Calendar field length limitation

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

Hi, my name is Mike, and MyPhoneExplorer was the answer to my issue of being able to sync with Outlook directly, instead of using an Exchange server. I have an exchange server at work that I sync with, but I didn't want to have to reply on being connected to it just to sync my phone, rather I just wanted to sync without, plan and simple. Smile

So, I've been using MyPhoneExplorer and really liking it, but the except of one little issue that I see...

At my work, we often schedule recurring "bridge meetings" (i.e. teleconference) months at a time. For example, I have one recurring meeting that happens every Tuesday morning and the calendar event has all the bridge info for all the meetings between Oct 11th, 2011 and April 3rd, 2012 (about 6 months worth of meetings, after which, this even will be updated with the next 6 months worth of info). For example, each week has info like this:

Code:

Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 09:00 AM US Pacific Time
xxx-yyy-zzz, 8-aaa-bbbb, Bridge: ##, Passcode: ########
Live Meeting: https://webjoin.companyname.com/?passcode=########
Speed dialer: companyname dialer://##,######## | Learn more

... < deleted to keep it shorter > ...

Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 09:00 AM US Pacific Time
xxx-yyy-zzz, 8-aaa-bbbb, Bridge: ##, Passcode: ########
Live Meeting: https://webjoin.companyname.com/?passcode=########
Speed dialer: companyname dialer://##,######## | Learn more

Tuesday, April 03, 2012, 09:00 AM US Pacific Time
xxx-yyy-zzz, 8-aaa-bbbb, Bridge: ##, Passcode: ########
Live Meeting: https://webjoin.companyname.com/?passcode=########
Speed dialer: companyname dialer://##,######## | Learn more

So, the body of this appointment where all those details are kept for my current meeting is about 6800 character, but in the MPE calendar event's "additional" field, where these details are synced to, the field seems to be limited to only 2000 characters, so when I look in MPE or my phone, I only get October 11th through November 8th, and part of November 15th (i.e. I'm missing Nov 15th through April 3rd).

If the "additional" field could be changed from 2000 bytes/characters to something like 8192 bytes or larger, that would help accommodate larger calendar events like this.

So far, I've been using this for about a week, and this is the only issue I've seen with syncing my Outlook calendar, otherwise, MPE is exactly what I need! Great work, and thanks! Smile

-Mike

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

Argh, I'm not sure why I didn't realize this before, but it seems the phone is also limited to 2000 characters, so I suspect MPE can't do anything about fixing this unless Android fixes it or there is a different Android calendar that I can sync with that has a high character limit. If anyone knows of something like that, let me know. Thanks. Smile

-Mike

Site Admin Anmeldedatum: 15.02.2006 Beiträge: 31906 Wohnort: Tirol

Please install the current beta where i did increase all calendar-fields to 10.000 characters maximum

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

Been on vacation and just catching up on emails. Sorry it took so long to try this out. I just downloaded the beta and will try it and let you know what I see. Thanks for the quick response. Smile

-Mike

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

Notes during install:

Tried to install beta, but got error trying to open MyPhoneExplorer.exe for writing. Aborted/Cancelled. Tried again, but ran as administrator, and that worked.

At the end of the install, I was asked "Changelog Öffnen? Yes/No" and I had to stop and think back to my high school Germal Classes. Wink

So, if you wanted to add "(Open Changelog)" to that prompt, it might be helpful for people who don't speak German at all. Smile

Didn't see any mention of the increased character limit in the changelog (maybe intentional, since this is just a beta, but thought I'd mention it, in case it was an oversight).

