Sync Oddness - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Ok, got the Hero (after a diamond and trinity) works nice BUT what is with the HTC Sync Thing?
Everytime it connects it udates random conacts from Outlook, so that at the moment the wife has 4 entries and some other numbers are the same yet others are fine.
ANyone else any experience and more importantly how to heck do I stop it?!
ta muchly

What? Really? HTC Sync lets you synchronize Outlook or Windows Address Book contacts on your PC with your Hero.
ANyone else any experience and more importantly how to heck do I stop it?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just don't use it! there is nothing to say you have to use 'HTC Sync'.
I never use it as I don't want the contacts in Outlook to sync to my Hero. I just use my google contacts for this.

No there is nothing saying I HAVE to use HTC Sync however if I want to put all my contacts across in one easy go then the options seem a little limited.
Fixed it now just told it not to auto sync and that seems to have got control back to me

Glad to hear you got it sorted...
I know there are limited options when 'sync-ing' contacts to your Hero.
I used 'ExportContacts' app in the market to export all my 'old' SIM contacts into a csv file. I then exported my contacts from outlook also to a csv file which can then be imported into your Google account.
All to do then was to 'merge' all of the contacts in my Google account. This then syncs with the phone and I never bothered to use HTC Sync.

Makes sense, I dont use the google address book as I tend to keep the data useage to a minimum mainly as when at work we dont even have a phone signal, so prefer to carry everything "locally" properly, hence the much abused and hated outlook ;0

Related

Porting phone contacts- Blackstone to Hero

Hi,
Sorry for the newbie question.
I have a Touch HD/Blackstone, currently with about 200 phone contacts in it, I don't sync the phone contacts with outlook as I don't want the ( literally) 1000's of old/rubbish/wrong contacts that I have in outlook cluttering up my phone contacts list.
I do have agoogle account linked to my outlook, so the calender apointments have synced to the phone fine.
Question is, how do I simply port my contacts in my blackstone to the hero?
I'm sure it's simple, but I can't figure it out...
Clock is ticking, My number ports over to the hero Tuesday and it is my work phone (own business) so not having contacts on the phone is going to be rather disastrous! ( They are both network locked, so can't simply swap sims)
BTW, Am I right in thinking once I have my contacts over, set my email (pop3) that there is no need to plug my phone into my work PC as everything will be coming across wirelessly? ( Contacts already there, calender is sent via google wirelessly and email via pop3 account..)
Sorry to ramble and thanks in advance for any answers.
BTW... The hero is a class apart from the Blackstone, despite running all sorts of decent stuff and (IMO) the best/smoothest Rom for it ( Topix ). Won't be going back to Winmo intil windows 7 is released-and thats only if it is any good- but by then Android will be ruling the mobile world I'm sure!
perhaps this: http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html#p=winmo
Thats great, thansk for that.
All new to me this Google stuff, didn't know that existed.
squirreleater said:
Thats great, thansk for that.
All new to me this Google stuff, didn't know that existed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can also use the main Active Sync application on the blackstone creating a server m.google.com with your username and password.
Make sure only contacts and calendar are ticked (as notes /tasks and email aren't supported yet) and this will work when you sync
Thanks ,
Did this last night and now have 223 contacts on the phone.
The more I use the Hero the more impressed I am!

leaving winmo!

