Carl(WNY)

I seem to be having a real problem converting my "Planner book" which was my Lotus Organizer 4.1 program into a useable format to transfer into my Amim X51v. I have tried to convert it to MS Outlook 2003, but it doesn't quite work right. It only took 4 names from my address book, and then not all the information on some of those people. As for calendar data, a lot "Made the trip" but things like my anniverary shows as June 9th, but is listed on June 10th!!??

I've even treid talking to Microsoft support, but they have to do more research and get back to me... *sigh* Has anyone solved this problem yet?

DeeCee52

I am a lotus user. I am using lotus 5 and I sync my planner and my tasks everyday. I transferred my contacts as well. Becuase I wanted to have the same contacts in my phone as my pda, I first exported my contacts to a .csv file and imported them into a blank outlook file. I also cleanedup the file and for abnormal entries, odd phone numbers and entries with apostrophe's and commas in them. This was very important.

I used this outlook file to move my contacts to both my phone and my pda. Now I only BT occaisional new contacts to the phone. However, I had to breakdown and buy Laplink's pdaSync so that I can sink my pda and desktop everyday. It does not sync the notepad, but it does a good job with tasks and appoints and cost catagories. I then fold this info into my time tracking and billing at my office. Hope this helps.

ccdrew11

I purchansed Laplink's PDAsync for about $50. It has no problem synchronizing contacts, calendar, tasks, and email from Notes to your PDA. It also works with symbian phones. You might try it. They have a 15 day trial version as well but the trial version does not autosynchronize like the registered version.

At least with this you won't have to do so much work.

Carl(WNY)

I don't seem to have the choice in Lotus Organizer 4.1 to export the file in the (.csv) format. The only choies it gives me are 2 different (.txt) formats (ACSII Delimited, and ANSI) and two (dbf) formats Foxpro and and dBase... Do you think I have to by a program just to do this one time? 'Cause once I do this, I probably won't use Lotus anymore.

DeeCee52

Originally Posted by Carl(WNY)

I don't seem to have the choice in Lotus Organizer 4.1 to export the file in the (.csv) format. The only choies it gives me are 2 different (.txt) formats (ACSII Delimited, and ANSI) and two (dbf) formats Foxpro and and dBase... Do you think I have to by a program just to do this one time? 'Cause once I do this, I probably won't use Lotus anymore.

The program is pretty expensive for a one time use, I had other laplink products and I still think it cost about 30.00 USD.

You can try to do it manually, it will take some time. Export your information into all of those formats, the ascii delimited and the dbase .dbf are probably going to be the most helpful. I suspect you have some illegal characters in some of the fields, which are causing the records after that to not parse correctly.

export the files.
Now using excel or lotus 123, open the exported file. Look at how all the different formats come into the spreadsheet. The one that looks like it parsed the most number of records and fields correctly is the one that you should work with. Also on the delimmited file, try exports using different delimmiting characters, if that is an option. The spreadsheet program may ask you how you want the information displayed, you want each field in the record displayed in a separate column, and you want field names in the first line.

Now you need to do some homework about what characters are allowed in fields and therfore, how the columns need to be named.

You may also notice that some things seem to line up perfectly and then suddenly everthing will be in one cell, or a name will be split. Take out the offending characters to get things lined up again. Obviously this could take some time, if you are slow and patient, it is very doable.

Save this as a file type that outlook likes and mapping the field names in the exported file (corrected if needed) to the field names in Outlook, you should be able import without a problem. I don't think this technique will work with the notes. Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

If you stick with lotus, as I said I use version 5, PDASync is worth it and works well.