I was wondering whether anyone had a simple technique for temporarily removing personal infromation, such as contacts and calendar entries.

I have a Dell axim x50v 2003SE. I have a number of applications and utilities installed. I want to remove my calendar entries and most contact details temporarily, and reinstate them later, ideally without doing a full reset and reinstall.

I have a system backup with ActiveSync, and my calendar and contacts are synced with Outlook. My notes aren't, as they don't seem to want to sync, I can create them in Outlook, but they never reappear there (another problem).

Any ideas?

Ian

I guess you could set AS not to synce the contacts and calendar entries. Then, just delete the info off your PDA. Then, at a later date, reset AS to sync the contacts and calendar entries. Then, it will all be reloaded onto the PDA.

    

Thanks kcallahan, I thought about that, but next time I do sync, won't the deletes transfer over to Outlook from my Axim? And deleting contacts is fairly easy, there aren't too many of them (Billy-no-mates? ho ho), but deleting calendar entries will be tedious!

Ian

If you have SKTOOLs installed on your pocket pc, you can use the option there to delete the entire contents of your contacts and appointments.

Or you can use dbView, a free software, to delete the records:

PocketPCFreeware : dbView 0.9

     

Julie,

Thanks... will that only delete them from the Axim? And then when I resync with Outlook will I get them restored? I only want to remove them temporarily.

Ian

I'm not sure. But you could try it out by adding a bogus record to either your schedule and/or contacts. Sync the information to the pocket pc. Then, either using SKTOOLs or dbView, delete the bogus record on the Pocket PC. Sync and see what happens.

A safe way to ensure you don't delete any of the records on your computer is to delete your existing ActiveSync partnership. Then when you are ready to resume synching these items, you can create a new partnership and sycn the data back to your pocket pc. You can sync files and install applications through a guest partnership.

     

FYI I tried creating a dummy entry, deleting that with dbview, and resyncing... and it then gets deleted in Outlook. So it's not a safe delete on the axim only!

I will consider deleting the partnership, but I think I'm going to need to keep some backups safe, both of my Outlook pst and my axim...

Before deleting contacts and calendar entries on your Pocket PC you have to uncheck them from syncing. You don't have to delete partnership. After that you can delete items on ppc, and becouse these items are not sinchronizing any more they won't be deleted from your Outlook.
When you want your info back on Pocket PC just check these items for synchronizing again, and they will appear safely.
I know for sure because I did it by myself many times.

Thanks Galina, I tried what you suggested:
1. Created a test appointment in Outlook whilst connected to axim - it synced to the axim OK
2. In Activesync I unselected calendar from synchronsisation
3. Disconnected the axim
4. Deleted the test entry
5. Reconnected the axim, remember calendar was not set to sync.
6. Selected the calendar for synchronisation - the appointment got deleted from Outlook.
So they didn't reappear safely again!

Ideas?

Ian

Why are you reluctant to delete your existing partnership? It is not a big deal at all. There is an index that is maintained in ActiveSync and that is associated with tne partnership between a specific pocket pc and computer of all the data that is synced between the two. ActiveSync uses this index to determine what gets removed, changed or copied between the computer and the pocket pc. That index is maintained for as long as you have a partnership going on. Remove the partnershup, remove the index. When you establish a new partnership and sync for the 1st time, it takes quite a bit longer to complete the very first sync because AS has to look at every single record on both the computer & the pocket pc and create the syncing index. But other than the longer sync time, it is no big deal.