Hello all, i am leaving winmo this friday for a HTC Hero and i would like to know some things ahead of time.
1. Is ther a bing app for android. i use this every day and would like to continue.
2. how many email acct. can one have on the hero?
3. are there cab. files for android or is everything ran from the app store?
4. will pim backup work to transfer all my contacts, texts, email and so on?
5. are there any other roms to flash to to make it better, and where are they?
i hope some or all can be answered, and i hope this is not a repeat... if so i am sorry, hanx
1. For what purpose?
2. Same as WinMo... one Exchange and as many IMAP/POP3 as you want...
3. Not CABs, they're called APKs in Android, can be installed from device or PC (needs to be enabled in Settings) as well as the market
4. No
5. Modacos and Drizzys is available in the Development forum for Hero, they are custom made from HTCs latest update
Hey, thanks for the quick feed back. just what i needed to know. bing is windows mobile live search cab that give u everything in one place, movie times, weather, business and map searches, gas prices etc. is there anything like it or does google do it all as well? how is the sync feature with windows vista and xp. does android sync with your office suite like winmo does? can you sync calendar, contacts etc.?or will i have to start over with new contact client setup and calendar or something?
It would be in your best interest to set up a google account. I think it syncs your calendar and stuff with google.
Re Syncing of Hero
Yes you can sync your phone so that it gets all your contacts, calendar and emails.
I sync with Exchange to get my emails and calendar entries but use the HTC Sync program to sync contacts. I do this as for some reason I get various errors when syncing contacts through my Exchange account.
This is my first non winmo phone since the first HTC came out on orange and I was very hesitant to leave the platform, however after a week with my G2 (still waiting for T Mobile update!!) i am more than happy and doubt I will venture back unless Microsoft pulls a rabbit out of a hat (or their fingers out of theirs arses) and releases the operating system that people actually want!!
Syncing Hero with Google and Desktop Applications
d.raw24 said:
Hey, thanks for the quick feed back. just what i needed to know. bing is windows mobile live search cab that give u everything in one place, movie times, weather, business and map searches, gas prices etc. is there anything like it or does google do it all as well? how is the sync feature with windows vista and xp. does android sync with your office suite like winmo does? can you sync calendar, contacts etc.?or will i have to start over with new contact client setup and calendar or something?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Hero comes with HTC Sync which supposedly lets you sync the phone with the Office suite, but I haven't tried that - by the time I realised it was there, I had already migrated everything over to a mixture of Google and Mozilla.
The way I make it work is by using Google contacts and calendar as the 'central database' that you sync everything with. I use Thunderbird for email and contacts, and Sunbird or Lightning for the calendar. (Lightning is an extension for Thunderbird, and Sunbird is essentially the same program but set as a standalone application). Using the GContactSync add-on with the Thunderbird address book lets it sync with Google contacts, and Sunbird/Lightning can be set up already to work with Google calendar. Ideally you actually keep two calendars in Sunbird; one for your recent appointments, one for the archive. This keeps your life off of Google's servers, and makes the synchronising faster on the phone or desktop.
This setup works well even if you have multiple computers that you all want to sync together, though if some of the computers aren't always connected, such as a laptop, then you need another step. The issue is that Sunbird/Lightning connects directly to Google calendar rather than maintaining an offline calendar which it occasionally syncs with Google. So if your connection drops or you switch off wi-fi to save laptop battery, you lose access to the calendar. The solution is another add-on called GCalDaemon which downloads the calendar from Google and then works with Sunbird/Lightning, syncing with Google when it can.
It might sound complicated, but it's not too bad really!
so many questions?
moved to Q&A
Thank steven just what i was after and i never even asked...good man!
d.raw24 said:
Hello all, i am leaving winmo this friday for a HTC Hero
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Having left Winmo for Android are you happy with your choice? I am currently running a HD and a Hero, I was intending leaving Winmo but I am a bit disappointed with Android.
Do you feel you can do everything with Android that you could do with Winmo?

