Guide for those migrating to webOS that still want to "hot sync" to their PC

[Cantaffordit]

This thread is intended to provide guidance to users that want to sync their webOS phone to their PC just like they have been doing with their Palm Treo, Centro, or Palm PDA. There has been a significant number of people that have been surprised that Palm’s webOS phones don’t have the Hot Sync capability that made Palm unbeatable in the world of PDAs and early smart phones for almost a decade.

My intention is to consolidate the “how-to” steps from various threads for those that want to continue to use this paradigm, and are willing to spend the money to buy a 3rd party app to sync their new Palm phone to their PC.

This isn’t a thread for debating the wisdom of desktop sync, or the merits of webOS Synergy, “cloud computing”, or syncing with Gmail. This isn’t about how to sync with an Exchange server. There are many threads already covering that, and those methods are fine for many users. Hopefully this thread can serve as a place for users to post tips and questions on how to continue syncing with a PC for those that want to continue that with webOS.

If you are moving to webOS from a PalmOS PDA or phone – and you want to continue syncing to your PC… this thread is for you. If you want to keep using Palm Desktop or Outlook to sync with your webOS phone, read on. I will break this up in to several posts. The first is to identify how to get ready for the transition to webOS without losing control of your contacts/calendar data. The next post will cover what to do once you have your phone.

The first thing to understand is what a “Palm profile” is, and to NOT confuse it with other “cloud” services such as Yahoo or Gmail. Your Palm profile does several things. First, it is required for the phone to work. It is used to manage your App Catalog downloads, and it manages automatic backup and restore of your webOS phone. That means if you wipe your phone clean, it will automatically restore app catalog purchases and certain configuration settings automatically when you log in to your phone. Very cool. It will also store and back-up your contacts, and they have a one-time tool called Data Transfer Assistant - which I recommend you avoid. The reason I recommend that is that it can pull all of your contacts into your Palm profile and sync them to your phone... But the bad news is that there is no way to access contacts in your Palm profile contacts except on your phone. You can’t use a browser on your PC to access or export them. This thread was largely motivated by helping people that didn’t realize this, and they are unhappy that their contacts can’t be easily exported. I don’t recommend keeping your contacts in your Palm profile.

Read on:

[Cantaffordit]

Steps before you start setting up your webOS phone.

1. Always create multiple back up copies. Stop reading this, and make multiple copies of your data before continuing. Do it now, really. Don’t continue until you have AT LEAST 2 backups physically stored somewhere other than your PC. If you are using Palm Desktop, find the “Palm” directory on your PC, and make several copies. If you are using Outlook, export your contacts and calendar to a .pst archive file. Copy one to a USB key. Copy on to a CD. Send a copy to your Grandmother. Put one under your mattress. Just make sure you can ALWAYS get back to a good copy of your data.

2. Set up a dedicated email account to use for your Palm profile. In order to use a webOS phone, you have to create a “Palm profile” that is tied to an email address as part of initializing your phone. I’ll explain more later, but for now I strongly recommend that you chose an email address that you don’t use for anything else. Even if you have to create a new email address at Yahoo or Hotmail, I suggest you do that. It will help you not to get confused when you are working with other accounts that Synergy may want to sync contacts or calendar with. For example, I happen to have an account from godaddy.com that costs me about $1/month that I use for this so I can use “name@myname.com” specifically for my Palm profile. That way I won’t get it confused with any Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail/etc accounts that I eventually link to my phone with Synergy, which is Palm’s next-generation of “hot-sync-on-steroids”. Synergy is really cool, but it is unfortunate that is doesn’t include desktop sync.

You may eventually use Synergy to tie in your FaceBook, Hotmail, and/or Twitter accounts. But until then, I recommend that you tie a different email account to your Palm profile, even if you have to create a new one (they are free, after all). It’s best if there aren’t any contacts or calendar entries in that account. Clean and empty will make it simple.

If you ever want to change the email address that is associated with your Palm profile, you can log on to the Palm website and change it.

[Cantaffordit]

Now that you have several backups of your data, and a clean email address… It’s time to buy and set up your webOS phone. Ready?

1. When you start to set up your phone, it will ask you for an email address and password. The password you give it will be used to set up your Palm profile. It doesn’t matter if it’s the same password that you use for the actual email account. The password you give it will be needed to buy apps from the catalog. It is used to log in if you every wipe your phone, have to replace your phone, or log your phone out of the network. Also, receipts for your App Catalog purchases will be sent to this email address. Eventually you may want to set up the email client on your phone to get email from this account. But let’s save that for a later post.