Fired MPE up after beta update. Attached phone to USB, ran multi-sync, but got an error that it couldn't open Com9... Power-cycled phone. Tried again. Same error. Verified USB Debug still enabled. Restarted MPE, tried again, same error. Disabled BlueTooth, but different error. That reminds me... Wink

Set connection to "Autodetect" (since I had it on bluetooth when I was first working on getting a bluetooth sync to work), and sync started to work. (Silly me)

Had a dialog popup during first sync, and was in the process of hitting a key when it popped up, so I didn't see what it said (oops), so I aborted my sync (so I could try again and see it this time), and it aborted that part of the sync (contacts), but then went on to sync my calendar. This makes me think it might be cool to have an "Abort All" button, if you want to cancel the entire multi-sync, and not just the stage you're on. (For now, I'll just sync individual items as a quick work-around during this testing).

Trying again. Ah, that dialog was asking if I wanted to allow the program to access email address info, etc... Allow! Smile

hmmmm... I've clicked "allow" a bunch of times, but it still just keeps asking while in the "Synchronising contacts with Outlook..." stage. It wouldn't let me just click "Allow," it only went away when I clicked "Allow for 10 minutes." I didn't ever used to get this dialog, but now I can't seem to get rid of it.

Using Outlook 2010: Went to File, Options, Add-Ins, and notice that MPE was listed as an "Inactive Application Add-in", so I selected Manage "COM Add-ins" and "Go". then clicked the box next to "MyPhoneExplorer", then OK, etc.... Now it doesn't prompt me with that dialog anymore (yeah). Smile

Not sure why that got unchecked... Maybe because I have a new version of MPE and it only "certified" the previous version and was "protecting" me from this new version?

Oh, wait, it did prompt me again (I guess I was still within the "allow for 1 minute" timeframe)... Did some research, and found this link:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/i-get-warnings-about-a-program-accessing-email-address-information-or-sending-email-on-my-behalf-HA010355062.aspx

Per suggestions in that link, I noticed that my Anti-Virus hadn't updated in a while (since I'd been on vacation and not even opened my laptop for a couple weeks). Updated my Anti-virus to see if that gets rid of this dialog... Yep, that fixed it. It was part of that MS security trust center stuff, that in the case where you let your AV dat files get out of date (or your AV stuff stops working), then Outlook decides to be less trusting of add-ins and stuff, so it prompts you, but after updating my AV dats, it's working fine again.

Looking over sync options, I see a number of contacts and calendar events that I'm not sure why they're wanting to be sync'ed (things I haven't changed in a long time). Hmmm... Maybe these are items that had long bodies and are now "different" between Outlook (with the original "long" body) and MPE (with the currently truncated bodies, about to be expanded to the full size)... Going with the "Use entry from Outlook" option for these...

Sync Complete.

Side note: The Synchronizing dialog says "Synchronising" (with an "S" instead of a "Z"). If that's the correct or alternative spelling for some location besides the US, then cool, otherwise, it's spelled wrong.

Decided to sync (multi) again, and it had a bunch of things to sync again... Less than the original sync, but still, quite a few... Wonder why...

Decided to sync yet again. Had two items to sync. (Much better)

Did a 3rd multi-sync, and finally, it doesn't have anything to sync, so that's a good thing, I think. Looks like I'm all sync'ed up. Smile

Now, for the real test... Do my long Outlook bodies properly transfer into MPE's "Additional:" field???

YES!!!!

But what about the even more important question: Will those same long text entries get transfered into my phone?

YES!!!!

It seems the Android calendar has some kind of maxiumum text field limit, as I can't add any additional info to the calendar events (when I try to, it says "Maximum number of characters reached"), but whatever I have in my calendar gets stuffed into MPE and then stuffed into my phone calendar (Android 2.3 on a Samsung Galaxy S2), even though it goes over the calendar's character limit. Since I rarely have any reason to edit these long text fields on my phone (typically doing it in Outlook), I'd call my issue revolved in this beta version.. I don't know how you are able to stuff more characters into my phone's calendar than I can by default (maybe its a limitation of the built-in calendar's gui, and not a limitation on whatever it uses for storing calendar events), but it works. Smile

. Thanks!!!

I know this is a long post, but since it was a beta, I figured I'd share the entire log of my experience, in case it helps in further development and/or anyone else who might try this beta. Smile

-Mike

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

P.S. Sent a small Paypal donation for getting me a beta that works. Smile

Thanks again.

