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Bob Russell · 10-27-2004, 06:29 PM

I tried the my.yahoo thing, and it didn't work for me, but I did find a great alternative...

Resync can be found at www.stratabase.com

It's FREE and it's wonderful!!!!!! My options were basically going to come down to purchasing a third party solution (a whopping $20, $40 or more depending on functionality and without trials available because they don't want people using he trial to do the conversion I guess.) This program saved me a lot of money and probably a lot of frustration.

A couple things to watch out for: 1. Make sure you have a full install of Outlook including the CDOs. Stands for something like Collaborative Data Objects. 2. If you get a security warning about some program accessing the mail file, just allow it, because it's the Resync program doing what it's supposed to be doing. There's even an option in Resync to automatically close that warning for you.

PALMONE USERS MAY ALREADY HAVE POCKETMIRROR!!!!!
I should mention that I'm converting from my Sony Clie SJ33 which is an earlier model. Therefore it doesn't come with PocketMirror like the more recent models from PalmOne. If you are lucky enough to have a program already to sync from Palm to Outlook, that's all you need. Like Jess said before, once the data is in Outlook it's ready for PPC, because Outlook is to PPC like Palm Desktop is to Palm PDAs. (Gee... all those SAT questions seem to have influenced my thinking. I'm writing like those analogy test questions from high school!)

So I'm all set. It went very smoothly for me. The only work required had to do with categories and task priorities. Take all this with a grain of salt, because I've never used Outlook before, but this is how I chose to handle things...

CATEGORY SETUP
The categories are maintained in a master task list for Outlook. They are then automatically included in the list of categories to choose for an Outlook item (like a task, note, apptmt, contact). That list was annoyingly populated with stuff from Microsoft that I never use, so I wanted to remove the stuff I don't use and add the categories I do use. Turned out to be easy because removing the category in the master list doesn't automatically move the items in that category to unfiled like on the Palm. So I fixed the master category list and then viewed the items by category-organized view. Then for each category I selected all the items and right mouse clicked to set the new category assignment in a mass change operation. Slick! In my case I mostly just had about a dozen memopad categories and a few apptmt and contact categories, so it was easy.

BACKUP OF OUTLOOK DATA
Once all this was done, I did make a point of copying my outlook data to a backup directory. What I did was choose, File.... Data File Management... and then I opened in the indicated directory. Two files were there including an extend file and a .pst file. That seems to be all my data, so I just copied them to a backup folder on my pc and assumed I can recover now if necessary. (Hope that's right... I didn't see any documentation on that!)

TASK PRIORITIES
I was saddened to see that Outlook only uses 3 priority levels for tasks. Apparently this is based on Redmond culture at Microsoft and high priority means it's for Bill, normal means it affects your performance review and low means you'll get to it when you have some extra time.

Well, it may work for Bill, but I wasn't thrilled that I have to convert my system to fit Bill's system! Turns out, though, that I was able to adapt, and I think I like the new method better than my old one. What I'm doing now is making two categories for each previous todo category on my Palm. In my case, that's just Work and Home. So now I have Work, Work_Queued, Home, and Home_Queued. The idea is that priorities 1,2,3 are fine for tasks that are really current and for the day at hand. All the other tasks that clutter up everything are now in the "_Queued" categories so they don't get forgotten. Then they move to the main category when I'm ready to attack them.

There's another expected benefit for me with that because now I'm not as dependent on the outliner to be able to link todos. That was a key feature in ShadowPlan that I wasn't quite sure how I'd do without. It was nicer in Shadow because the todos could live inside of my outlines dormant until they came up for current todos, and then all I had to do was click a checkbox and they popped up on my todo list in the Palm PIM todo app! I'll miss that funtionality, but I think it will be okay now that I have a "_Queued" category of todos. The top-level vision and project info can be in an outliner and/or memos. The dormant todos that I don't want to forget can live in the "_Queued" category. And they move to the active todo list when I'm ready for them. You never know how something's going to work until you try it, but I am satisfied that it's a reasonable approach for my needs.

ADDRESS FIXES
One more item that needed care and feeding manually was the contact database. Even though the items showed as if they were migrated properly, and even though the "File As" item was populated in the screens for the item, Outlook didn't seem to know that the File As item was there. As a result, the PPC Contacts application wasn't showing any item that was entered with a company but no (person) name. I had to open each item and add a space to the name and delete the space and then save the item. It was corrected once that was done. If you are trying this conversion yourself, I'd set the Outlook File As option under contact options to be something that includes both name (last,first) and company. Maybe that would cause it to understand the proper file as on the first sync.

MEMOPAD FIXES
Seems the notes didn't come over properly. Not sure why yet. I'll edit this post with the solution or workaround if I find one.

WRAPUP
Sorry this post is so long, but I figure the info is essential for anyone converting from Palm to PPC, so we'll just leave it here for reference even if people don't bother to read it all right now. I don't think this kind of info is available anywhere else but MobileRead.com, so when the time comes, you'll be glad it's here!

