corman

Many have reported problems with duplicate Contact and Appointment entries after syncing with ActiveSync 4.x using WM 2005. Frequently these "duplicates" may become "triplicates" or even worse after compounding the original error by performing the all too necessarily frequent hard resets. The problem can probably be obviated initially by ensuring that before you sync for the first time or after a hard reset that your Outlook entries are correct and then making sure that you DO NOT respond affirmatively to the initial ActiveSync question asking if you want to combine entires on the AXIM and Outlook. If you do, Outlook unfortutnately does not seem to pay attention to items that are contained both in Outlook and the AXIM, but merely copies the items from Outlook to the AXIM, thus creating duplicates of almost everything. Upon a subsequent sync, Outlook sees all of these duplicate items as new items and copies them from the AXIM to Outlook thus resulting in duplicates in both places.

I found it was easy enough (albeit a pain) to eliminate the duplicates calendar items in Outlook by viewing them "By Category" and then going through each of my categories selecting every other item (the duplicates) while holding down the CTL key, and periodically hitting the DEL key to delete these duplicates. The same can be done for Contacts. Some people have tried the Outlook duplicate finder program, but that did not work for me (and others have reported the same).

However, it is not easy to eliminate the duplicates from the AXIM without painstakingly going through all of your calendar entries for as far back and ahead as you have maintained. So how can this be done easily?

Contacts and appointment data are maintained in a file on your AXIM named "pim.vol". This is located in the root directory of the AXIM.

1. Locate the pim.vol file and (for safety sake) rename it to "xpim.volx"
2. Soft reset your AXIM
3. After the AXIM comes back from the soft reset it will have created a new "empty" pim.vol file
4. After ensuring that you have cleaned up your duplicate Contacts and Appointments in Outlook, you can now put your AXIM in its cradle and resync
5. Outlook will see no Contact or Appointment entries and will copy them all to the AXIM
6. After ensuring that everything is OK, you may then delete the file that you renamed to "xpim.volx".

I have no idea why an "empty" pim.vol file is 200KB in size and mine, with only about 225 appointments and 145 contacts, is over 650KB. When it contained duplicate entires it was over 1 MB in size. It does not appear that this is a very efficiently constructed file with each entry averaging over 1K in length above the 200K base.

Steve

dannyw001

I just had to perform my first hard reset on my X51v. I got the dreaded duplicate entries for all tasks, all contacts, and three months worth of calendar history, as well as all future calendar appointments.

Prior to doing the hard reset, I had backed up all my PIM data. I then hard reset and restored my backed up PIM data. I tried to sync, but had to reset the connection between my computer and the X51v. My old connection was named Windows PC2 while I named the new one Windows PC. An error popped up stating there was a problem with "Desktop Services" (I believe that was the wording). During the setup, I DID NOT combine entries on the X51v and Outlook, but chose to go from Outlook to the X51v. After the sync, I had all those duplicates!

I have deleted all duplicates from my X51v. Now my questions:

Since I have deleted all duplicates from the X51v, but not from Outlook, can I just sync and the X51v deletions will overwrite the duplicates in Outlook?

Would I have been better to not have restored my PIM data after the hard reset, but just synced with Outlook, hopefully resulting in only single entries?

What is the correct answer to Active Sync concerning entries when restoring a connection between computer and X51v?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

DUPLICATES STATUS FOLLOWING RESYNC

As I suspected, since I had deleted all duplicates from the X51v, but not from Outlook, once I resynced, the X51v deletions did actually overwrite the duplicates in Outlook!!!

I believe that the next time I have to hard reset (hopefully not soon!), I won't restore my PIM data through the Data Backup program, but I will just sync with Outlook and let the desktop overwrite the handheld. I suspect this will result in only single entries.

corman

I agree that what happened in your final paragraph above would work. I.E. Outlook sees that deletions were made on the AXIM and therefore upon sync'ing deleted those from Outlook also. However, I found it a lot easier to delete duplicates form Outlook than from the AXIM.

However, a major porblem exists with your thought about not restoring PIM data after your next hard reset. Data backup offers 2 mutually exclusive options. One is "Backup all data", the other is "Backup PIM database only". Within this second option you can choose any or all of contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, or inbox. However, there is NOT an option to backup everything EXCEPT PIM data. Therefore, there is no way to restore registry entries, settings, etc. without also having to restore PIM data.