-Mike

Anmeldedatum: 16.01.2011 Beiträge: 7

Hello,

after my last calendar synch, i got connection drop, now I know why... I had no idea that MPE has some characters limit in calendar notes, so i pasted a longer conversation into it. I checked in Word and it has almost 80 000 characters with spaces :/

Is it really much to ask for increasing the limit to 100 000 at least?

Whether 10 000 characters is your final decision or not, MPE defenitely should warn a user that an event is exceding a limit.

Is it really neccessery to have a limit so low? People just wont stop begging for incresing the limit over and over...

I mean, 1 000 000 000 could solve the problem for few decades, hopefully Very Happy

Verfasst am: Do Jan 12, 2012 00:48

@wiss:
No, 100000 is too much. It will be kept to 30000.
- every Sync-Software and all phone shave field limits
- its nearly impossible to read such long texts on the phone

@Skier: Yes, really a long post Wink

the most things have nothing to do with the beta. Thanks for testing. The Security dialog of Outlook can be fixed with "ExpressClickYes"

Anmeldedatum: 16.01.2011 Beiträge: 7

Alright, I think i can deal with 30 000 for now, it will be 100 000 until 2020 tho, im pretty sure Smile

1) This is not about reading the conversations on the phone, but more about having just one, integrated calendar, that is the same everywhere, and the copy in the phone works as a backup too.

2) MPE doesnt warn when the limit is crossed, could you implement a warning or something?

3) In my primary ICS calendar (Reminderfox as Firefox addon), i noticed significant performance drop with just 10 events with conversations around 50 000 characters. I checked the ICS and it has less than 600 KB, so I will try to contact developers if they can look at it because I dont think this is a normal behaviour.

Thank you for incresing the limit to 30 000 anyway Smile

Anmeldedatum: 12.01.2012 Beiträge: 8

On a somewhat related issue, what is the maximum field length on the Notes section in the Contacts app? I noticed that many of my notes for Contacts were truncated when transferring from Outlook to my Motorola Droid Razr (2.3.5) . Luckily (for me) when resyncing, the truncated Notes do not overwrite my Outlook data.

Is this limit set by MPE, the Contact app, or...?

If it is something set by MPE, what are the chances of upping this limit as well? 30,000 sounds pretty good to me Wink

Verfasst am: Fr Jan 13, 2012 00:34

The limit is set in MyPhoneExplorer. We are talking in this thread already about the contact notes limit. This is increased in the current beta to 30000

Anmeldedatum: 20.12.2011 Beiträge: 15

Couple things.

1. I've had no issues with the beta you had me install (which I commented on in detail above), and it's been ~6 months now. Smile

I notice that the current version is 1.8.2, but dated in October 2011. The date of the beta I have (v 1.8.2 - nightly) is 12/23/11, so just noting that the beta would seem to still be the only way to get this change update for anyone who needs it.

2. Regarding the comment "We are talking in this thread already about the contact notes limit," in this thread, we've been primarily talking about the field limit in the notes field in calendar events, not the "contact notes" limits. Was the Contact Notes field length also updated?

-Mike

Verfasst am: Mi Jun 27, 2012 21:44

1. I know, my release strategy is awfully at the moment. But the next release is very near Wink

2. Yes, contact note limit was also increased to 30K

Anmeldedatum: 09.09.2014 Beiträge: 8 Wohnort: Bulgaria

FJ hat Folgendes geschrieben:

2. Yes, contact note limit was also increased to 30K

Nowadays, in MPE 1.8.6, what is the limit of the Notes field of a contact?

And do you plan to increase it? Many of my contacts' notes are truncated Sad

Anmeldedatum: 09.09.2014 Beiträge: 8 Wohnort: Bulgaria

FJ hat Folgendes geschrieben:

2. Yes, contact note limit was also increased to 30K

FJ, could you please increase the limit of the Notes field of a contact?

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