Beyond Contacts - Access your Outlook Data from your handheld

Beyond Contacts Review

Reviewed June 2005

We recently purchased a Palm Zire 31 to replace our aging Visor Handspring. Our MS Outlook is set up with a lot of subfolders. We had been using Chapura to provide a conduit that would recognize subfolders.

As we were setting up the new Zire, we realized that it didn't include any email inbox. We like to have our incoming messages on our Palm. We searched a little and found a nifty little application for under $30 called Beyond Contacts from Dataviz. It claims to work the same as Outlook and delivers on that claim. Installation was a snap. Once it was installed, all of the folder and subfolder information for tasks, calendar, notes etc. was duplicated on the Palm.

Dataviz offers a free 30 day trial.

Tips.

Before you do anything with any handheld synchronizing application, you absolutely need to back up your Outlook PST file. That way, you are protected in the event that anything goes wrong.

We were having some problems with a lockup during the BCNotes sync. We tried reinstalling the app on the Palm and desktop but still had the problem. We found that the USB synch cable was plugged into a USB hub. We moved the cable to one of the USB ports on the PC and the problem has not reoccurred

We purchased a cigarette lighter power adapter for about $20. It's something else to store in the truck but it comes in real handy when you are on the road and realize that the battery is low. .

We were getting a "Unexpected error occurred - $80210138 Synchronization was skipped because Beyond Contacts has detected that this is not your primary PC." error message. Nothing in Beyond Contacts on the Palm was being updated. The fix that worked with us was the following: (NOTE- You will probably lose anything you entered into palm before synchronization went bad. You should also make sure that your Outlook PST file is backed up as well)

Right Click on the Palm HotSync icon in the system tray.
Choose "Custom"
Set BEYOND CONTACTS to 'Desktop overwrites Handheld". Do not make this a default action
Synchronize and check both your logs and the content on both your PC and Handheld
If the above doesn't work, try repeating it, but doing a pin reset of your palm prior to synchronizing
Note - If you repeat the process, you will have to reset the "Desktop overwrites handheld" option

Summary

A great program at a very reasonable price.

Update - August 2005 - We started to experience a hang when we would sync at the BCNotes portion. This would require resetting the palm, rebooting the workstation and then clearing out the local settings, temp folder. It didn't seem to happen if the machine was recently booted. We reinstalled the software per tech support on both the palm and the workstation. The problem was not resolved.

We noticed that the usb cable was plugged into a hub and not directly into the PC. We moved it to the PC and things seemed to be OK for a while.

We experienced another hang at BCNotes when trying to synch after the machine had been running for a couple of days and really could have used a reboot.

This still seems to be a problem. One thing that might have worked was to click the hotsync icon in the system tray when the synchronization hung at BCNotes again.

Update - Sept 2006 FINAL RESOLUTION- We noticed that the USB cable was slightly damaged. Once we replaced the cable we have not had the problem. Apparently, the damaged USB cable would provide an erratic connection depending on how it was positioned.

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