Contacts / Calandar / Birthdays Synchronisation

[Bemuddlement]

I have recently upgraded to the new A06 ROM on my X51v, which (of course)required a hard reset.

In order to keep track of peoples birthdays, I use the "Birthday" field in "Contacts". As you all know, doing this will create an entry in Calendar.

After reinstalling the software and backing up the PDA from the PC, I noticed Active Sync was giving having problems synch-ing those Birthdays with the PC Calendar. (I synch Contacts, Calendar, Files and Tasks)

Checking the PDA I noticed that each Birthday was duplicated many times in Calendar on the PDA.

I deleted the duplicates on the PDA and attempted to resync. The number of errors reported in Active Sync reduced but even the single entries failed to synch with the PC.

I deleted all the birthday events in Calendar, thinking that the PDA would somehow re-establish the entries from Contacts into Calendar and I could then re-sync with the PC. Unfortunately that did not occur, but the rest of my Calendar did re-synch with the PC and I now have appointment entries on my PC.

My question is this.... How do I re-establish the Birthday entries in "Calendar" from my "Contacts" on the PDA?

Any help anyone can provide would be gratefully received.

[vtrnutter]

Hi

Normally I think you will find that if you go into each contact and edit each one (i.e. put a space somewhere, and then save it), this will cause the birthdays / anniversaries etc. to be re-created.

[Bemuddlement]

Thanks for the quick response.

I have tried that, but so far the Calandar has not been updated.

[Bemuddlement]

Well I managed to get the Birthdays/Anniversaries from Contacts into Calendar. This was the method I used.

a) Backed up Contact data to SD on PDA
b) Backed up Calendar Data to SD on PDA
c) Backed up Tasks Data to SD on PDA
c) Sync Other Data using ActiveSync
d) Hard Reset PDA
e) Restored Contacts from SD to PDA
f) Restored Calendar from SD to PDA
g) Restored Tasks from SD to PDA

[NOTE: at this point the Birthdays/Anniversaries only resided in Contacts, not in Calandar. There appears to be NO synchronisation on the PDA between these two data sources]

h) Copy any files on PC that were previously synchronised with PDA to a "temp" folder.
h) Deleted all contacts from Outlook on PC
i) Deleted all calendar entries from Outlook on PC
j) Deleted all task entries from Outlook on PC

[NOTE: This avoids the duplication of data when performing the next steps]

k) Sync PDA and PC using Active Sync. This populates Outlook on the PC and if "files" were selected, will create a new Synchronisation area for the newly established link.

[NOTE: After this Birthdays/Anniversaries "magically" appear on both PDA and PC]

l) Copy files from "temp" folder into the newly created synchronisation folder on your desktop.
m) Re synchronise using ActiveSync
n) Reinstall any 3rd party software

It's a long winded process... but it worked for me and I hope this helps someone in the future.

[BartS]

Hello,

I'm having exactly the same problem. Even though I have entered quite a few birthdays in my Contacts, none of them ever show up in the Calendar!

From the above, it seems that this is not a matter of changing a specific setting.... It can't be true that I need a hard reset to see a birthday entry in my calendar???

I keep wondering what the quality department of Dell *did* check....

Bart

[donka]

This isn't a Dell only issue. I still get occasional instances of this on my HP h4150 running WM2003! I think you can probably point the finger more in MSs direction!

[rsx]

I have recently upgraded to the new A06 ROM on my X51v, which (of course)required a hard reset.

In order to keep track of peoples birthdays, I use the "Birthday" field in "Contacts". As you all know, doing this will create an entry in Calendar.

After reinstalling the software and backing up the PDA from the PC, I noticed Active Sync was giving having problems synch-ing those Birthdays with the PC Calendar. (I synch Contacts, Calendar, Files and Tasks)

Checking the PDA I noticed that each Birthday was duplicated many times in Calendar on the PDA.

I deleted the duplicates on the PDA and attempted to resync. The number of errors reported in Active Sync reduced but even the single entries failed to synch with the PC.

I deleted all the birthday events in Calendar, thinking that the PDA would somehow re-establish the entries from Contacts into Calendar and I could then re-sync with the PC. Unfortunately that did not occur, but the rest of my Calendar did re-synch with the PC and I now have appointment entries on my PC.

My question is this.... How do I re-establish the Birthday entries in "Calendar" from my "Contacts" on the PDA?

Any help anyone can provide would be gratefully received.

Do you use a backup program with your WM5? If so, you could perhaps upgrade to A06, then restore your data from the backup. At least, this has worked well for me in the past with WM2003 and Sprite backup, after upgrading to a new ROM.

[BartS]

Hi,

for anyone having the same problem, I managed to fix this problem without a hard reset. Until now I didn't use Microsoft Outlook on my PC, so I only synchronized files & settings, no calender or contacts information.

After installing Outlook, I deleted my existing partnership in Activesync on the PC. When re-establishing a new partnership, I chose to sync contacts & calender too. The synchronization went well, and to my surprise, the calender on my X51v suddenly was updated with birthday entries from the contact list.

To summarize: no hard reset required, just (re-)establish a sync relation with calender & contacts syncing enabled.

Bart

PS: I have read somewhere that a backup from a previous ROM version can *not* be used after upgrading to a newer ROM. I didn't try, so no guarantees....

[rsx]

PS: I have read somewhere that a backup from a previous ROM version can *not* be used after upgrading to a newer ROM. I didn't try, so no guarantees....

Actually, Sprite says this is possible, and I have done it. Again, with 2003SE, not WM5.