Converting from WinMo

Hi All
I currently have a Diamond and am due for an upgrade and am seriously thinking about the Hero.
I've looked around the various forums but can't seem to find the answer to my question. When changing between Win Mo Pro phones I could easily backup contacts, calender, text messages, emails etc using PPCbackup.
Is there a program that will allow a backup from WinMoPro and restore it onto the Andriod system?
I know I can backup the contacts and calender using outlook 2003 and squirt them over the Hero using the HTC Sync program but not sure about anything else? It would be very helpful to have my text messages sent on the Hero as alot of work communication is sent that way.
Help much appreciated
Ed
You send your outlook contacts to your googlemail account. google backs then all up, so as soon as you sign in (say after a wipe) they all come back to the phone as before.
There is also various backup aps as well.
can you not sync ur winmo phone to an exchange server then sync ur android one too.
also theres a app called windows mobile sms migrator. http://android.modaco.com/content/software/288916/windows-mobile-sms-migrator-beta-1/
Well if all your contacts are in Outlook the HTC sync software just simply pulls the contacts from Outlook.
http://www.htc.com/uk/SupportViewNews.aspx?dl_id=756&news_id=339
My contacts and calender aren't the issue but thanks for replying, it the SMS messages I'm more concerned about.
I'll upgrade and give the modaco app a try and see how I get on.
It would of course be nice to see migration software that'll squirt everything across in one go that would indeed be a shot across the bow's for windows lol.
Thanks for the replies everyone

