Missing data from Outlook appointments - urgent cry for help

[Mrs G Chew]

We are due to go on the most complex family holiday we've ever attempted on
Friday this week, and I have been setting up appointments on Outlook to
organise all the information required for each day.

The format was:

sets of recurring appointments relating to each major location (ie,
preparation, Dundee, Exeter, Dartford), edited individually to show the
specific information for each day (eg, preparation: get suitcases down,
Dundee: hotel information, Dartford: information for daytrip to London)

This information is then synchronised to my HTC-S620, which uses Windows
Mobile 6. It has been working brilliantly until this morning.

This morning I have come to print out the entire schedule, and one whole
series of information is missing. Preparation, Exeter and Dundee have
retained their notes, but Outlook on the pc shows only the Dartford
appointment subjects, but will not show any of the notes associated, which
include job lists, venue information, web-links, packing lists and so on. We
begin packing today. It's been a severe blow to have to spend time trying to
figure this out instead of just getting on with the work.

I have tried to synchronise the appointments from the phone to the pc, and
it says it's done it - but nothing shows up. Only the headers appear, but I
can see the information on my phone, and now I'm terrified of hooking the
phone up and editing the calendar because I can't trust that it won't lose
the information on the phone too. And I don't know how to print directly
from the phone.

If I can get a hardcopy, I won't mind losing what's on the phone. But
there's nowhere else that the information is held.

We tried looking at the archive file, but it isn't a true backup, it's only
deleted stuff. These are all future appointments.

Please can you help me get my information back?

Regards

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

Let's check to see if it's missing or just out of view as I am not sure from
your description whether you have opened the appointments to see if the
Notes data is there. "Only the headings appear" doesn't explain exactly what
you are looking at.

So open a few appointments - are the Notes there?

If so, turn on the Advanced Toolbar (View | Toolbars)
In the Current View window, set it to show you Day Week Month with
Autopreview. Now do you see the notes data in the way you expect to?

If I haven't helped, PLEASE come back with some basics like Version of
Outlook, any add-ins you are running and what happened just prior to this
problem commencing.


--

Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

www.judygleeson.com
www.deskdoctors.com

Are you sick of bad email practice? Get a copy of my paper "Implementing
Email Policy" from the Desk Doctors website.

 

[Mrs G Chew]

Dear Judy,

Hi Judy my wife is busy at the moment so if it is ok I have detailed below
the additional information you requested and also check what you asked us to
check.


We are using Outlook 2007. I have look for the add-ons but the only thing
we have downloaded recently is the Back up facility for this software off the
Mircosoft Website.

I have checked the under view/tools and the option is selected to 'advance'.

What happened before is we connected a BT mobile (HTC Smartphone) which is
running Windows Mobile software V6 and it sycn with the Desktop computer and
Outlook (on the Desktop) lost some of information mentioned. The information
is still showing on the mobile but when it is connected it show that the sycn
is completed.

I hope this additional information is helpful, but you need additional
information let me know.

Kind regards,

Jeremy Chew

 

[Mrs G Chew]

Hi Judy,

Sorry, I have just check and my wife say the information disappeared before
she connected the mobile to the computer.

Kind regards,

Jeremy

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

Can you do the tests I suggested? Open a meeting - is the information there
or not?

What view are you looking at? View | current View should tell you.

Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

www.judygleeson.com
www.deskdoctors.com

Are you sick of bad email practice? Get a copy of my paper "Implementing
Email Policy" from the Desk Doctors website.

 

[Mrs G Chew]

Hi Judy, Glenys here.

We opened several appointments from all the series's (what is the plural of
series?)

As originally explained, the other series's have retained their notes
information. But the Dartford series shows no information at all. We have
had to reconnect the phone for accessing other files, and it has again
synchronised. The information I need shows on the phone, but does not show
on Outlook.

We have restarted Outlook, we have restarted the pc. There is no change in
the information. I have opened the appointments and tried "select all" and
changed the font colour, in case it had somehow formatted to a colour that
rendered the text invisible. There is no text to select.

The view pane is set for Weekly-with-preview-pane. The toolbars make no
difference to the view.

Thank you for being so prompt with your help on this.

Regards
Glenys

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

hmmm. Well it seems the data has really gone missing. Odd but Outlook does
odd things at times.

Are these appointments all of the same Category and a different Category to
the unaffected ones?

There may be a way to safely make a new Calendar folder and synch to that.
I'll think about it or wait for someone to jump in with instructions or
other ideas!

Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

www.judygleeson.com
www.deskdoctors.com

Are you sick of bad email practice? Get a copy of my paper "Implementing
Email Policy" from the Desk Doctors website.

 

[Mrs G Chew]

I don't use categories. The mobile version has no capacity for them, so I
use the location box to specify groups of appointments (Family, Church,
Holiday, etc). As long as the information stays on the phone, at least I
have access to it somehow. But I'm also enquiring in a separate post how to
put the appointment information across into Word document so that my Mum,
sister and cousin can read it. They don't have Outlook. I don't know how to
get the missing information off the phone and across to either Outlook or
Word. I guess that would be a question for Windows Mobile, rather than
yourselves?

Regards
Glenys

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

If the phone has wifi or infrared and you have a printer accessible via
either, you can print from the device. At this point I'd be afraid to do any
syncing until the details are printed, out of fear you'll lose them on the
device too.

I suspect these are recurring appointments with different data on each date
in the series - outlook doesn't always handle these exceptions well. Oh,
one thing you could try is exporting the outlook calendar to excel and
seeing if any data is in the exported appointments. I'm not hopeful, but you
might get lucky.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Yes, either the mobile newsgroup or one for the actual device would be more
helpful for that.

This link will open up the pocketpc/activesnyc groups - not sure which is
the best group for your question -
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie....aspx?dg=microsoft.public.pocketpc.activesync


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34