Perhaps backing up PIM data and backing up everything else should be separate but not mutually exclusive options. Then your suggestion would work. But, since DataBackup has always worked this way, I wouldn't hold my breath. After all such a change would not be necessary except for getting these duplicates, which is clearly a bug that need to be fixed itself.

SteveC

dannyw001

I realize that if I don't restore a backup after a hard reset, that I would have to reinstall all third-party programs. Simply syncing after a hard reset would only reintsall PIM data from Outlook to the handheld, the same as setting up a new handheld. Until I know definitely which option to choose when resetting up Active Sync (combine entries on the handheld and Outlook or chose to go from Outlook to the handheld), I believe I would rather face resetting up the programs again rather than having to wade through duplicates. Are you positive to not respond affirmatively to the initial ActiveSync question asking if you want to combine entires on the AXIM and Outlook, because I thought I did not do so but still got the duplicates. I don't mean to be argumentative, I just don't relish the idea of sorting throught the duplicates again. :)

Your last post brings up another question I have had. After a hard reset, do you have a clean registry (as before any third-party software is installed), or are there still references to previously installed software (as in broken registry settings)?

Thanks!

corman

Originally Posted by dannyw001

........ Are you positive to not respond affirmatively to the initial ActiveSync question asking if you want to combine entires on the AXIM and Outlook, because I thought I did not do so but still got the duplicates. I don't mean to be argumentative, I just don't relish the idea of sorting throught the duplicates again. :) Your last post brings up another question I have had. After a hard reset, do you have a clean registry (as before any third-party software is installed), or are there still references to previously installed software (as in broken registry settings)? .........

No, I cannot be positive unless I recreate the situation, which I won't do until another hard reset my be required. However, I have done several hard resets and think that the only time I had a problem was when answering the question wrong (i.e. allowing items from both AXIM and Outlook to be combined.). I did get duplicates once even after choosing the option to only place items on the AXIM from Outlook. However, after the hard reset I had done a restore to the AXIM from my card backup which included duplicate calendar and contact entries (of which I was unaware at the time). So, upon resync'ing after that restore, Outlook saw a bunch of "new" entries on the AXIM and nicely copied them back to Outlook, thus resulting in duplicates in both places. Could that have happened to you?

As far as I know, after a hard reset you have a "virgin" registry. Even if all of your programs are on CF or SD flash cards, they are unreachable because their registry entries are gone. If you do not do a full card Backup restore, then you need to re-install all of your programs to recreate their registry entries. There are a number of other functions and setting that typically need to be restored or re-entered after a hard reset. For example, when WM5 erased both my SD and CF cards and I had not copied them to my desktop PC, I lost my last card Backup. I needed to re-enter all of the registry tweaks that have been discussed on these lists.

It has been stated many times in the past (prior to WM5) that when performing flash upgrades (i.e. A01 to A02, to A)4, etc.) That you do not do a restore from your card Backup because you will write over any registry changes that might have been included in the new upgrade. Therefore I assume that any hard reset gets you back to the original registry state. If I am wrong and there are some things that get reset and some that don't, maybe someone else can comment.

SteveC

Arbanak

A more covenient, though not free, solution, would be to purchase Sperry's duplicate eliminator programs. I have used them to eliminate duplicates from Outlook, which then automatically deletes the duplicates from my Axim the next time I sync.

Belmichel

I was also partially successful in removing duplicates (XXplicates) with a 3rd party "prayware" called "Outlook Duplicates remover" by Fr. Simon. It removed the vast majority of them from the desktop outlook and it does Appointments, mail, contacts and tasks.

njpeeke

Once you have the desktop Outlook or Thunderbird cleaned up.

1. use the backup utility to backup PIM database only, leave everything checked except the calendar
2. go to the root directory and rename pim to old_pim
3. soft reset
4. restore from the backup on step one
5. soft reset
6. sync with desktop

I had multiple issues when I tried to do a restore from backup where I had people's birthdays as a recurring appointment starting from the year they were born. This was how I fixed it.