PocketMac and iCal Sync Problem Solved!
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I just discovered this program today and I love it almost as much as my new Mac (2nd day newbie, lol). Anyhow, I read a few threads regarding this problem and I thought I would share my method of how to get around this issue.
Some concepts to understand to make this easier (If you don't care about this info just skip to the stuff in bold down below):
When you name a "category" in iCal, you really aren't naming a category - you are essentially creating a NEW calendar. Apple makes this easy by letting you view all these calendars on the same page (similar to Google Calendar). Your BlackBerry only has the capability of having 1 calendar, and when it receives information in a sync - it doesn't see any categories at all.
Here's an example of what's happening. Lets say you create 4 events.
3 Items Created in iCal under "School", "Personal", and "Work" (1 item each)
1 Item created on BlackBerry under default category "PocketMac" (1 Item)
Now you Sync.
Blackberry sends PocketMac item to iCal, new category "PocketMac" is created.
Blackberry receives 3 items, BUT...
Blackberry cannot read separate Calendars, so iCal drops the calendar categories you assigned in iCal and adds a "PocketMac" Category to them.
So now you have:
4 events in iCal - 1 each of School, Personal, Work and PocketMac
4 events in BlackBerry - all of them have "PocketMac" assigned to them.
Well, what if you sync again?
-BlackBerry sends 4 "PocketMac" items to iCal! 3 of these items are new to iCal - iCal doesn't know that the original categories were changed.
And, if you sync again?
Luckily, the problem will not duplicate itself because the Blackberry already has 4 "PocketMac" items. So even though iCal is now sending items with the original categories and the new "PocketMac" categories, once they are received Blackberry sees them all as "PocketMac" categories.
ARE YOU READY FOR THE SOLUTION?
COMPLETE THESE STEPS FOR ALL ITEMS YOU SYNC (CALENDAR, TASKS, ETC)
1. Go to PocketMac SyncManager and select Advanced Preferences for the item you want to change.
2. Click "Sync only the categories below" and uncheck "PocketMac".
3. Change "Default for mobile-related-device..." to "PERSONAL".
THAT'S IT!
Now here's what happens:
If a new item is created from iCal, it has one of our iCal categories assigned to it. When the Blackberry receives it, the category assignment is lost and "PocketMac" is assigned to it. But when it syncs back, "PocketMac" is now disabled so now duplicates are made.
If a new item is created on BlackBerry, it assigns it to "Personal", so then you can change it to your preference once you are back in iCal.
***UPDATE - My theory on "why" and "what" happens may be off, because you can update items received from iCal, and if you sync back the change is reflected in iCal - which means that somewhere the category is being recognized. So if it just dropped it and PocketMac was added, then with PocketMac disabled", if that was the new assigned category then the update would not be reflected. This is actually a good thing that it does reflect though. So regardless of why, this method works. Try it out!
Last edited by projekt.thirteen; 09-10-2007 at 03:19 AM..
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