[gavininskip]

Hi guys and girls,

A friend of mine has highly recommended the site, so I've signed up!

I wondered if you could help me with this problem as it's stressing me out a bit at the moment! I have a many IT issues to sort out at the moment, especially as I have just bought a Macbook but still have a desktop PC! I have looked around the site but not been able to see anything relevant.

This is how my life works......

I have a PC at home and a PC at work. Because I'm very anal in my orginisation I LOVE Outlook and sadly it runs my life! Because of that I have an iPaq. This is great because with Active Sync I Sync up my Contacts, Diary and Tasks. When I get to work I put the iPaq in the dock, when I get home I put it in the one on my office desk. Thus this means wherever I am - Home, Work, or Even on the Move my Outlook is in Sync, woo hoo - life is perfect!

Hope you're with me so far.

Life is great, until (once again) the iPaq cocks up on me because (once again) it dies, literally dies! However this may be an oppourtunity for change! You see, I think I need to stop carrying around a bulky iPaq. As my friend pointed out I could just do it on a mobile, and Sync that up between Work and Home and then use that on the move.

Great Idea.....However......

In my Outlook I have about 900 Contacts, my mobile phone I just put random numbers in manually (the ones I probably need most often) so as you can imagine, I don't want to carry around 900 contacts in my my mobile phone book.

I hope you're still with me....

The perfect solution I think, would be to find some online programme that can sync up Outlooks over the web, then I could do this at home and at work. (If it could do it with my Macbook too that would be even better). However I don't know of such a programme. That would solve the PC at Home and Work Syncing Issue.....but what about on the move?
Well that would be okay because I could get that just to Sync Diary and Tasks whenever I'm at home or work.

So what do you think guys and gals? It's an open ended problem where anything could be the answer? Or maybe I should embrace the iPaq and get it repaired?!.......And then don't even start me on the mobile - Sony Ericcson k850 (have 800 at mo) or Nokia N95......! That's another issue!!!

Seriously, any help would be greatly appreciated

gav

[leroys1000]

This maybe?
http://get.live.com/

[gavininskip]

From what I can work out I don't think that does syncing.....any other ideas....pretty please?!

[Soundy]

Of course, this is what an Exchange server is designed to do. That's not free, though.

However, I googled "sync outlook via web" and this is the first hit that came up, may be useful: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.asp

[Soundy]

This one may be useful as well; it's not free, but is specifically designed for what you're trying to do:
http://www.mapilab.com/groupware/share_sync/

[Ae3 Boomer]

From what i can understand your trying to keep outlook contact info at home thesame as the info at work, Correct? because i thought you could save the contact info to a file (like on a zip drive) and then import it to another computer's outlook,wich i recomend, because thats easy + free

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by Ae3 Boomer

From what i can understand your trying to keep outlook contact info at home thesame as the info at work, Correct? because i thought you could save the contact info to a file (like on a zip drive) and then import it to another computer's outlook,wich i recomend, because thats easy + free

Yeah, but not very efficient if you want to update in both locations and keep them synchronized... every time you save it in one location and import it in the other, it'll stop on every duplicate and ask what you want to do with it. Might be okay if you have <10 contacts...

[Drabdr]

I'm certainly not an expert. I just thought I would brainstorm a bit.

I would think that you could export from one (.pst), and then import to the other computer (allow duplicates). It should just import them, and if there are any duplicates, they will be made.

Also, couldn't you export both to Excel, then compare?

Also, maybe you could import all the records into Access. Keep control of the one database. Then, you can import the one file to both computers.

I have gone so far as to delete the contact list on a computer (or export it first, if you want), then uploading the most current. That way it's clean each time.

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by Drabdr

I'm certainly not an expert. I just thought I would brainstorm a bit.

No problem. That's half the fun

I would think that you could export from one (.pst), and then import to the other computer (allow duplicates). It should just import them, and if there are any duplicates, they will be made.

Sure, but then you need to find and delete the duplicates, which means figuring out which duplicate is the more recent version. The whole idea of synchronizing is to update a central record with the latest version of the record. For example, my phone syncs to my Outlook automatically - if I update an entry on Outlook, the version on the phone gets updated with those changes on the next sync; if I change an entry on the phone, it should alter the entry with the new information on Outlook when I sync.

Also, couldn't you export both to Excel, then compare?

Yes, but that becomes a lot of work as well - you need to export both PSTs, load them into Excel, and if you don't have a script that will compare them, you need to go through every entry, and again, determine yourself which is the correct record to keep. Then once you're done, you have to export them again to a PST, and import that back into BOTH copies of Outlook.

Also, maybe you could import all the records into Access. Keep control of the one database. Then, you can import the one file to both computers.

The whole idea, again, is to avoid the whole export-to-a-third-application process every time you update one or the other.

I have gone so far as to delete the contact list on a computer (or export it first, if you want), then uploading the most current. That way it's clean each time.

That can cause problems, though, if you change one record on one machine, and another record on the other machine - you're going to lose one of the changes.

[gavininskip]

Hi everyone,

Wow thanks for this - this is great.

I didn't realise I had all these replies, sorry I thought I got email notifications when that happened.

I'm up in Liverpool at the mo, so I've got some time later and I'm going to sit down and read all these thanks loads!!!

gav

[Drabdr]

Originally Posted by gavininskip

...I didn't realise I had all these replies, sorry I thought I got email notifications when that happened.

Hello, gav. I am new to this board, so this needs to be confirmed by a senior member/moderator. Generally, you will receive a notification to the first reply to the thread. Then, when you visit that thread (read the replies), you will begin to receive new notifications.

[Drabdr]

Originally Posted by Soundy

Sure, but then you need to find and delete the duplicates, which means figuring out which duplicate is the more recent version. The whole idea of synchronizing is to update a central record with the latest version of the record. For example, my phone syncs to my Outlook automatically - if I update an entry on Outlook, the version on the phone gets updated with those changes on the next sync; if I change an entry on the phone, it should alter the entry with the new information on Outlook when I sync.

Agreed. This was the least favorite of my ideas.

Originally Posted by Soundy

The whole idea, again, is to avoid the whole export-to-a-third-application process every time you update one or the other.

Agreed on the other parts as well. In the past, I have used a Palm, which works pretty well for this scenario (like the OP, I tend to be a bit obsessive/ anal about things also). The palm was always pretty clean, and would keep both groups of information current.

900 contacts sounds like a pretty huge list. I think I only know about 50 people total!

[Soundy]

My boss and I both have Palm Treos (his is a 600, mine's a 650), so I set us both up on Outlook (it's a bloated piece of crap, but it seems to be the only thing that will do all this properly), connected both to a friend's Exchange server, installed KeySuite on both Palms, and imported our entire work contact list into my Outlook (a couple hundred entries)... any changes to the contacts or calendars on either Outlook or Palm are all synced nicely across all machines. At least that works... now if I could just find an anti-spam filter for Outlook that actually works AND doesn't lock up all the time...

[gavininskip]

Thanks for that Drabdr

Shall I add a curve ball to this, that you'll probably groan about!

I've just got a Macbook so obviously if there's a good way the PST can sync up to Entrouage....that would be good!