Registered: Jul 2001
Location:
Posts: 13

Synching with Outlook and 2 PCs

I am having a problem synching my email between Outlook 2000 and my Visor Platinum. I have it set to synchronize the files, and I have not set any filters on my visor. When I hotsynch, all of the messages in my Outlook inbox are indeed transferred to my visor, and any messages in my visor outbox are transferred to my Outlook. I synch my visor to both my home computer and my work computer. The problem I am having is that any email messages that have been transferred to my visor from one computer are not transferred to my other computer when I synch it. Worse than that, these messages are also deleted from my visor during the synch. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a flaw in the program? If it is a flaw in the program, is there a third party program I can download to work around this? Thanks

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Atlantic Rim
Posts: 570

Ah, the Old Outlook on Two Computers Problem

This "issue" is well documented. Unfortunately you can only really synchronize your Visor, with the built in Mail software with one desktop at a time. Each time you synchronize at home or work it will reload the Inbox content in its entirety -- there is no way to merge the two different versions of Outlook. There are third party apps that will do what you want, but they cost between $30 and $50.

I have the same issue, and I worked around it this way: I collect only work email at work, but collect both work and personal email at home. I set Outlook at work to leave messages on the server for 14 days (although a day or two would be fine), an option under the Advanced field in server set-up on the Mail Account set-up in the Windows control panel.

Each time I check email from home it captures all my email, including those from work which I may already have seen. That way my Visor holds both my personal and work email. I configure my Hotsynch at work so that it does not synchronize my email. This means that I don't have my very latest work email on my Visor, but I do have every email I receive within the ten hours between my morning Synch and when I Synch coming home from work.

If there is ever a need to get an important email onto my Visor while I am at work, I will simply Custom Hotsync and allow my Visor to load my latest work email, knowing that it will restore all my personal email when I get home. That doesn't happen very often.

The whole key to the workaround is leaving email on the server for a few days (which, incidently, is a really good way to idiot-proof the backup of your latest, and typically most valuable email correspondance. If I ever have a catastrophic failure, or need to access my email from someone else's machine in an emergency, it will always download every email I have received in the last 14 days.)