10-27-2004, 06:29 PM	#24
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	Converting PIM Data from PalmOS to PPC I tried the my.yahoo thing, and it didn't work for me, but I did find a great alternative... Resync can be found at www.stratabase.com It's FREE and it's wonderful!!!!!! My options were basically going to come down to purchasing a third party solution (a whopping $20, $40 or more depending on functionality and without trials available because they don't want people using he trial to do the conversion I guess.) This program saved me a lot of money and probably a lot of frustration. A couple things to watch out for: 1. Make sure you have a full install of Outlook including the CDOs. Stands for something like Collaborative Data Objects. 2. If you get a security warning about some program accessing the mail file, just allow it, because it's the Resync program doing what it's supposed to be doing. There's even an option in Resync to automatically close that warning for you. PALMONE USERS MAY ALREADY HAVE POCKETMIRROR!!!!! I should mention that I'm converting from my Sony Clie SJ33 which is an earlier model. Therefore it doesn't come with PocketMirror like the more recent models from PalmOne. If you are lucky enough to have a program already to sync from Palm to Outlook, that's all you need. Like Jess said before, once the data is in Outlook it's ready for PPC, because Outlook is to PPC like Palm Desktop is to Palm PDAs. (Gee... all those SAT questions seem to have influenced my thinking. I'm writing like those analogy test questions from high school!) So I'm all set. It went very smoothly for me. The only work required had to do with categories and task priorities. Take all this with a grain of salt, because I've never used Outlook before, but this is how I chose to handle things... CATEGORY SETUP The categories are maintained in a master task list for Outlook. They are then automatically included in the list of categories to choose for an Outlook item (like a task, note, apptmt, contact). That list was annoyingly populated with stuff from Microsoft that I never use, so I wanted to remove the stuff I don't use and add the categories I do use. Turned out to be easy because removing the category in the master list doesn't automatically move the items in that category to unfiled like on the Palm. So I fixed the master category list and then viewed the items by category-organized view. Then for each category I selected all the items and right mouse clicked to set the new category assignment in a mass change operation. Slick! In my case I mostly just had about a dozen memopad categories and a few apptmt and contact categories, so it was easy. BACKUP OF OUTLOOK DATA Once all this was done, I did make a point of copying my outlook data to a backup directory. What I did was choose, File.... Data File Management... and then I opened in the indicated directory. Two files were there including an extend file and a .pst file. That seems to be all my data, so I just copied them to a backup folder on my pc and assumed I can recover now if necessary. (Hope that's right... I didn't see any documentation on that!) TASK PRIORITIES I was saddened to see that Outlook only uses 3 priority levels for tasks. Apparently this is based on Redmond culture at Microsoft and high priority means it's for Bill, normal means it affects your performance review and low means you'll get to it when you have some extra time. Well, it may work for Bill, but I wasn't thrilled that I have to convert my system to fit Bill's system! Turns out, though, that I was able to adapt, and I think I like the new method better than my old one. What I'm doing now is making two categories for each previous todo category on my Palm. In my case, that's just Work and Home. So now I have Work, Work_Queued, Home, and Home_Queued. The idea is that priorities 1,2,3 are fine for tasks that are really current and for the day at hand. All the other tasks that clutter up everything are now in the "_Queued" categories so they don't get forgotten. Then they move to the main category when I'm ready to attack them. There's another expected benefit for me with that because now I'm not as dependent on the outliner to be able to link todos. That was a key feature in ShadowPlan that I wasn't quite sure how I'd do without. It was nicer in Shadow because the todos could live inside of my outlines dormant until they came up for current todos, and then all I had to do was click a checkbox and they popped up on my todo list in the Palm PIM todo app! I'll miss that funtionality, but I think it will be okay now that I have a "_Queued" category of todos. The top-level vision and project info can be in an outliner and/or memos. The dormant todos that I don't want to forget can live in the "_Queued" category. And they move to the active todo list when I'm ready for them. You never know how something's going to work until you try it, but I am satisfied that it's a reasonable approach for my needs. ADDRESS FIXES One more item that needed care and feeding manually was the contact database. Even though the items showed as if they were migrated properly, and even though the "File As" item was populated in the screens for the item, Outlook didn't seem to know that the File As item was there. As a result, the PPC Contacts application wasn't showing any item that was entered with a company but no (person) name. I had to open each item and add a space to the name and delete the space and then save the item. It was corrected once that was done. If you are trying this conversion yourself, I'd set the Outlook File As option under contact options to be something that includes both name (last,first) and company. Maybe that would cause it to understand the proper file as on the first sync. MEMOPAD FIXES Seems the notes didn't come over properly. Not sure why yet. I'll edit this post with the solution or workaround if I find one. WRAPUP Sorry this post is so long, but I figure the info is essential for anyone converting from Palm to PPC, so we'll just leave it here for reference even if people don't bother to read it all right now. I don't think this kind of info is available anywhere else but MobileRead.com, so when the time comes, you'll be glad it's here!