Major Outlook sync problems

[Pilgrim]

I've been fighting this problem for almost three weeks.....

First thing that happened (possibly coincidence) was that when I opened a Note in Outlook and closed it, I started getting error messages from Outlook that the file could not be saved. Had to exit and re-enter Outlook to make the messages stop arriving every 10-15 minutes. This MAY not matter.

Shortly after that, my 755p locked up and wouldn't take incoming calls - had to do a soft reset by pulling the battery.

Ever since then, my Outlook Contacts, Calendar and Email have refused to sync. I've done hard resets and my network manager has spent two days messing with it, including completely deleting and rebuilding my exchange account on our server. Meanwhile my personal POP email account syncs to the Treo with no problem.

We've updated to Palm Desktop 6.2.2, deleted and re-installed the Palm software in my office computer, and nothing seems to help. We're pretty well stumped.

Here's a really weird aspect of this - no contacts load at all from my outlook account, so I have to look up and manually dial all outgoing phone calls. But when I do so, if the number I'm dialing was previously in the contacts list, the display screen shows me the information associated with that number (for instance: it says "Bob (M)" when I dial Bob's mobile number. Even though the contact is not in the list, the phone seems to be retrieving old contact data from its memory.

Documents to Go and all other files seem to be syncing, but the Outlook Calendar, Contacts and email refuse to do so. The backup log says that Outlook Tasks and Notes synchronized, but they did not.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[jfa02]

welcome pilgrim (almost sounds like John Wayhne to me). Had you by chance installed any third party programs right before yopu started experiencing these problems? If so delete them and see if the problems are cured. If they are reload the programs one at a time after the first is loaded check and see if the problems have returned. If so delete it and try the next program, etc.

If thats not the problem then some settings have gotten messed up or some program has changed your settings. Check your hot synch manager and settings for synchronizing tasks and notes are properly set up.

[Pilgrim]

Didn't install anything immediately before this - probably hadn't installed anything new in a couple of months.

I agree that it's settings. The problem gives hints that there is more than one profile the Palm is trying to sync to, but there's only one profile in the Palm and we completely deleted and re-estblished my exchange account.

Calendar, Contacts and Memos are all set to "Synchronize the files" but no joy. I'll keep after it.

If I can't get this working by the end of this week, I'm probably going to abandon the 755p and change to a Blackberry or Moto-Q.

[stuartrayner]

Hi Pilgrim and welcome to Treonauts. I don't sync to Outlook, but I saved this post from one of the forums and have posted it from time to time because of the issues. Not sure if it will help. Another option would be to download a trial of TealScan from Tealpoint.com and run a scan to see if there are any blobs or corrupt data that might be causing the problem. Doubtful that explains all of it though. Also, Palm has an extensive hotsync support site at Palm.com that if you haven't already viewed, you may want to peruse. Here is the old post:

I just spent several hours with Palm paid support to solve my problem syncing my 755P. The real issue was outlook.

I had the following behavior.
- Sync worked fine for everything but Calendar and contacts.
- The Sync log had several OERR errors. They indicate the issue is with Outlook, not Palm or Hotsync.
- Hotsync/Custom would reset Calendar & Contact to Do Not Sync regardless of what it was changed to at the beginning of the Sync.

With the support analysts assistance, we did the following
- deleted & recreated the User. This cleared up the Contacts problem but not the calendar.
- Ran Outlook Detect & Repair. It took a while and did fix some stuff.
- Checked to be sure there were no more than 15 categories with no sub-categories
- Deleted Recurring appointments that had no end dates
- Deleted all Appointments that span across midnight.
This cleared up my problem that I had been dealing with for three weeks.

[cortland1998]

Pil I had the same exact problems and this is what I did to fix it. I have yet to have this happen again.

I use the Palm Desktop and Hotsync designed for Windows Vista, even though I'm running XP. The Hotsync works a lot better than the XP version. In the XP version I was running into issues trying to sync my contacts and calendar. So, I went to the palm website and selected Vista as my OS. It works great! I also sync over the air thus eliminating the use of having to plug into my computer each time. I can sync throughout the day anywhere in town as long as my computer is turned on. Instructions for over the air sync is on my website: Treo Tips and Help

[jbg7474]

I had an issue with Outlook sync when we changed to an exchange server. The process left me with two Outlook profiles, and Hotsync kept looking for the old one. I am using Outlook 2007 & Vista.
I finally solved it by deleting the old profile, uninstalling Palm desktop and Hotsynch and deleting the folder that stores your archive. In other words, all remnants of Palm must be expunged from your computer.
Then I made sure Outlook still only had one profile and reinstalled Palm desktop. This forced Hotsync to get the right profile, and after that it worked.

This might or might not be your issue, but something else to try.

Also, you can check which profile you are sync'ing to in Hotsync 7 by right-clicking on the tray icon, clicking settings, then applications. From there, you can select any of the conduits and click the configure button. That will bring up a Change Hotsync Action window. For Outlook conduits, there is a settings button. Click that, and there will be info about Outlook profiles and such.

[Pilgrim]

Well, after another week of time invested in making the 755p sync - and no luck at all - I'm stumped, my IT guys are stumped, Sprint is stumped, and Palm hasn't been able to contribute anything. We probably have 40 hours into trying to make this thing sync - and it will NOT.

I will change to a Blackberry Curve next week. I'm at a university under a Sprint contract, and Sprint has offered to change me to that unit for the contract ($179) price without requiring a contract. Fortunately for me, the Curve was just added to the university's phone contract yesterday (5/9/08) so I'm able to get the unit I want.

Thanks for the attempts at help - I appreciate your efforts - and I'm sorry it didn't work. A month without a functioning PDA is more than I can deal with. Equipment needs to work as designed, or it's time for other equipment.

[jfa02]

I can relate yo your frustration its sounds kind of like what I went through with microsodt and active synch on my Casio E-20 and HP journada 567 pocklet pcs when I first started using them.