Sync With Google

Google Sync is a free service that allows you to sync your contacts, email and calendar with your gmail account.
It is a two-way sync, meaning that if you add an appointment or contact to your phone, it will upload to Google's cloud and update your gmail information as well.
I use Google Sync to keep my contacts in the cloud, vs using myPhone since I have multiple phones but only one Windows Live account. If you have ever synced two phones to myPhone under one account, you'll see right away why this is a bad thing.
One of my favorite benefits from using Google Sync is the fact that it not only stores my phone contacts, it also stores their facebook links and contact pictures as well. This means that I can freely flash another ROM without worrying about backing up all of my contacts to SIM or myPhone and then manually updating all of the information for them.
The best part of Google Sync has to be the push email service. As emails arrive (assuming you have set the account up correctly), they will be pushed to your phone via ActiveSync. You don't have to be at your computer for this, it's done over the air.
The only think Google Sync can't do is sync Tasks. If you choose Tasks during the setup, you will receive a cryptic error.
Now that I've told you about the benefits of Google Sync, let's go over how to use it. This assumes you have an existing gmail account. I don't know how to sync with Google without a gmail account, sorry.
I always add my hotmail account first. For some strange reason you can never go back and edit the settings for the first mail account you setup on Windows Mobile, so I use my hotmail account for this.
Steps:
Select your Mail tab and hit the Menu button
Choose "Add Account"
Under "Choose a Mail Provider", select "Outlook" (Don't select Gmail!)
Put your entire gmail address ([email protected]) in the "Email address" box, followed by your password.
Select "Next"
Under "User name" put your email address ([email protected]) again.
The Password field should be filled in, if not just put it in again.
Scroll down.
Leave "Domain" blank.
Scroll down.
Leave "Save password" checked.
Under "Server address" put m.google.com
Leave "This server requires an encrypted (SSL) connection" checked.
Select "Next"
If all options are selected, deselect Tasks (Very Important!)
If not, select Mail, Contacts, Calendar
Hit Advanced Settings
Peak time and Non-peak time (I have "As items arrive" on both here) sets how often your emails are pushed to your phone.
I have nationwide coverage, so I also select "Sync data when roaming".
Hit "Done"
Hit "Done" again.
The phone will now connect to the Google Sync server and begin updating your contacts, calendar appointments and email. This may take a few minutes, depending on the number of contacts and such. If you have any unread messages in your gmail inbox, they should now appear on your phone in short order. You may choose "Send/Receive" from the mail Menu if you think it is taking too long.
You will now be able to receive your email sent to your gmail account as soon as it arrives. I have also forwarded my email from my other accounts to my gmail account, but this may be too much for you.
I would not recommend this to anyone who does not have the "Smart Phone" plan (so-called "Unlimited Data Plan"), as it will eat up your bandwith quickly. It may also have a detrimental effect on your battery, due to the fact that it requires a constant data and Active Sync connection to work properly.
If you are concerned about your battery, you can try changing the Peak and Non-peak options under "Advanced" to longer intervals. If it makes a big difference in the life of your battery, I would love to hear about it here!
You can view the original Google Sync video and tutorial links here:
http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/
Hopefully this will be of use to someone out there! Please let me know if you use Google Sync or if you have trouble following my directions.
---Issue With Labels/Folders---
If you have set gmail to tag messages with labels as they come in, you may not be able to read the messages on your phone. XDA-DEV user pantyshot has managed a workaround and posted it here. Be sure to thank pantyshot for the fix if you find it handy!
Also, newer versions of Outlook Mobile (any available as a cab install so that people don't have to use a custom rom?) support sorting messages by subject. Pretty darn close to the threaded messages in the orgasmic Android Gmail app.
I've been doing this since I got the phone, but it is nice to see someone write up the details.
Nice thx man. I didnt even know this was possible on WM coming from a Nexus. I synced my phonebook with MS outlook but nice to know this is possible.
This should be a sticky!!!
Thanks... nice sticky note.
On Friday, I bought an HD2 to replace my Nexus One (which I gave to my daughter). The N1 & Android are just fine but I wanted to play with the HD2 and WinMo. Not too worried about the lack of support for WinMo 7 as I am certain that we will find versions we can use thanks to XDA.
Ok, back on-topic... I was using Google Sync to get my messages from Gmail to my Nexus One. I now know how to do this with WinMo 6.5. I will address this when I get back home as I am on a business trip in Amman, Jordan and I don't want to rake-up astronomical data roaming charges while over here.
this is helpful for newbies/ beginners..
Anyway I had done set up the gmail as "PRIMARY" account only when i got HD2. why i need hotmail set up as primary account then add gmail? I just curious..
I've been using this method as well, but has anyone noticed that you cannot sync your labels from gmail? Is it just me or Outlook just syncs the inbox aside from contacts and calendar?
The only glitch I have seen with using google sync is that when you import your contacts from google, they get sorted as Last Name, First Name. (Doe, John.)I have always liked seeing my contact list as first name last name. (John Doe.) If you manually try to switch this in your contact list, it gets over written once google syncs again. Does anyone know how to possibly fix this?
This method is GREAT. Big thanks to OP
GAMERIG said:
this is helpful for newbies/ beginners..
Anyway I had done set up the gmail as "PRIMARY" account only when i got HD2. why i need hotmail set up as primary account then add gmail? I just curious..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure why, but whenever you add a new email account to Windows Mobile and attempt to go back and edit it, the first account you added will always be grayed out. This means you can't modify, or even delete the first account.
Since you may decide you want to change how often you check your gmail, I thought you might want to add a hotmail account (Windows Live) first, since those settings are automatic and can't be changed anyway.
I've always had to do a hardreset in the past to get rid of bad gmail settings, so I learned to always put hotmail first.
Hope that helps
