Various faults synching Galaxy Tab to Outlook.

[Steffie]

Hello, thank you for your software.

I successfully used MPE [MyPhoneExplorer_Setup_1.8.4.exe] to Synch my Outlook 2010 Calendar & Contacts to my Samsung Galaxy Tab [10.1" GT-P7510 Wi-Fi] from May 2012 til April 2013 [usually via USB, but occasionally by WiFi]. In April i upgraded to Outlook 2013 & found that MPE would no longer Synch. This was fixed by installing the Beta Update [MyPhoneExplorer_DebugUpdate.exe].

A few days ago i upgraded my Tab's ROM from ICS to JB 4.2.2 [CM10.1], & today was my first attempt to Synch the "new" Tab with Outlook 2013. I have had lots of problems:

(1) the USB connection with MPE is impossible now; it fails to connect every single time. Pls note my comment refers explicitly to USB in MPE... i have no problems at all outside MPE with being able to transfer files over USB cable between my pc & my Tab using Windows Explorer ... so this is not a general fault with my USB ports or cable etc ... it is specific to MPE's USB synch function. Tonight as per http://www.fjsoft.at/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11454 i also downloaded & installed the Android ADB drivers, but it did not help. USB-Debugging *is* Enabled on my Tab. Tonight i also installed the latest version of the Beta Update from your site on my pc, & updated to the current MPE Client on my Tab from Play Store. Nothing helped... MPE USB Synch will not connect at all now.

(2) I tried using Bluetooth instead, with initial success that allowed me to synch my Outlook Contacts to my Tab, & a majority of my Outlook Appointments [both of these were a forced one-way synch of Outlook to Tab]. My Appointments synch was interrupted by an error msg from MPE on the pc that “The connection to phone was lost. Ensure your phone did not change to standby mode.. If need restart MPE Client on the phone & then start the sync-operation again”. That was despite both my pc & my Tab indicating each was still connected to the other over BT, ie, the pairing was still intact, & the Tab had NOT gone into Standby .

(3) I then tried WiFi, which eventually successfully completed the Appointments Synch to Tab.

(4) Next i performed a test by creating a dummy Appointment for today on my Tab, edited the MPE settings to allow “Synch Both”, + “Synch only events in the future, including 730 days before today”, & initiated a new WiFi synch. MPE eventually offered me the chance to DELETE > 10,000 items on Tab!!! It counter-offered to let me keep them, BUT as I have found from Day 1 of using this MPE app, it has no way to change all selections in one go… it needs me to make the change item by item [a Global Change All option is REALLY needed please]. As that is practically impossible for > 10,000 items, I aborted the Synch, & edited the settings to be a very limited “Synch Both” + “Synch only events in the future, including 28 days before today”, & tried again. This time it wanted to Delete > 11,000 entries!! This makes no sense to me; whilst there might be that many total entries now in the Tab Calendar, my settings are only supposed to be looking at a very small, recent, subset.

I have abandoned my attempts, & now am unsure how to proceed. I would appreciate your advice pls.”

[Steffie]

Pls now ignore those parts of my initial Post that mentioned the USB Synch. I have now fixed that after discovering this related thread: http://www.fjsoft.at/forum/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

However my #4 remains a problem, & any solution would be welcomed thank you.

[dvhttn]

Is one of your calendars a 'master'? Personally I use Outlook as my master copy and so, if having problems like yours, I delete the Phone (tablet in your case) calendar completely and re-load from Outlook. Before the new sync, but after deleting your tablet calendar, do a 'download entire' in MPE. Then sync.

I often change ROMs on my phone (HTC Desire HD) and using this method works fine for me.

[Steffie]

Thanks dvhttn. Yes, like you i regard my pc Outlook as the master calendar. Following your Post i Cleared the Calendar Storage data & initiated another “Force Outlook --> Phone” Synch. It eventually failed b4 finishing with the annoying [& wrong] “The connection to phone was lost. Ensure your phone did not change to standby mode.. If need restart MPE Client on the phone & then start the sync-operation again”. i Cleared the Calendar Storage data, created a replacement Local Calendar, & initiated another “Force Outlook --> Phone” Synch. An hour later it failed again with the same error message. i Cleared it, began again. It failed again.

