Upgrade to WM 6: BEWARE!

There is always a place for lost subjects who apparently don't fit the previous forums. This is the one...
Post Reply
Robert
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2007 5:09 pm
Location: Edinburgh

Upgrade to WM 6: BEWARE!

Post by Robert »

I've just upgraded my PDA/Phone from WM5 to WM6.

The good news is that BirdieSync still works. But a couple of points to watch out for:

1) The WM upgrade will clobber everything on your PDA. So you'll have to re-install BirdieSync (and any other software you have on the PDA). So make sure you've got the relevant installer to hand.

2) I started out upgrading BirdieSync to 1.6.4, which is the version that works in WM6. The upgrade was fairly straightforward, though the instructions could be clearer (see my moan on in the Problem Reports forum). Then, I did the upgrade to WM6, and re-installed BirdieSync, which was painless. I selected the options to sync. with thunderbird and sunbird, and all my contacts and appointments were automatically re-instated from my laptop to the PDA. Wheee!

Then, I tried to sync to my desktop. A bit more dramatic! ActiveSync noticed that something was different, and asked me whether I wanted to merge or overwrite addresses, diaries etc. I said "merge", and it promptly started duplicated all my address book entries! Not pretty. So be very sure you have everything backed up!

3) Note that "Tasks" in WM6 is broken. You cannot filter to show only Active tasks. I'll say that again, otherwise you won't believe me. WM 6 does not let you show only Active tasks. The "filter" option is there: it just doesn't do anything. So my reminder to buy my wife's birthday present is showing on my "Tasks" list now even though the task is not set to start for another six months. So if you use "Tasks" to remind you to do things well in the future ("what a good idea!") you may want to seriously consider staying with WM5.

All in all, not entirely smooth, but less painful than I'd expected...

Robert.
--
Robert Inder
Edinburgh

Birdy
Site Admin
Posts: 3118
Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:43 am
Contact:

Re: Upgrade to WM 6: BEWARE!

Post by Birdy »

Hello,

Thank you for sharing this information with us.
I said "merge", and it promptly started duplicated all my address book entries! Not pretty. So be very sure you have everything backed up!
If you select "merge", ActiveSync will copy all your data from the mobile to the desktop and all your data on the desktop to the mobile. If the data are identical, at the end of the synchronization, the duplicates should be searched ("Looking for duplicates" in ActiveSync window) and automatically removed if the items are considered "identical". If it was not the case (because of some differences), they were left untouched leading to duplicates. If you had a lot of duplicates, it could be interesting to investigate on the cause of these differences. Let me know if you still have an example of such duplicates.
Birdy

Post Reply