adamhlj said:
The only glitch I have seen with using google sync is that when you import your contacts from google, they get sorted as Last Name, First Name. (Doe, John.)I have always liked seeing my contact list as first name last name. (John Doe.) If you manually try to switch this in your contact list, it gets over written once google syncs again. Does anyone know how to possibly fix this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, this is annoying. I have added two new contacts and both of them were sorted like this.
You can try deleting the "Last Name" field in your phone contacts, then add the last name beside the first name, but I haven't actually tried that.
If it works, please get back to us
pantyshot said:
I've been using this method as well, but has anyone noticed that you cannot sync your labels from gmail? Is it just me or Outlook just syncs the inbox aside from contacts and calendar?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I used the official Gmail App, it represented labels as folders. Because Google doesn't actually have different folders (just different flags for each message), I don't know of any way to split the messages by folder.
As a matter of fact, I don't think you can do this with regular folders via Outlook, due to the way the built-in email client works.
If anyone knows a fix to this please post; we would all like to separate our messages by folders if possible!
Snarksneeze said:
I know, this is annoying. I have added two new contacts and both of them were sorted like this.
You can try deleting the "Last Name" field in your phone contacts, then add the last name beside the first name, but I haven't actually tried that.
If it works, please get back to us
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
adamhlj said:
The only glitch I have seen with using google sync is that when you import your contacts from google, they get sorted as Last Name, First Name. (Doe, John.)I have always liked seeing my contact list as first name last name. (John Doe.) If you manually try to switch this in your contact list, it gets over written once google syncs again. Does anyone know how to possibly fix this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try this app I have called Contact Changer. Just install to phone, hit the change button and soft reset. After that they should display correctly, and it's actually WinMo that displays contacts like that b/c I have mine sync'd through Microsoft Myphone (b/c gmail messes up the contact pics) and they display the same way.
Now once you run the app, if you add a contact or delete a contact it will revert to last name first. Just run the Contact Changer and reboot again and you will be golden.
pantyshot said:
I've been using this method as well, but has anyone noticed that you cannot sync your labels from gmail? Is it just me or Outlook just syncs the inbox aside from contacts and calendar?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes this is the unfortunate aspect of using gmail this way.
chrisrj28 said:
...It's actually WinMo that displays contacts like that b/c I have mine sync'd through Microsoft Myphone (b/c gmail messes up the contact pics) and they display the same way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny you mention that.
I actually used the built-in option to link my favorite contacts to their respective facebook account in my friends list. This changed the contact picture from the camera image I had to their facebook avatar. When next I flashed my phone, Google loaded the contacts back with the facebook linke and facebook avatar, which was very surprising to me.
Does myPhone do the same thing if you use them to keep track of your contacts?
chrisrj28 said:
Now once you run the app, if you add a contact or delete a contact it will revert to last name first. Just run the Contact Changer and reboot again and you will be golden.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this app. I didn't even know it existed!
OTHERWISE
HTC HD2 PRODUCT SUPPORT-SYNCHRONIZATION..
GAMERIG said:
HTC HD2 PRODUCT SUPPORT-SYNCHRONIZATION..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure what you posted this link in reference to. Unless you are confusing Google Sync with ActiveSync...
ActiveSync is the method of connecting your phone directly to your PC, for file transfers, updating your ROM image and standard backups. It is also the name of the protocol that the Microsoft Exchange Servers use to sync data between the Server and ActiveSync-enabled devices.
Google Sync is a free Microsoft Exchange Server that allows "push" email via your phone's data connection. You don't have to be near a PC to sync your calendar, contacts or gmail.
I think the threaded e-mail conversations are only available in the WM 6.5.x versions of WinMo. I am also unable to sync my other folders (Sent, Saved) from Gmail. I have them checked off as well in the Manage Folders option, but nothing appears in these folders after syncing. I think the only possible folder to sync is Inbox.
cu2cool said:
I think the threaded e-mail conversations are only available in the WM 6.5.x versions of WinMo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am about to flash to a 21903 ROM in a bit and I'll let you know if it breaks my threading.
cu2cool said:
I am also unable to sync my other folders (Sent, Saved) from Gmail. I have them checked off as well in the Manage Folders option, but nothing appears in these folders after syncing. I think the only possible folder to sync is Inbox.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure they are actually folders? I thought gmail only has labels that appear as folders in the native clients.
Also, this is the same as most Outlook syncs; it will only give you the unread messages. There may be a setting in gmail that will allow you to retrieve old messages, but I'm not sure why you would want to do that on a mobile phone.
If you want to just get your emails, you can use the "Gmail" option when setting up your new email account on the HD2. This won't "push" like the "Outlook" option will, but you can still set it to manually check as often as every 5 minutes if you can spare the battery life.
Of course, you would be much better off getting the official gmail client for that, since that will also support your lables-as-folders option.
Myself, I prefer to use Google Sync and let that push emails to my phone as well as syncing all of my gmail and phone contacts. I don't use labels any more and don't want all the "Sent" or "Archived" messages to clutter up my phone.
Yea, you're probably right about the labeling/folder issue. I just want to see a saved e-mail to look some thing up at times, but maybe I'll just log onto gmail.com for that on my phone. Is there any Gmail client available for WinMo phones? I haven't seen any. Also, does push kill battery life? (ex. sync every 5 minutes) Or is it a more sophisticated syncing method that will only connect to data when new messages arrive?