I reduced the Event date range in Settings, Cleared the Calendar Storage data, created a replacement Local Calendar, & initiated another “Force Outlook --> Phone” Synch. An hour later the Confirmation dialog appeared [the previous few Synchs failed b4 getting to this stage] & advised “2148 entries will be deleted. 169 entries will be edited”. Huh? Why delete any when this is the 1st Synch to a newly created empty Calendar? Curious to see what happened i let it proceed ... & 30' later it failed again with that same error msg [which is wrong every time; nothing had gone into Standby Mode].

I inspected the Local Calendar to see what it looked like after this latest abortive Synch attempt. I could see that it has lots & lots of Events written in, & a cursory visual overview comparison with Outlook implied at least the possibility that there's substantial correlation, though unless i were to compare them event by event [which is impossible in a practical sense] i can't know for certain. Oddly, given my settings were to Synch dates back to Jan 2009, an awful lot more data older than that has been written & i can't understand why.

You advised me "do a 'download entire' in MPE". The fact that you enclosed it in inverted commas leads me to presume that you are quoting an actual MPE command or menu option in the pc pgm ... but i can't find any such command. Where is it pls? Or maybe you were not being literal after all, & merely alluding to what i've already been using, “Force Outlook --> Phone” Synch?

Regards, Steffie.

[dvhttn]

"Download Entire" is the big, blue arrow beside the 'sync' button. Hover your mouse over it and you'll see. I use this after clearing my phone storage as this also clears what MPE is reflecting on the PC. THEN I sync with Outlook.

I use wifi and, with a calendar set to 'sync all dates' and about 1000 entrries, it takes just a couple of minutes (XP Pro and HTC Desire HD running 4.2.2). It could be that wifi is shutting off on your phone. There is usually something in advanced settings (wifi menu) that keeps it turned on. You could try that.

I'd also 'search' on here regarding max. number of calendar settings as youy could be hitting some limit there. I'm sure there's been some discussion on it.

[sunniva]

Ein bekanntes Problem neuerer Modelle, mangels schlechter Verbindung reisst diese beim SMS-Versand komplett ab.

[Steffie]

"Download Entire" is the big, blue arrow beside the 'sync' button. Hover your mouse over it and you'll see. I use this after clearing my phone storage as this also clears what MPE is reflecting on the PC. THEN I sync with Outlook.

I use wifi and, with a calendar set to 'sync all dates' and about 1000 entrries, it takes just a couple of minutes (XP Pro and HTC Desire HD running 4.2.2). It could be that wifi is shutting off on your phone. There is usually something in advanced settings (wifi menu) that keeps it turned on. You could try that.

I'd also 'search' on here regarding max. number of calendar settings as youy could be hitting some limit there. I'm sure there's been some discussion on it.

Hi Dave & sorry for my very tardy acknowledgement.

I've re-read your info many times since you posted it, throughout the very large number of ongoing attempts i've been making as i battle this strange Calendar Synch difficulty. Before going further, i'd like to note here that [whilst i cannot *prove* this], my sense is that all these problems arose once i had upgraded my Tab from Android ICS to Jelly Bean 4.2.2 [specifically CM10.1]. I do not know if that's relevant or not, but JB has very many differences to ICS, so i presume it might be a relevant factor ... not least coz JB was accompanied by replacement core apps like Calendar [quite different to the old stock ICS one].

" "Download Entire" is the big, blue arrow beside the 'sync' button" ... oh deary me, didn't i feel like a prize goose when finally i actually noticed this highly visible icon that somehow i had been completely overlooking. Sigh. Having now been educated by you [ta], i ensure that now every time i have to Clear the Tab's Calendar Storage to start over again, i also click that button [though it does not really seem to do much other than wipe out all entries in the PC's MPE Calendar [is that important / beneficial?].

