feeling a little braver, i decided to get intellisync for the rex, pointing to my main personal folder in outlook, rather than an ancillary folder. i've been fairly impressed with the sync logic, and more comfortable with the process. one problem i faced with using a separate personal folder (as mentioned before) is after copying the data over, the rex wants to drop and reload all those entries... not optimal.
so, to cut out my extra step copy-paste step(s), meant i had to convert my original personal file from the outlook 2003 unicode format to the outlook97-2002 non-unicode format. there is no conversion software. i wasn't entirely sure if that was possible, or if i would lose some functionality here.
but the unicode format is just a character data format, all you really get the extended unicode character set for your data, and larger memory file handling. (note : i'm not sure on that second point - if you use fat32 file system you'd still have a 2Gb file size limit, no?? plus your data takes up twice as much room right). really nothing compelling for me.
ok, so creating another personal file and copying all the entries is really easy. i tried both 'no encryption' and 'compressible encryption' options. stuck with no encryption in the end, but either should work. this step is actually pretty easy - so with some effort you can totally swap out your outlook data files. would be nicer for microsoft to release a widget to convert formats.
so i've got my personal folder, loaded with data, and here's where things didn't go so well. i spent the better part of the night trying to get intellisync to recognize, and select the new folders. very frustrating, but i think i figured out what's going on.
in short, intellisync is set to automatically choose the default folders, but simply doesn't find them. bug, feature, bitrot, or whatever. just doesn't work. success came, after trying lots of things to set up personal folders, when i chose names for the new folders besides the stock 'calendar', tasks', 'contacts', or 'notes'. intellisync seems to have no trouble finding & listing folders by any other title. so now you can properly select them in the dialog/treelist. intellisync is probably deliberately filtering out the names, not sure. having done this, i was able to consistently open all the dialogs and select the folders, every time.
[note: i skipped all this renaming business, setting up another machine, just create another personal non-unicode 2002 format, assign as default for mail delivery, (copy data over if needed) and delete the original 2003 unicode format file.]
worried these non-standard names would break all my the other sync logic, i was keen on setting them back to standard. so after i pointed intellisync at the these folders, i renamed them in outlook. keep in mind, you can't rename the folders once you choose that personal file folder as the default destination for incoming email delivery. doesn't matter if you actually use outlook for email or not (i don't). i'm also assuming having the file set as the default email handler, sets the file as the default for contacts, calendar, et al.
so, finally a little bit of luck here -- with the folders renamed back to the stock names- i was still able to view and select these folders in intellisync. must recognize some other identifier at this point than the folder name. so this step works. this is the workaround, and gets things back to "normal".
with everything properly selected -- now it's back to outlook, to point email delivery to this new personal folder, and drop the original outlook 2003 format personal folder. this makes the personal folder the default, for all the other sync-ware. notes: outlook registers itself as the default application for email, so you may have to re-set that back, with your favorite email app.
now everything is set. reinitialized the rex, performed a full sync and got all my data. similar with the palm, and ericsson t-39 -- each complained a little bit, but just required a full re-synchronization to get things back in order. also had to reset a couple of preferences here and there -- but nothing major.
curious issue i discovered doing this... i have too much contact data for intellisync - instead of getting an error message though, it just skips adding *any* contact to the rex. odd - it should prompt you and tell you what's up, if you're out of memory etc. in this case problem was, i inadvertently select the include subfolders option in when setting things up again (and therefore too much data), after going back and patching my selections up, everything was fine / back to normal.
[there is a 1mb rex6000 model, caveat emptor! you can usually tell by serial number only, not the firmware screen]
another issue i found -- when i was trying to sync with the stock setup to the default folders (didn't have the folders manually selected because i couldn't open dialog/treelist at this point) -- it acted like it totally synched but did nothing. it didn't actually send any data to the rex. this was a little confusing and frustrating too, as it appeared like things were working only to realize later nothing was happening.
also, i have a lot of calendar data, when i sync everything it still works but slows down the rex, really sluggish. guess the calendar doesn't index the data too well? but when i trim things using the date range filter (two months worth) -- it's much better, and pretty responsive.
last item, i like how the sync button in the task tray auto-launches rexsync and starts to synchronize. i'm wondering if there's a command line modifier to launch the synchronization process? can't figure it out. i'd rather not have the task tray icon running at all, and use a preset shortcut for that. even better if the application would also exit when finished sync'ing. this actually really saves one keystroke (spacebar) when launching rexsync, but well... why not. if that's all the sync monitor really does, i don't need it in the task tray. oh, i guess it's for the cradle -- but i don't use that.
oh, i figured out this is using com automation to launch the sync process. i guess there's hope, i could load the dll and figure out how to kick start synchronization -- i don't have time to fuss with all that right now, and will leave things be, tinker with it later.
so -- in the end i have my palm, ericsson t-39, and rex all set with a pretty mindless one button sync process. i'm also playing with having my phone set to auto-sync over bluetooth -- look ma, no hands!