know a good synchronisation utility for WinWP/Win2K? (to synch all my documents & Outlook e-mail...)

[Shiperton Henethe]

Hi

I regularly need to 'synchronise' my laptop (WinXP) with
my PC (Win2000).

Does anyone know of a utility to let me copy (just) all the
changed files across?

Obviously I could just copy all my documents
(i.e. office files, HTML, images etc)
from one to the other the whole time across my LAN,
but this is *extremely* slow - it takes about 25 minutes.

Likewise I need to get ms Outlook synchronised

Is there a free utility somewhere to
compare file dates and to automatically just copy the
more recent files over?


Ship
Shiperon Henethe

 

[The Unknown P]

What's wrong with the synchronizeing tool that comes in
XP? Go to the help and support center and type in
synchronize and then click the green arrow and tons of
articles to read will come up telling you how to do what
you want. Keep smiling.

 

[Shiperton Henethe]

What's wrong with the synchronizeing tool that comes in
XP? Go to the help and support center and type in
synchronize and then click the green arrow and tons of
articles to read will come up telling you how to do what
you want. Keep smiling.

Thanks. Yes I've tried this again.

And yes, with persistence it does more or less do what I need!
(Pretty counter intuitive I have to say...
but I've more or less got there in the end.)

Synchronisation of my data files now takes about 4 minutes
instead of 25!

A couple of problems
1. At it's first attempt it fauld to synch about 6 GIFs
for some reason. However at the second attempt it
has now stopped moaning (so I presume it has done it!)

2. It doesn like '.mdb' (i.e. microsoft Access) files.
And instead of just ignoring them it spends several
seconds pondering each one. Is there a fix for this?!

3. Everything has now moved to the "offline files folder"!
I am keeping my PC as the master copy and the laptop
now takes an "offline" copy (using the WinXP's
Synchronisation Manager).

This is very irritating because all my software
(e.g. Dreamweaver, HomeSite, Absolute_FTP, etc)
were previously set up to expect to find data in
the "My Documents" folder!!)

Is there any easy way to get the Synchronisation Manager
to put the offline copies where *I* want them put?!!

4. MS Outlook remains a bit of a problem.
I guess I just have to manually copy the entire
mailbox.pst file, right? (This file is now
about 750MB, even though I do archive stuff
every year !!)

With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

2. It doesn like '.mdb' (i.e. microsoft Access) files.
And instead of just ignoring them it spends several
seconds pondering each one. Is there a fix for this?!

Error Message: Files of This Type Cannot Be Made Available Offline
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;252509

3. Everything has now moved to the "offline files folder"!
I am keeping my PC as the master copy and the laptop
now takes an "offline" copy (using the WinXP's
Synchronisation Manager).

4. MS Outlook remains a bit of a problem.
I guess I just have to manually copy the entire
mailbox.pst file, right? (This file is now
about 750MB, even though I do archive stuff
every year !!)

Some general links (For Outlook, see e.g. last couple of links):

Managing Files and Folders
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prde_ffs_rljk.asp

Supporting Mobile Users
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prdc_mcc_gnml.asp

(Note the expanded menus in the left frame for the links above)


Configuring Offline Files for Portable Computers
http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5566f.asp

If you consider Roaming profiles:

Configuring Roaming User Profiles and Folder Redirection
http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5566e.asp


Other links covering both redirected folders as well as roaming profiles:

See
Folder Redirection Tips and Tricks
Offline Folders Tips and Tricks
User Profiles and Roaming User Profiles Tips and Tricks
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/columns/tips/inttips.asp


User Data Management Issues
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/distrib/dsef_tbs_voef.asp

Configuring Outlook, see "Managing folder locations" here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/four/outd05.htm

Configuring Office for Roaming Users
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/one/depe02.htm

 

[sgolemon]

You might look into using Offline Folders. In windows 2000, go to help and
run a seach for offline files. Another option is to use the briefcase. You
can search for this as well.

As far as outlook, are you running an exchange server and outlook 2000 or
better? You should be able to set up Outlook to work offline as well.

 

[Shiperton Henethe]

Thanks. Yes I've tried this again.

And yes, with persistence it does more or less do what I need!
(Pretty counter intuitive I have to say...
but I've more or less got there in the end.)

Synchronisation of my data files now takes about 4 minutes
instead of 25!

A couple of problems
1. At it's first attempt it fauld to synch about 6 GIFs
for some reason. However at the second attempt it
has now stopped moaning (so I presume it has done it!)

2. It doesn like '.mdb' (i.e. microsoft Access) files.
And instead of just ignoring them it spends several
seconds pondering each one. Is there a fix for this?!

3. Everything has now moved to the "offline files folder"!
I am keeping my PC as the master copy and the laptop
now takes an "offline" copy (using the WinXP's
Synchronisation Manager).

This is very irritating because all my software
(e.g. Dreamweaver, HomeSite, Absolute_FTP, etc)
were previously set up to expect to find data in
the "My Documents" folder!!)

Is there any easy way to get the Synchronisation Manager
to put the offline copies where *I* want them put?!!

4. MS Outlook remains a bit of a problem.
I guess I just have to manually copy the entire
mailbox.pst file, right? (This file is now
about 750MB, even though I do archive stuff
every year !!)

Actually there is a bigger problem with "Synchronise Manager".
These synchronised files are not held in their
original directory structure!

Hence, an off-line copy of a website (with images
held in a directory called e.g. images) wont work.

Disaster.


I also tried briefcase. This was a total disaster,
because for some reason it keeps referring back
to the original files everything you even click
on the briefcase directory... With several thousand
files in my "briefcase" this is too slow to be usable.

Any other suggestions.


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[Erwin R. Leijen]

I regularly need to 'synchronise' my laptop (WinXP) with
my PC (Win2000).

Does anyone know of a utility to let me copy (just) all the
changed files across?

Likewise I need to get ms Outlook synchronised

Is there a free utility somewhere to
compare file dates and to automatically just copy the
more recent files over?

Good morning,

The utilities I use are not free, but they proved to be very handy. I'm
using them for many years now.

For synchronizing Outlook (Mail, Addresses) and Explorer (Browser
Favorites) I use fusionOne (www.fusionone.com). Your data is stored on a
secure web-based site and you can sync the data with many other hardware
capable connecting to the net. I think it even allows you to sync with
some web-based e-mail sites (Yahoo). The handy part is that the data is
still available, even if all the data is lost on your computer(s) (has
happend to me many times when I still was running Win98 ) ).

For synchronzing files among my computers I use Total Commander. This is
not only a very good file manager, but also manages synchronizations in
a very good way. You can sync single directories or whole lists of
directories. You can find this program at www.ghisler.com. One of the
other strong points of this program is that it als can access ftp sites
in a very easy manner.

Regards,

Erwin

 

[Shiperton Henethe]

Try SynchronX from www.clickteam.com

It seems to be defunct!
The link to downloads.com no longer works
and there is no mention of whether it works under
WinXP...

I am now looking at FolderMatch which costs about
GBP 21.00. They have time-bombed it at 30 days which
I rather resent for such an "occassion" type utility.

I hope it uninstalls completely cleanly (I doubt it!)

But if it's *really* good, I shall buy it.


Ship
Shiperton Henethe.