The "connection ... lost" failures seemed to stop once i'd reduced my date span to be only Jan2011+ [which is frustrating as i thought that under ICS i'd been able to go older than that ok], [also, the WiFi comment was not applicable as all those Synchs of mine were USB]. However i have been battling several other oddities since [see paras below]. Oh, BTW, re your "I'd also 'search' on here regarding max. number of calendar settings as you could be hitting some limit there. I'm sure there's been some discussion on it", i certainly found some canvassing of this, http://www.fjsoft.at/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19605 , but sadly i found FJ's advice confusing... "There is no fixed limit how many items MyPhoneExplorer can handle" 23May vs "Again - this amount of data is probably too much for MyPhoneExplorer. You have to reduce your data on the phone when you want to use MyPhoneExplorer" 26May.

Lots of events (especially in 2011, but also later) appear in Tab Calendar Month View as duplicates, but when zoom in can see that in fact my single Outlook appointments had been split by MPE into Tab as 2 consecutive events, generally with their times shifted one hour. Also many Recurring Appointments have gone nuts in Tab, with the recurrence still present on days that I'd modified in Outlook for custom time, thus creating appearance of duplicates. Worse, in trying to delete the superfluous recurrences on said individual days, it actually deleted ALL future instances. Aaaarrrrggghhhh.

From careful comparison of several months in Tab Calendar vs Outlook Calendar, i discovered something interesting; I'm sure this must relate directly to observations in the preceding para, but have not been able to solve it. In my part of Oz we begin Daylight Savings in Oct & end DS in Apr. In my Tab Calendar i've found that the Daylight Savings changeover on 7/April marks the time when the 1 hour shift of all my recently Synched appts stopped, ie, all later entries in Tab are right, but those before then in Tab are 1 hour wrong, then those entries before the previous 7/Oct DS changeover are correct again, etc. I know, obviously, that DS shifts time by an hour, that's the whole point, duh. However i cannot understand WHY *either* MPE, or Jelly Bean, are dynamically shifting all those appts during the Synch so that they end up contradicting Outlook [& actual historical reality]? Weird.

I found this Post at http://www.fjsoft.at/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19868 & applied the modification to the INI file, but it made no improvement; Tab Calendar / JB / MPE is still shifting all appts spuriously by an hour within those DS dates. Sigh.

I really hope something here might make sense to another User, coz at the moment i seem to be getting nowhere! Until / unless i can solve this hour-shift & occasional appt-duplicates, i am loathe to return MPE's Setting to Synch Both Ways; i'm just doing it all Outlook to Tab for now. Whilst i'm irritated at the falsehoods being perpetrated to the Tab Calendar, i can keep it in perspective [it's only the Tab Calendar!], however if i were to return to [what i had hitherto done routinely & frequently when still on ICS] 2-way Synchs & this unsolved bug began rearranging my Outlook Calendar too, well that would be A Bridge Too Far ... or to put it another way, given that my Outlook Calendar manages & annotates my "life" [sad, i know], spurious edits of historical records would be far too Orwellian for my tastes!!

Steffie.

[FJ]

Puhh - long story of problems....

We should try to find a solution for one point to another, otherwise we will find no end.

1. Yes, there is no limit in the amount of data. But your tablet has not unlimited resources and my experience is that 10.000 appointments will be critical on your device. The databas egets slow, there are from time to time errors when MPE tries to create new events.

2. Do not trust your native calendar application if you see some items twice. Samsung had several isues in the calendar app especially with ruled events. To test if its a issue of the calendar app please test alternatives like BusinessCalendar or aCalendar and check if they show thise events still duplicated.

3. In case of time shifts (and also duplicates) its always very important to know if the diffrence is between the Calendar of MyPhoneExplorer and the phone or between the Calendar of MyPhoneExplorer and Outlook.

[Steffie]

Thanks FJ.

#2 - I did not bother to mention this before, as i did not wish to further complicate my story, but in fact each time i have written about the "Calendar" in my Tablet, i am actually meaning the native Jellybean 4.2.2 Calendar *AND* also Business Calendar [Paid version]. In practice i do not ever "use" the native JB calendar app, as i prefer the greater sophistication & functionality of the BC. However i understand, from separate correspondence with the BC people, that BC simply reads all the raw Appointment & Event data from the native Android calendar [or rather, i imagine, from the Android's "Calendar Storage"]. Also, i note your comment about possible Samsung calendar app faults, but this cannot be relevant for me -- despite my Tablet being a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, its ROM is *not* factory Samsung any longer ... i rooted it & installed a custom ROM [CM10.1 JB 4.2.2].

