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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Symbian phones > Losing numbers when syncing P910 with Outlook Bookmark topic

Hello,

When I edit or create a new contact in my p910 outlook deletes the mobil & fax number when sync'ing. It does not delete the numbers from the handheld only in outlook!

Of course if I sync it one more time it will delete the number form my handheld and thats be cuz it thinks that the contact with the deleted numbers in outlook is the newer one.

But why does outlook delete the numbers in the first place???
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Posted: 2004-10-25 16:36:12
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Am I the only one?
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Posted: 2004-10-26 23:34:56
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You are not alone...I am the second one! Don't really know why it happens, but very annoying!
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Posted: 2004-10-27 12:01:37
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Try changing the options under sync, with phone overriding outlook. Should work, does in mine.
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Posted: 2004-10-27 14:49:45
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Been digging into this and I am slowly understanding what is going on. Under the surface Sony is using the vcard format to sync the contacts with outlook, this makes a lot of sense as it is almost the p900 native format and most CRM systems understand it. The problem comes with MS I am afraid in that they only allow one mobile no as opposed to the multiple nos that can exist in the P900/P910. My research so far indicates that you should be safe with up to the following:-
2 Business Nos
2 Home Phone Nos
1 Business Fax
1 Home Fax
1 Mobile No (either home or work)

(The above list is valid for Outlook 2003 it may be less on previous versions)

If you break the limits above then strange things happen depending on your settings. Under certain circumstances I have seen the contact being deleted in others You simply lose a number.
Unfortunately the solution appears to be In Microsofts hands as there is no way that you can create new fields in outlook and map them to the VCARD format so dont expect a resolution any time soon....
I would expect this problem to be worse with older versions of Outlook. I have a feeling that these only allowed one work and home phone number. The best way to check is to create a dummy contact in Outlook with all the fields filled out - you can get at all the nos in the all fields tab - and see what transfers. Interestingly you can actualy raise the no of fields displayed in the P910 by this method. Like many things MS I suspect there may be a way to hack Outlook to deal with this better BUT it will be undocumented & unsurported and probly involves hacking the codex and replacing the schema entry for the car tel no.

It is also of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE that you DO NOT change Home nos to work nos where you have more than one home or work number on the p910 as this would reorder the nos and thus cause confusion in Outlook. The problem here is that the P910 doesnt differentiate between 1 & 2 where it has multiple home or bus nos.

I am still plugging away at this but dont expect results any time soon and the above is just the result of my preliminary investigations.
I WOULD STRONGLY URGE ALL TO BACKUP THEIR OUTLOOK FILE BEFORE SYNCING as I have observed some very strange behaviour at times even to the extent of watching it delete 100 out of 131 contacts.

If you do need to store more than one mobile number for a contact I would recomend that you create two contacts with different names for the present. The same solution may be true with older outlook versions for multiple home/businees nos

rgds
Stephen

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Posted: 2004-10-27 15:04:46
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Thanks very much! I have a better understanding now!
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Posted: 2004-10-27 15:47:17
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More than I do at present appear to be going arround in circles on this

I suspect the only way out is to write or buy another sync program.

Moderator - is there anyway we can sticky a sync topic as this is a recuring theme and potentially can completely wreck ones adress books on both pc & p900


[ This Message was edited by: stevehaley on 2004-10-28 01:28 ]
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Posted: 2004-10-28 02:25:49
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well same thing happening to me its not from the synchronization it happens as soon as you recover a backup
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Posted: 2004-10-28 12:12:54
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Thanks a lot stevehaley!

I will try with an upgraded version of MS Outlook (I am running 0ffice 2000 at the time).

Is there any other sync-program on the market for P910, like the one PALM uses? It seems that everytime you try to get a third party program to work with MS something always goes wrong!

//David

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Posted: 2004-11-05 13:43:22
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I am desperate for a different Synch program - PC suite does not work on my laptop and I have to keep an old PC just for synching my 910! I have searched the internet but can't find anything. Would be grateful if anyone knows of anything...
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Posted: 2004-11-05 19:09:04
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