How do you fix it when you have 1000 duplicate calendar entries added to your Microsoft Outlook Calendar by a phone set in the wrong timezone??? No idea? Neither do I, so here is a post about how to ensure that you are not reminded of your 8am meeting at 1:45am as well as 7:45am.
CHECK YOUR PHONE AND PC TIMEZONES
Under the clock options, ensure that both your computer and your phone agree what timezone you are in. Otherwise, if your phone notices that there is no entry at 2am (+5GMT) for your 8am (+11GMT) , it will add another meeting in at 2am. Multiply that by 1000 and you have a problem.
LIMIT YOUR FIRST SYNC
Before you connect your phone to the PC Suite, check your sync options. Allow your phone and PC to sync a small range of dates such as two days before, and two days after. That way if something goes wrong with the sync you can undo it without too much fuss.
REMEMBER SYNC CANT BE UNDONE
There are programs that allow you to remove duplicates but its not easy so just dont rush into doing your first synchronisation.
CHECK YOUR SYNC OPTIONS
If you know that your Microsoft Outlook calendar is always more accurate than its phone brother, then make sure that the sync program is told in the options that when there is a conflict between the two, it will go with the Outlook version of events.
TRY ONE WAY FIRST
If you want to be cautious, how about doing a one way sync first.
Hope these tips help you to keep yourself from sinking while you're syncing. And if anyone has been in this situation... you've made a mess of your calendar with a dodgy sync, please feel free to share how you got out of it. YOu dont need to login, just post as anonymous in the SUGGESTIONS link below.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
5 Things to Think Before you Sync - Outlook Calendar with Nokia
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A medium-tech solution:
ReplyDeleteI switched to using ICS files for my calendar. This is an open standard. I switched from Outlook to Sunbird/Lightning because it uses ICS as a native calendar format. There are many other programs which can use it also.
I then submit the ICS file to my personal Subversion server, which I already use to keep my other files organised. The client diffing tools allow me to check before a commit if I want to actually keep the changes.
The next problem was syncing with my E65. PC Suite is out the window, as it does not sync with Thunderbird. Today I set up my own Funambol server, and used the Funambol plugin for Thunderbird to sync.
Overall the system works well except for two niggles so far:
1. newlines in the calendar entry notes become '\n', not sure if this is funambol or the thunderbird plugin.
2. tasks are not synced by the plugin yet, they will in future.
The advantage of the ICS/Subversion system is that it makes it easy to control changes, and revert to previous versions.
ReplyDelete