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OK, this is driving me nuts. I've got a Mac at home and a PC at work, each with a cradle. I've got friends with PCs, with whom I'd like to swap Palm data.

Before I bore you with my annoyances, a simple question: is there a simple, effective way to swap data between the Mac and PC versions of Palm Desktop?

Here are the irritating differences I've found so far:

1) The PC version exports .aba and .dba files from Address Book and Date Book respectively; Mac version doesn't import either.

2) As an experiment, I exported my address book from my PC at work using Tab and return, and tried to import into my Mac. The Mac seems to have no idea of the field format exported by the PC; the notes field, which had returns in it, showed up as a bunch of independent records. Of all the import formats given in the pull-down menu, "Palm Desktop Address Book" is not given.

3) The Mac version has a bunch of nice independent fields for secondary address, birthday, etc. Neither the Visor nor the PC versions know anything about them, and just lump everything into the Notes field. This isn't too big a problem, but it's irritating nonetheless.

There's more experimentation I could do, but I don't understand why this should be such a chore. Any help is appreciated!!!!

nweinstock,

I have a feeling I'm missing something...can't you swap the data through the visor? At least for your home and work machines, I would have thought that all you had to do is hotsynch in both places and all three (Mac, PC and Visor) would be synched.

Now, if you're talking about sharing data with others who want to use the desktop software without a handheld...I don't have a PC, so I don't know if this would work.

If it's like the Mac version (I know, your post is about how it isn't), it seems that you should just be able to copy your user data file. The merge command under the file menu can put the data into your file, or you can just switch back and forth between users...so there is no issue of exporting in a particular file format.

My goal here is to share contact data with others, and since I don't want to share all the other stuff, I don't think merging is the right way to go. Also, this is being done through email, so beaming or synching solutions aren't applicable.

On the other hand, I've temporarily (I hope) lost the ability to hot-synch on my work PC (sigh), so it happens that I would indeed like to export from my PC to my Mac, then hot-synch. The suggestion to try copying the user data file from my PC to my Mac is a good one. The formats ought to be the same, but then so should the import/export formats. We'll see....


[This message has been edited by nweinstock (edited 01-25-2000).]