CLIE, Entourage, Missing Sync -- What gets it to work perfectly?

[Frank H. Wu]

Hello there. I'm a newbie here. I am wondering who out there has gotten a CLIE, Entourage, and Missing Sync to work perfectly? What is the secret? Is it just buggy? Does it depend on the individual pieces of hardware, so there is no pattern? Why do so many people report problems when so many others have it working fine? (I searched previous threads here before posting.)

I have an NX70, the last version of Entourage X, the latest version of Missing Sync, and the latest MS conduits, all installed in the right order. I've had the NX70 for about a year and a few months (I've owned a Palm III, V, Nino, and iPAQ -- the original iPAQ is still my favorite, and I think it rivals the PowerBook in its industrial design.) Everything worked fine for the first few months. Then for some reason I couldn't sync any Notes anymore. One day is just stopped working. Then for some unknown reason I could sync only some Calendar events. Last week it stopped working if I tried to sync more than one week back and four weeks forward (I did change something: I started using cateogories extensively in Calendar.)

I may just do a hard reset (everything is backed up) on the CLIE and see if that fixes it.

But any thoughts would be most appreciated.

PS I switched 18 months ago, and I'm happy I did so (having used Macs back when they first came out). I just wish we didn't have to make a compromise with PDAs.

[kp*]

I have mine working perfectly, originally with an NX80, now with a TH55, which so far seems to be communicating just fine during sync. One thing I'll say is that I don't use categories in Datebook, so that would make it hard to detect if there are any bugs with categories.

If you know all the information on your handheld is complete and correct, you may want to go into Hotsync Manager, to Conduit Settings (command-J), and under Entourage Conduit set everything to "Handheld Overwrites Entourage." In theory this should get everything to match. Check to make sure that works, then set all to synchronize, and create a couple of test entries to make sure that stuff you put in the Clie appears in Entourage and vice versa. This may at least help you narrow down what kind of situations are causing information not to sync.

I don't refer to the information in Entourage nearly as much as I do on my Clie, so I might not be noticing some slight discrepancies. It's very possible there are bugs (I mean Microsoft programmed it, you know ;) )

I hope some of this helps.

[poisonberry]

Hey -
I'm another person who has the above combination working faultlessly, with an NX70. The one thing you don't specify is your OS version. I'm using 10.3.2 - though it's worked for me with each version of Panther. Maybe a small system upgrade might shake things up a bit (that kind of thing has ironed out inexplicable buglets in the past) - but see rider disclaiming all responsibility for anything whatsoever... ;-)

Anyway - good luck...

[javastarbuck]

I gave up on that combination in January. I've been using Missing Sync with iSync, iCal and Address Book and have had no problems.

I was having similar problems. After the third time it started happening I decided to chuck it. Although I like Entourage, I was just spending to much time uninstalling and reinstalling all the necessary software and then dealing with all the minor hassles that followed.

[Frank H. Wu]

I, too, am giving up. I installed Panther, re-installed the Missing Synch software, re-installed the Entourage conduits, and did a hard re-set on the CLIE. I also did a rebuild and advanced rebuild of the database. Then I deleted calendar items that were old and removed the categories from calendar items that were new. Still the same problem. Everything synched fine if I did calendar items only for 1 week back and 3 weeks forward.

I think it may be corruption in the database. When Office 2004 comes out, I plan to import my contact list, but otherwise start a new Entourage identity from scratch.

I've also found that I have my Powerbook with me so much, I really don't need a PDA as much as I used to.

Thanks for all the suggestions.