Well, something managed to turn my Axim on last night and drain the battery, so I am now faced with an unwanted hard reset. I sync to my home and my work PC, and when I've done this before I've always had problems with duplicates. In the past, I'll sync with the first PC and everything gets copied over to the Axim. The problem comes when I sync to the second PC. It will sync, and either one of two things will happen - 1. I will get duplicates of everything, or 2. the Ax will be updated with everything from the second PC. Both of these results come from selecting "combine data", but I have yet to figure out why sometimes it duplicates and sometimes it doesn't. The problems with outcome #1 are obvious. With outcome #2 what happens is that when I go back to PC #1 everything syncs again because it thinks it is all changed again, and I enter a vicious circle of every single record being synced every time I switch to the other PC.

I checked the tutorials and did some searching of the forums, but didn't see anything. There has got to be a way to avoid either of these outcomes, but my searches didn't give me much hope.

The old name of the Axim was PocketPC (underscore removed from the standard name). I was going to try switching it back to that name once the battery is charged, and then go into AS and say "Desktop overwrites handheld" for the first sync. Then when I get home tonight I was going to pick "Handheld overwrites desktop". Theoretically, I believe this will work.

Any suggestions from more seasoned folks would be appreciated.

Thanks and regards,

Gary

AIM: gtownsend
ICQ: 36261155

Well folks, I was successful, so I thought I'd post back and let everyone know what I did.

First, I performed a full backup of my data. Then, I deleted the partnership on my work machine and recreated it and synced. This allowed me to get all of my data back onto the handheld. After the first sync was completed I went into the properties for each item and made sure "Sync All" was selected so that _everything_ got loaded onto the Axim. As always, this went just fine. Since my work pc is always the most up-to-date I started here.

At home, I only sync Calendar, Contacts, Notes and Files. When I got home that night, I performed a full system backup. I then renamed the "PocketPC My Documents" folder to "PPC My Docs Backup". After that I went into Outlook and deleted all my Contacts, Calendar entries and Notes. I then deleted the AS partnership and plugged in the Axim. When prompted, I told it to combine the data from the handheld with the data on the desktop. This got me almost all the way there. I then went into the properties of each individual item and selected "Sync all" (particularly for Calendar entries) so that I got _everything_ back. After that everything was back on the desktop. After checking that it was complete, I went and removed the original items I had deleted from the Deleted Items folder and deleted the "PPC My Docs Backup" folder.

When I went back to my work PC it synced up just fine and only picked up the changes I had made on the home pc. No duplicates and no endless resyncing of every record each time I sync with the other PC.

While this certainly isn't what I would consider an "elegant" solution, it was a lot easier to delete all the items from Outlook before syncing than it is to go back and delete the duplicates. Since my Work PC is always more up-to-date than my Home PC, this worked perfectly for me. My only warning is back up, back up, back up...just in case something doesn't go right.

Regards,

Gary

AIM: gtownsend
ICQ: 36261155

STOP ACTIVESYNC FROM RUNNING UNATTENDED

All you need to do to prevent activesync from automatically turning on your axim is:

If you just want to charge the axim:
1. insert axim in cradle
2. quickly turn off axim before activesync connects.

If you waited for activesync to connect and then turn the PPC off, it will turn on again after a few min.

If you want activesync to stay off after you have finished syncing:

1. Turn off axim while in cradle
2. Turn on axim and quickly turn it off again before activesync connects.

Please give me some feedback

STOP ACTIVESYNC FROM RUNNING UNATTENDED

All you need to do to prevent activesync from automatically turning on your axim is:

If you just want to charge the axim:
1. insert axim in cradle
2. quickly turn off axim before activesync connects.

If you waited for activesync to connect and then turn the PPC off, it will turn on again after a few min.

If you want activesync to stay off after you have finished syncing:

1. Turn off axim while in cradle
2. Turn on axim and quickly turn it off again before activesync connects.

Please give me some feedback

Also, since activesync relies heavily on Outlook, do yourself a favor and check the following:
Open Outlook on the pc
Open the inbox
click tools tab
click preferences
click email options
put a check mark in each box BUT the top one
on replies....do not include
on forwarding....include
NO CHECK IN BOTTOM BOX
---------------------------
click mail setup tab
click email accounts
check the view or change box
this brings up another page showing the email accounts that you have set up....it should not be blank
highlight your account and click change
look very closely...this is where most errors occur...look at every word, every period
all 6 boxes need to be filled in
leave secure authentification unchecked
now click on "test account settings"
did it pass? if so...problem solved
if not, cick the "errors" tab and tell me what it says

there are several other settings but lets stop here and see if it now works...if not, we'll look further
remember to let me know!
ken

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with preventing duplicates when syncing with two pc's after a hard reset?

~Gary

AIM: gtownsend
ICQ: 36261155