#3 - Good question, here's the status. For each 6-month period that we are NOT in Daylight Savings in my part of Oz, all calendar Appointment times agree in each of Outlook & MPE on my pc, AND Calendar + Business Calendar on my Tab. However, for each other 6-month period that we ARE in Daylight Savings, whilst Outlook & MPE continue to agree with each other [& ARE the correct times], both Calendar** & Business Calendar on Tab become wrong by 1 hour on the Tab... even though all those Appointments were written to the Tab by MPE from Outlook.

** I've just made a significant discovery as i was preparing this Post... as follows:

Before i rooted my Tab & flashed the CM10.1 JB ROM to it, i used stock Samsung Ice Cream Sandwich, whose native Calendar was called S-Planner. My Business Calendar app seemed happy to integrate fine with this as the source of all its data, as i did NOT experience this Daylight Savings 1-hour timeshift fault back then. This fault ONLY began since i have been using the JB 4.2.2 ROM, with its new native Android Calendar app.

This new JB Calendar has a setting [not present in the older ICS version] to allow the User to select a Home Timezone, including specifically if that TZ incorporates Daylight Savings. If i Enable this Home Timezone in the JB Calendar's Settings, then choose my applicable TZ, all the Appointments displayed in the Calendar app during the 6 months of Daylight Savings, jump back to the *correct* times, thus agreeing once again with Outlook & MPE.

HOWEVER, when i then check all these same Appointments in the Business Calendar app, they are still wrong by 1 hour!! This directly implies that all this time i had been suspecting a fault with either MPE or the JB Calendar, i was wrong. Instead, i now suspect the culprit is that the current version of Business Calendar is not able to properly process the data it reads out of the Calendar Storage, for the Daylight Savings periods., ie, this might be the cause of the 1-hour shift error during the DS periods. I shall email the BC people & advise them of this discovery ... i think they need to update BC to properly integrate with this new Jellybean Calendar Home Timezone feature.

I'm terribly sorry to have wasted your time on this forum, & falsely implied a fault with MPE. Oops!

[FJ]

MyPhoneExplorer does create events with the devices default timezone. So if you change the timezone of the device then the timezone field of the events will be NOT changed. It depends which timezone the calendar app uses. It seems BusinessCalendar does use the event-timezone and the native calendar app does use the current timezone.

Delete the problematic events and sync again.

[Steffie]

"So if you change the timezone of the device" ... No, that is not relevant for my situation; i have *not* changed my Tab's timezone, it is still set correctly. The "Home Timezone" to which i referred is a NEW feature within the Settings of the NEW Calendar app that comes with JellyBean 4.2.2. It is separate from & additional to the Tab's native timezone setting. As i explained, if i enable this setting within the new Android Calendar app, then ALL my Appointments display the correct times when viewed in the Android JB Calendar app, BUT when viewed in Business Calendar, only those Appointments for the months when Eastern Australia is NOT in Daylight Savings show the correct times; all Appointments for the Daylight Savings months are wrong by an hour in BC [but still correct in JB Calendar]. On the other hand, if i disable the JB Calendar's "Home Timezone" setting, then the Appointments for half of each year display wrong by 1 hour in BOTH BC & JB Calendar.

"Delete the problematic events and sync again" ... I'm sorry FJ but with respect that's completely impractical... we are not talking about 1 or 2 or 3 Appointments here, we are talking about dozens & dozens ... *every* Appointment during the half of *every* year for which Daylight Savings is active, is wrong by 1 hour in BC, but correct in JB Calendar [*if* i have enabled its "Home Timezone" setting].

As i said in my previous Post, this now looks to me like a bug with Business Calendar, not something that MPE would be able to resolve until the makers of BC issue an updated version fully compatible with JB 4.2.2 with respect to its new Calendar's "Home Timezone" feature.