2. Once you enter your email address and password, the phone will ask you if you want to set up email on your phone. Choose the option to SKIP that step. That way your new phone will not have any contacts or calendar entries. Skip to the end of the process until the point that you can make and receive a phone call. Call a few friends so they can hear how clear the calls are from your new phone…

3. Install your chosen sync application, and sync with your phone. If you have a lot of contacts, it might take a while. Just let it run while you get some coffee and relax.

If you followed the process I’ve outlined, you can’t hurt anything. If things on you new phone look funny, you can wipe it clean and do it again. If you somehow ruined the data on your PC, you have plenty of back-up copies, remember? Hello? Yes, you have plenty of back-up copies! Life is good!

At this point, you should see all of your familiar contacts and/or calendar on your phone.

Open some contacts that you are familiar with to make sure everything looks right. Same with the calendar, open it up and look at some appointments. This is the time to make sure everything is right. Once it looks ok, you are good to go. Now you can use it just like your Centro or Treo. When you are comfortable with making and taking calls, you can start exploring the many cool things about webOS, starting in the next post:

[Cantaffordit]

The first thing to learn is how to use “Universal Search” to find your contacts.

First, you must promise that you won't open the Contacts App to look for contacts for the next week. Really, spit and pinky-swear that you won't open the contact app... and here is why:

You can just start typing, and it will show you people, applications, etc. that match what you type! If you are looking for “John Smith”… you can start typing “john"… but you can also type “JS” and I’ll bet John Smith will be the first item on the list. From that point, you can call/txt/email John with one finger tap!

The best thing you can do to get over withdrawal from your old Palm device is to embrace this method of finding things. It’s similar to what you are used to, but you don’t open the contacts app first. Just start typing. Play with it. Practice a few times. You will quickly love it, and probably remove the contacts app from the Quick Launch bar because you never open it… That's what I did, and I haven't missed it once!

If there is interest, we can include posts about how to pick the right 3rd party app for your syncing needs. However, here is an existing thread that may be the best place to have that discussion:
http://forums.precentral.net/webos-s...nk-better.html

Personally I use Pocket Mirror, and I did extensive testing on CompanionLink. I haven't tried any of the other options...

Here are some additional links to helpful info for getting started:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...ul-others.html
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...es-themes.html
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...e-welcome.html

OK, now it's your turn to post questions, or tips you've learned. Thoughts??

[bulls96]

Thanks for the effort! Hope newbies find it useful!

[Blaize]

You did a truly terrific job with this!

[sjsamphex]

I vote for stickying.

[milominderbinder]

I will incorporate this into the Backup/Sync thread in the Tips and Resources forum with some key areas for users to consider with backups. I will also add a link to this thread.

• What does the webOS Backup app backup?
• Why is Gmail Synergy so important?
• The patch to backup contact (and export even Facebook contacts)
• Backup Homebrew App data with Save/Restore.
• Manual USB File Backup
• USB File Synchronization

The Backup/Sync thread also lists a number of sync apps and gives links to all.

- Craig

[Cantaffordit]

Originally Posted by milominderbinder

I will incorporate this into the Backup/Sync thread in the Tips and Resources forum with some key areas for users to consider with backups. I will also add a link to this thread.

• What does the webOS Backup app backup?
• Why is Gmail Synergy so important?
• The patch to backup contact (and export even Facebook contacts)
• Backup Homebrew App data with Save/Restore.
• Manual USB File Backup
• USB File Synchronization

The Backup/Sync thread also lists a number of sync apps and gives links to all.

- Craig

Feel free to edit/delete/move as needed. I wanted to get that all written down in close proximity because it was littered throughout a bunch of threads that made this topic harder to follow. You may modify at your discretion.

[morrit]

Good.

I make this post to compare the third-party-software to sync.
http://forums.precentral.net/webos-s...-software.html
contributions / corrections are welcome

Cantaffordit; with you pcketmirror, use palmdesktop or outlook ?

[Cantaffordit]

I use Outlook with Pocket Mirror.

[TimmyB]

OK, Can'tAffordIt, looks very good, but...

I just got my Pixi last night. After setting it up and playing with it all day, I realize I really don't want to sync (solely) on the cloud for two reasons. One, it can be lost with no hope of recovery. Two, it was soooooooooooooo convenient for the past decade to simply hotsync with Palm Desktop, and I don't care how old-fashioned that sounds!

