Plaxo Creating New Calendars?

I thought that by synchronizing Outlook data between two computers, Plaxo would maintain a similar structure. I just installed Plaxo on my notebook, after having installed it on my desktop last week. I expected one calendar on the desktop, and one on the notebook - both with the same data, as synchronized by Plaxo.

Instead it added a new calendar on my notebook - "Calendar (2)". So I now I have one calendar in Outlook on the desktop, and two on the notebook; Plaxo, instead of placing the desktop's Outlook calendar data into the notebook's Outlook calendar created a new calendar on the notebook. Now, for example, if I sync a pocket pc with the notebook it automatically selects the base calendar, which is outdated. All the current data is in this Calendar (2). I don't want that; I want the data synced with one calendar on each PC.

I tried to delete the first calendar, but Outlook forbids that - it's the base calendar folder. And I cannot import the data into the base calendar.

Was this the designed behavior for Plaxo?

Also, what is supposed to happen when I click on the "Sync Now" button on my Outlook Plaxo toolbar? Currently it says it is synching the contacts. Doesn't mention the calendars, tasks, or notes at all.

Perhaps this is a beta version and I didn't notice?

Plaxo tries to be intelligent about which folders to match up. In general, default folders should be matched up as well as folders of the same name with a similar number of items. I'm not sure why in your case this didn't seem to work as expected.

However, you can change the mapping fairly easily. In your case, if you go to your notebook and go to Plaxo, Synchronization Manager, you should see a list of folders on the left-hand side. Click on Calendar (2), and then on the right-hand side click on the link to ignore the folder. Now click on the other Calendar folder on the left-hand side. Click the link on the right-hand side to relink the folder. Choose the other Calendar folder (there may be only one choice), and it should now be matching up your default Calendar folders on both your noteboook and desktop as well as Plaxo Online. At this point you should be able to remove the Calendar (2) folder from your notebook.

Please see http://support.plaxo.com for more info - in particular you might want to try the Synchronization Setup Guide there for more information. Hope this helps....

Thanks Bryan!

I've removed the second calendar folder and made sure that there is only one calendar in Outlook on each PC. Although they do not appear to be synched. (I'm away from home with the notebook and accessing the desktop remotely from the notebook). I'll wait till I get home to address the desktop PC's Outlook calendar. I've noticed a few extra Contacts folders there also.

A future enhancement request: Allow users the option to manually determine the synchronization scheme during initial setup, rather than to let Plaxo determine it. Regardless of the "smart" technology used by Plaxo, I don't think that any new calendar or contact folders should be created by Plaxo without specific approval by the user.

Perhaps there was a problem with my installation, but I know that I had no idea the added folders were created untill after the fact.

Thanks again for the quick response!

BTW, IS Plaxo in beta? Just curious.

Hi J-Mac,

I'm surprised Plaxo didn't ask you about creating new folders... I believe that it has prompted me about that during my installs, but I might be mistaken.

And no, the overall Plaxo service is not in beta, though we do occasionally invite our members to try out new toolbars in beta (such as Plaxo for Thunderbird) or other services.

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Hi J-Mac,

I'm surprised Plaxo didn't ask you about creating new folders... I believe that it has prompted me about that during my installs, but I might be mistaken.

[/ QUOTE ]
If it did, I must not have been paying attention. Just in case, I'll use the "reset dialogs" option and watch it more closely.

[ QUOTE ]
And no, the overall Plaxo service is not in beta, though we do occasionally invite our members to try out new toolbars in beta (such as Plaxo for Thunderbird) or other services.

[/ QUOTE ]
OK. BTW, I didn't mean that in a bad way - I beta test many applications; most on handheld devices (Pocket PC and Symbian OS), but a good number of PC/Windows apps also. If I ever got paid for beta testing, I'd be rich!

If you ever decide to develop a toolbar for Pocomail or Barca, I'd be more than happy to test it for you - I also test a lot for PocoSystems. I only use Outlook for the other PIM functions, but not email. Currently, any updates Plaxo finds for my Outlook contacts, I have to then manually change in Pocomail.

Thanks much for the reply, Adam! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

BTW, I'm going through some severe growing pains presently with Plaxo. I have Outlook 2003 on both a desktop PC and a notebook, and synching them was just too appealing to pass up. However I am ending up with a lot of duplicates, and I seem to have lost some contact data altogether. (I do keep regular backup .PST's though).

I believe the main issue is synching these contacts with my Pocket PC via MS ActiveSync. When Plaxo runs a synchroization between my desktop and notebook PIM data, it invariably finds some duplicates. Since I use both PCs, I am prone to add contact info to some contacts on one or the other as I learn of it. So the contact data - even for the same contact - can be different on my PCs. That's why Plaxo looks so appealing to me. But once ActiveSync gets involved, the duplicate issue becomes really muddled.

When I work it all out, I'll post my findings, and hopefully a solution, for other users to benefit.

Thanks again!

[Kezzer]

I had the exact same problem and am grateful for the informative answer - I have now deleted Calendar 2 and all seems well. I would say that I wasn;t prompted about which folders to use and it defaulted to two different calendars.

While you're on, perhaps you can tell me how, in my online Plaxo calndar view, I can set the first day of the week to be Monday rather than Sunday?

Thanks in advance.