two
calendars," isn't it?

In a technical sense, it's a programming limitation of the Palm conduit
system. But you're right, it can also get messy in the mind trying to
remember which desktop PIM is being synced to your PDA. When I tried
this switcheroo, I found I was never syncing with the desktop PIM that I
thought I was (and I added the complexity of iSync and the iApps on top
of Palm Desktop and Entourage), which lead to interesting moments.

In the end, I gave up on managing the various PIM products manually and
stuck with one. It was just too confusing trying to keep them all synced
up on a daily basis.

But it's nice to know that you /can/ sync more than one desktop PIM on
occasion.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Steve