Bizarre task category sync problem - exceeding limit of 15 categories (not really)

[wintensive]

Due to the limitation of the Palm OS I can only have 15 categories on the device. So I recently cleaned out all the extra categories (on Outlook and Palm device) that I am not using and boiled it down to about 10 main categories that I will use. I configured all active, uncompleted tasks into these categories in Outlook. So now when I sync, it SHOULD work fine.

I deleted all the tasks on my Palm and setup the next sync to be ONE WAY so that Outlook overwrites all tasks on the handheld. However, when I sync, I still get all the errors in the sync log about too many categories and the 15 limit. I looked on the Palm Device and noticed that all the extra categories are all the old ones I had thought I deleted form Outlook and have no actual tasks associated with them!!?? After exploring a little I found that after I check "show completed tasks" it shows me all the completed tasks with those categories I had deleted in Outlook. So it's the old completed tasks from Outlook that have all the extra categories in them!

So if I can't prevent COMPLETED tasks from syncing to the device, how can I ever correct the problem of too many categories. I seems it doesn't matter if I tidy up my task list in Outlook and make sure all active tasks are within the 15 category limit, because even if I do that, all the old COMPLETED tasks (which also have older extra/unused categories) will sync over and exceed the 15 category limitation.

Thanks in advance to everyone!

I use:
Windows XP Pro SP2
Hotsync Manager 6.0.1
Palm Centro (Sprint) - Palm OS Garnet 5.4.9
Outlook Sync conduits that come with the device
Outlook 2003 SP2

[jfa02]

It sounds like that even though you are having desktop overrite device that that option is not being saved and the device is winning the battle somehow. Check and make sure that its saved the way you want it and there may be more than one place in the list to check desktop overwrites device.