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August 19, 2006
I Give Up
I've blogged about this before. I have nearly 10,000 contacts in my Entourage and I can now (somewhat) sync those up to my Palm Pilot, but I lose all sorts of labels and can only have ONE street address, birthdays don't get merged into my calendar anymore, etc. So, it's not perfect. It's more like a backup than a dual-platform tool anymore.
After reading a post on Lifehacker about syncing data, I revisited my address book issues and imported all of my contacts into a new Gmail account. Which I now cannot use. Yup. There are so many contacts that the Gmail server times out when I try to open any one of them... oh, and all of the information was imported into the NOTES field, with the exception of the primary email address, on each of these nearly 10,000 contacts I imported. Way to go, Google.
I've read the comments at that Lifehacker post and I've looked at the links readers have provided there. Nothing is clicking for me.
HOW CAN I BE THE ONLY PERSON ON THE PLANET WITH AN ENORMOUS ADDRESS BOOK WHO CANNOT SEEM TO FIND A SIMPLE WAY TO SYNC MY DATA?
I am so pissed off at Palm Desktop for losing its way. It really was the PERFECT solution for me for so so so so long. Damn Handspring corporate buyout and priority shift to "smart phone" BS rather than what I use my Treo to do: ORGANIZE MY LIFE. I DON'T CARE ABOUT RINGTONES!! I DON'T USE IT AS A PHONE!
Ugh.
So, anyway.
One of the major flaws I've found in Entourage, since using it as my primary source for contact information (as much as I hate having to look someone up on my computer instead of on my handheld if I want to see ALL of their contact info... grumble grumble) is that it will LOSE email addresses. The email addresses will show up in the preview pane that lists ALL contacts, but when the selected address is in the individual preview pane, the email address is MISSING. And, therefore, when I sync Entourage to my Palm (with Entourage overwriting Palm's CONTACTS file), I lose email addresses in my Palm... which I use for EMAIL ALL THE TIME!
Only when I open the individual contact file in Entourage in a new window does the email address magically reappear on the contact's page... and I have to resave the contact in order for that "change" (a change that occurs by OPENING a contact???) to "hold"... but then some other contact loses ITS address in the preview pane... and I'm guessing that's because I've reached the technical limit to the number of email addresses the damn program can hold in its brain at once.
GREAT.
So now what?
I am soooooo over this! Ugh!
PS--I should mention that the reason it's a problem that addresses "drop out" of the preview pane version of Entourage is that when an email comes in from a contact whose address has "dropped out," the message gets marked as junk and goes to my spam filter. And when I go to "add sender to contacts," Entourage can't seem to notice the person already has a contact file and CREATES A NEW ONE. Duplicates are oh so much fun when one is dealing with a kazillion contacts. Also, the contact file LOSES the link to message history (which I really do love using, when I'm trying to find where on Earth I've filed my last exchange with an agent with whom I'm working on three different projects).
Posted by bonnie at August 19, 2006 4:56 AM
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Comments
Have you talked to the people who make the software?
Posted by: Ed R at August 19, 2006 5:26 AM
Entourage was great...except when it wasn't. And you have to be vigilant about backing up your shit, b/c that file would become corrupted and...well, you know.
I'm stumbling along with Mail and Address Book now. Can't believe I'm using the software that comes with the computer. It's imperfect (I miss links! I miss automagically creating an event from an email!) but there are lots of scripts and stuff from the geeky Mac faithful.
If I were you, I'd query organizational guru Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. I'm guessing you're not the only one out there with an insanely large address book.
Posted by: communicatrix at August 19, 2006 11:00 AM
Chimin' in to feel your pain, sister.
Lost a years worth of emails, contacts, and calendar appointments the other day due to my Outlook slowly corrupting behind the scenes.
Pooh.
I want a new Mac.
xo
Posted by: Anna at August 19, 2006 3:09 PM