If you had happen what happened to me, (come in one morning to see that your Palm Desktop purged all of your events except for recurring events), my advice is to
WAIT!
STOP!
Be Careful!
Here is what I did:
1. Do NOT SYNCH!
2. Do NOT SYNCH!
(if you do synch you will erase the data from your handheld as well. I've been through these forums and read the tales of woe. If you DID synch, all may not be lost)
3. Check your handheld and see if the data is still there. If it is there still is hope.
4. First thing, learn how to make back ups with Palm Desktop. Even though you lost your data, make a back up of what’s left. Just go to File\Export while you are in the Calendar section. Make sure you have the "All Range" option selected. Find a nice place to keep the file, give it a name like 2006-08-25_Calendar, and save it. You may wish to do this for your contacts, tasks, memos, etc. as well. You now know things can't get worse.
5. This is merely a safety/paranoia step and may be skipped if you are a brave soul. Install the Palm Desktop software on somebody else's computer. Take your connection cradle and attach your handheld. Now, under HotSynch\Custom Highlight the Calendar "conduit" and using the "Change..." button, change the Action from "Synchronize the files" to "Handheld overwrites Desktop" This means that the info on the Handheld will stay intact. You can do this for the other categories if you wish. Now hit your synch button and all the handheld info will be on their computer. Now export all the data like in step #4 above. Copy that data to disk or whatever as a back up. (BTW, please be aware that all your personal stuff is now on this other person's computer) Now you can breathe easier. You have a back up in case all goes bad. Put this back up with the other back ups, make copies, etc. so you never have this happen again.
6. Now you are ready to bring your desktop back to life. Reconnect your cradle or whatever so you can synch your handheld. Again, go into HotSynch\Custom Highlight the Calendar "conduit" and using the "Change..." button, change the Action from "Synchronize the files" to "Handheld overwrites Desktop." Do the same for any other conduits you wish. Not hit the synch button, and Voila, everything is back to normal.
7. Continue to make back ups as needed. I also print out occasionally the entire contents of my tasks and memos and contacts to both paper and pdf files. Keep in mind that theft and fire can destroy your data as well, so be prepared.
8. Why does this happen? Some people get error messages saying too many items are on the calendar. One person's message said 300 or so, another's said over 4,000. Bogus! It’s just a random glitch in my humble opinion. A software error that Palm hasn't/won't fix. If there REALLY was a limit to how much a calendar would hold SURELY the stupidest programmer would include a warning that "Calendar Memory limit is approaching. Please delete or archive older entries" or something equivalent. But, in any case, most of the time the software is fantastic. On the other hand, no computer user should ever assume something will preserve their data forever (have you checked your old videos or audio recordings lately?) But I digress.
9. What if you DID synch without setting the settings properly in HotSynch\Custom? All is not necessarily lost. Just probably...
This "fix" is from Palm Agent Agent_AJ (see full posting at http://snipurl.com/vgfp )
"Windows XP have a system restore option
that can allow your system go back to a specific date
click Start>>Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>System Restore.. "
This is all fine and well, but if you CAN do this, make sure you make separate copies of everything you did since the last system restore date point--or you'll restore your system to that point and lose everything in between.
I hope this has been helpful. Just remember to keep on backing things up! Good luck.
--Buddy
