Location field in Outlook getting wiped out

[kvedt]

I'm using the build 3097 of CL Express with DejaOffice, Outlook 2007, Win 7 64 bit, and the htc incredible. I thought this was an error on my part yesterday, but I know that today it's not. When I receive and accept an invite, any information put in the Location field of the invite is getting wiped out after a sync. Same for instructions in the appended notes of the invite. I double checked the same invite after synching to Google Calendar but before synching with CLExpress, and all of the information is in the Location field ("Where"). After synching, the field's blank in both Outlook and my incredible, either the DejaCalendar or the native android calendar.

Help!

Peter

[DJOCTO]

Peter, we know the solution.

For now go to DejaOffice, Options, Sync Options, and Uncheck Calendar Sync.

In the process of moving the Event to the native Android Calendar, we missed moving the Location (Where) field. So the process of sync blanks it out. This will be fixed in the next release. I'm resigned to this release being Monday, but I'm still hoping for the end of this week.

For now, unchecking the native Calendar Sync will preserve "location" although new events won't be moved to the Android Calendar.

[kvedt]

Before I could even do that, I was doing a sync and DjO forced itself closed, then the incredible started cycling through Updating Records, going through all 620 contact records and then starting over. I finally forced DejaOffice to close and rebooted the phone. After booting back up and sounding the recurrent event notification, DejaOffice opened itself and displayed a message that the sync failed. No big deal, except it was frozen. I couldn't tap back, home, close or anything. I pressed the power button to turn the phone off and selected that, the phone started to power down and then utterly froze. I had to take out the battery.

Let it sit for ten minutes, put the battery back in and booted it back up and DejaOffice started to do the same thing - cycling through the records. I quickly forced a stop, then uninstalled the app and shut it down. This time it didn't freeze, but it took three times longer than usual to actually shut down. But then it wouldn't start back up. No response to pressing the power button, and plugging a charger into it also did nothing, not even lighting up the charging indicator. Battery back out, wait, back in and it booted up this time. At least the data in the native android calendar still exists, as do the contacts.

I'm going to hold off reinstalling DejaOffice until you can shed some light on what this was all about. I didn't lose any data, but it was not a fun 40 minutes. These things happen, I know (can you say "WindowsME?" or "Vista 64?"), and I always back up my Outlook file so I wasn't going to lose it all. Still, if you can tell me what happened and how to avoid it, I'd appreciate it.

Peter

[DJOCTO]

Peter I'm so sorry! I'm working through a similar issue where sync is behaving oddly on one unit. I think it's related. It will be my focus with the programmer tomorrow to get a good view of the process.

[kvedt]

As noted before, the incredible seems to have its own unique implentation of android.

Don't know if this will help, but I was being driven nuts by a problem synching iTunes using Syncr. Trolling forums revealed that most people using the incredible were having the same problem regardless of app. The music and (some, but not all) of the art would come over, and you could access the music via aritst, album or genre. But if you opened a playlist (which appeared to come over), you received a Playlist Contains No Music message, even though the music was there (I only used playlists to sync off of).

After lot of hit and miss, I found that the incredible handles capital letters oddly in some cases. To cut to the end of the story (for now), I had to manually delete all the existing playllists from the incredible, then mount the sd card and delete all the music, playlists and program data (except the license). The change all the playlists in iTunes to lower case only and sync all over again. This time it worked, and all music could be accessed via the playlists as well as the other routes.

Weird, huh?

Peter

[DJOCTO]

Peter, it makes sense in a way. Android is new, HTC is pushing a lot of technology out, with Incredible you are definitely on the "bleeding edge", and as a whole, Android is not stable across platforms so all App developers have to adapt to a shifting platform.

Your experience with onboard Contacts is a great example. When we only sync to our own database, it is stable and fast. When we sync to the Onboard database provides feature compatibility, but also it is unstable and incredibly slow. Everyone complains when we sync to the onboard database. Everyone complains when we don't.

My best plan is to continue to push to replacing features, including the dialer and eventually email, in order to control the app data which will give us stability for those who choose to turn off the native databases. At the same time, I'm equally sure that HTC and Google teams are working hard to bring better stability, account management, and app sandboxing for individual units like Incredible, and also to the platform as a whole. In the meantime, DejaOffice allows users to select whether to sync "through", thereby confusing just about everyone.

Overall Android is a great platform both for developers and for customers. Don't let "new version-itis" color the fact that more change will happen within 2010 on this platform than on any other phone. The sheer number of geeks, both developers, corporate players and marketers that are assigned to make it work is staggering. As I have said to my team; there will be bumps, go fasten your seatbelts; this is going to be a really big ride.

It will be worthwhile.