Now, since I have already done this, what do I do? Should I completely wipe the phone out and start over again, using the methods you described above? And, if that's the case, I'm not sure exactly how to sync it to PalmDesktop in step 2.

Any assistance you can give is GREATLY appreciated!

[Workerb33]

Actually, you have to buy a third party tool to sync with Palm Desktop. What version are you using (i.e. where you using a Centro previously? Centro used a different version of Desktop that pretty much anything else...) If you are using Desktop, you probably should use CompanionLink. If you are using Outlook, Pocket Mirror is a good choice.

Assuming all your contacts are still on your PC, you just have to use one of those tools to sync with your desktop. Synergy (the webOS feature that merges all your contacts and calendars from various sources) will see your desktop as a separate source, and sync everything it finds. At that point you would have duplicated everything. You will need to figure out how to remove them from your Palm profile, or stop syncing with your Profile. I'm not sure how to do that second part, because I don't have any info in my Palm profile and I use the method described above. I hope that helps!

[TimmyB]

Originally Posted by Workerb33

Actually, you have to buy a third party tool to sync with Palm Desktop. What version are you using (i.e. where you using a Centro previously? Centro used a different version of Desktop that pretty much anything else...) If you are using Desktop, you probably should use CompanionLink. If you are using Outlook, Pocket Mirror is a good choice.

Assuming all your contacts are still on your PC, you just have to use one of those tools to sync with your desktop. Synergy (the webOS feature that merges all your contacts and calendars from various sources) will see your desktop as a separate source, and sync everything it finds. At that point you would have duplicated everything. You will need to figure out how to remove them from your Palm profile, or stop syncing with your Profile. I'm not sure how to do that second part, because I don't have any info in my Palm profile and I use the method described above. I hope that helps!

OK, thanks workerB. This really is not cool, to have to go through all of this just to sync my data to a pc. How something as simple as a Centro could do it just like that, but a complex beast like WebOS can't handle it without a 3rd-party, $40 solution...

I have discovered that any new event I create on my Pixi, or on Yahoo calendar, seems to sync up with the other with no problem. It's just all my datebook stuff that came over from my Palm that I can't get Yahoo calendar to recognize. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and retype those items, and it should be good to go after that.

Disappointing, but what can you do?

[Workerb33]

you may have other options. Synching to your desktop is a snap. I just don't know what to do with what is already in your palm profile because I used the steps above when I first got my pre.

do a little searching in the threads about the palm profile, syncing, etc. I'm sure there is a simple way to clean out your profile so you can just siync with your pc. Keep looking. Until then, synergy will link contacts located in both placed. The names won't be duplicated, only the numbers lidted for the contact. Keep searching. I know there is a simple answer...

[TimmyB]

Originally Posted by Workerb33

lots of good info and links here:

http://m.forums.precentral.net/palm-...-pre-pixi.html

Yeah, I've just given up hope that I can push my Palm data onto yahoo, so I am going to take some time this weekend and type in all of my calendar events.

Thanks for the link, though. I will need that to get started with the homebrew thing when this first stuff is all finished!

[clutch1222]

Originally Posted by Cantaffordit

Steps before you start setting up your webOS phone.

[

You may eventually use Synergy to tie in your FaceBook, Hotmail, and/or Twitter accounts. But until then, I recommend that you tie a different email account to your Palm profile, even if you have to create a new one (they are free, after all). It’s best if there aren’t any contacts or calendar entries in that account. Clean and empty will make it simple.

If you ever want to change the email address that is associated with your Palm profile, you can log on to the Palm website and change it.

Thank you . Very Well Done!

[mcgraw21]

Cantaffordit:

When you say "Palm Directory", is that program files/palm?

Thanks for the great job explaining this stuff.

mcgraw

[rlanza1054]

I use Pocketmirror, for me it works flawlessly!

You get Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Tasks!

Chapura, has built their own Notes and Tasks app so that Outlook will work with WebOS.

And it's wireless! (At least from you internal home network!)

Rob

[PreZulu]

Originally Posted by Cantaffordit

Personally I use Pocket Mirror, and I did extensive testing on CompanionLink. I haven't tried any of the other options...

Hi, I also did buy CompanionLink - But what I really miss, is the Search ("Find") - function like on Palm OS! Is there such an App, that would do it for me or any other solution?

It does not help, to have such a lot of Data, many Doc's without at least a simple Search Function.