Is MS retarded, or is it me ? Contact photos and some other things.

After using Google calendar for about a year, I finally gave up. The service, for most part, is reliable, the calendar loads fast, but there's no way to sync Todo's and I have tons of them. Used to work around this by using GogTasks but the latest change from Google broke the sign-in process so there's no (free) way now to sync tasks.
So, I decided to give MS another try. Synced to Windows Live - this time calendar sync worked (I had a major problem with it a year ago). Still, there's a few issues.
1) It appears MS no longer allows syncing multiple calendars to Win Mob device.
2) It appears MS no longer supports categories in Tasks or Appointments.
3) It appears there's no way to add contact photos unless contacts create a Windows Live account and set up a profile picture.
Now, I can live with 1 and 2. It sucks but I guess there are some underlying problems they were trying to get rid of - AS always used to choke on category sync.
#3, in our day and age, is completely, utterly retarded. I don't understand why they did it. I don't understand the thinking behind it. Do they seriously think everybody in my contact list will just stampede all over one another rushing to create their own Windows Live ID ? The only thing more retarded is Google's joke of a practically unusable task list.
I'll stick with WL for now - unless I get an Android device next, and unless I start having problems syncing, I'd rather have bastardized Contacts and ToDos than "normal" Contacts and no ToDos. Still, why isn't there a single online provider that just works for basic PIM info on WinMob ?
gmail?
I use exchange and pocket outlook to sync my calendar and contacts with my gmail account - google runs the exchange server for free. I add my todos to wm's built in calendar app and gmail syncs them with google calendar or put it in google calendar save then sync your phone. It also syncs all my contacts including contact pictures - when I hard reset I just sync and everything is there - the only thing it will not sync is tasks so I just put them as appointments in the calendar.
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138636&topic=14299
The first 2 I just learned of today, it is a pain it doesn't do that, and this is one huge deal breaker for me to go almost to another OS as a whole, this whole unintegrated Microsoft ecosphere. It seems like though that Microsoft finally understands how broken they are and are finally integrating things all together, but that's only in their new products.
As for your problems...
1) Windows Mobile devices never synced multiple calendars, even with Google Calendar (you could get around it with other programs though which I used to do but alas, that was broken like you mentioned when Google updated...)
2) I'm not sure but my categories sync, when I make them in WLM Messenger (Favorites category seems to be syncing). Maybe the work around is to make it in WLM or on Live. Doesn't seem to sync the categories from your phone though....
3) I don't know what exactly is wrong, because I have been able to sync contact photos on my phone. I'm not sure if you're trying to do it from the Live services side of things though, if so, then I think it's impossible unless you do it through Windows Live Messenger.
Wow! This is all very interesting. A few weeks ago, my company's Blackberry server was upgraded. At the same time, MS Activesync stopped working for me. It gave me an error message code 80004005. I Googled this and it said that some software needed to be upgraded or something like that. I had assumed that because the security in my company's IT department is so strict, this had put a spanner in the works somehow into Activesync.
From what you guys are saying, it is a microsoft thing. I thought it was a RIM thing.
I am currently syncing with Blackberry Connect for both appointments and contacts. This is an old and crap system.
The contacts don't sync with their photos and also they sync lastname, firstname whereas I have set my preference to firstname, lastname. I then have to manually change this on my WM6.5 phone
The calendar syncing is also crap. Catagories don't sync and also some annually recurring appointments show up on my WM6.5 phone one month early!
I don't have Windows Live installed on my phone. If I did, would Activesync then work? Would it get rid of the 80004005 error code?

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