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TUTORIAL:quick transfer of PIM stuff & msgs to other WM devices w/o Outlook/Exchange

I often receive questions about quickly transferring contacts / calendar items from one Windows Mobile device to another. Because of the frequency of these questions, I deemed it necessary to devote a quick tutorial to the question, temporarily stopping my Next Big Thing: at last, a full review and roundup of ALL Windows Mobile-based database programs.

With devices running operating systems prior to WM5 this (at least as far as transferring contacts is concerned) was pretty easy: you just brought up the built-in keyboard SIP and tapped Ctl, and, then, A, to select all contacts. After this, you could mass-transfer all this via both infrared and Bluetooth to any other device. Alternatively, if you needed to transfer other (for example, Calendar) databases, you just fired up Pocket dbExplorer (my old, often-discussed favorite), backed up the database and just did the opposite (restored) it on the target machine.

Not so with WM5. Here, unless you use a (commercial) PIM extender like Pocket Informant, you can’t mass-select any kind of PIM data for transfer (yes, not even Contacts – Ctl-A doesn’t work any more) and Pocket dbExplorer no longer works either.

If you don’t have a desktop Outlook for quick synchronization of these types (the easiest way to do this is, again, Outlook on the desktop) and you don’t have access to any Exchange server either, you’re shot.

You may ask whether it’s possible to use, for example, Sprite Backup (or, for that matter, any other commercial Windows Mobile full(!) backup solution - see the Backup Bible for more info) to separately, selectively backup / restore ONE PIM database only (only all of them). That is, you would need to back up / restore all PIM databases, not only, say, Calendar (or any other database you select for transfer). This has the following major problem: While restoring the Calendar may work, doing the same with Contacts will most probably result in major problems (the built-in Contacts application not starting at all any more, necessitating a hard / clean reset).

I've tested this between the three models (in addition to my previous experience: see my related remarks on the problems with starting Contacts after some kinds of restorations in the Backup Bible):

Source: WM5 AKU 2.2 Dell Axim x51v

Targets: WM5 AKU 3.5 HP iPAQ hx4700 (imported calendar items weren't visible and

Contacts stopped working)

WM6 HTC Universal (imported calendar items became visible and Contacts

stopped working)

Jeyo’s well-known, commercial (!) Mobile Extender is only able to backup / restore / transfer contacts, SMS messages and call history – nothing else.

Fortunately, there IS a solution to this problem: either PIM Backup or SKTools.

Dotfred’s PIM Backup and / or SKTools to the rescue!

SKTools

With the latest, just-released SKTools, you can easily combat this problem. A quick remark: upon publishing the first, now outdated version of this tutorial, when SKTools was still unable to do inter-device model restoration, the excellent S-K folks have quickly fixed this bug. With the latest (internal date: 07/17) version, you can already do inter-model restoration.

Start it and go to the Maintenance category; in there, select Databases.

Now, select Appointments Database (or, if you plan to export contacts / tasks, Contacts Database and Tasks Database, respectively) and select Action / Export Marked:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/SKToolsExport.bmp.png

Now, after the backup has finished, just copy the XML file from \My Documents\db_xml to the target machine. On it, go to Maintenance / Databases and select Action / Import:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/SKToolsImp.bmp.png

and, in the file selector window, just double-click the just-exported file to load:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/SKToolsImp2.bmp.png

If everything goes OK, the result of the import will be a number more than 0 as in THIS screenshot.

PIM Backup

I’ve elaborated several times on Dotfred’s excellent, free and both Pocket PC and MS Smartphone-compatible PIM Backup several times and made sure it got nominated for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone. It is certainly worth giving a try and worth switching to for even scheduled (!) backing up your PIM data and messages, not to mention transferring this data to other Windows Mobile devices.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/PIMBackupMain.bmp.png

(WM6 VGA PPC; WM5 QVGA PPC HERE)

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/SPMainTH.bmp.png

(QVGA Smartphone)

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/SPMain176TH.bmp.png

(176*220 Smartphone)

Get the program HERE. Just transfer the single EXE file onto your handheld, let it be either a Pocket PC or a Smartphone. You can put in anywhere (I recommend \Program Files\PIM Backup or \Storage Card\Program Files\PIM Backup); of course, you will want to create a link to it from \Windows\Start Menu (on a Smartphone) or \Windows\Start Menu\Programs (on a PPC). Then, just start and enjoy it.

The user interface of the application is REALLY straightforward: if you’ve ever seen a Windows Mobile backup application, you’ll learn it in a second. I still provide you a step-by-step tutorial and, then, also remarks on the compatibility and the main subject of this article: selective restoration and data transfer to other Windows Mobile devices.

PIM Backup step-by-step tutorial

To backup a PIM category (that is, making it ready for future transfer to another WM device), just make sure its checkbox is surely checked in after starting the app (other checkboxes can also be checked in, of course, as separate restoration is possible). In the following screenshot, I show an example of backing up the Appointments database:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/PIMBackupAppDBBackup1.bmp.png

Now, click Next in the lower right corner of the GUI and, in the next window (where you can set the backup parameters: where to store the backup file at: it’s \Storage Card by default; note that if you don’t have a storage card or its path is named differently, you will want to click the Browse button and select another target directory; remember to do this because, if you fail to do it, the current (2.4) version may ot create a file anywhere and just keeps silent about this fact), also the same Next. The backup process will start as can be seen in the following screenshot:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/PIMBackupAppDBBackup3.bmp.png

Now, just exit PIM Backup on the source machine – you won’t need it any more.

Transfer the file (in this example, \Storage Card\PIMBackup_20070717.pib) to the target WM device and just click it (if you’ve at least once run PIM Backup on it so that it can associate backup files with itself for automatic execution). The data type contents (here, Appointments only) of the backup file will be shown:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/072007PIMBackup/PIMBackupRest1.bmp.png

Here, all you need to do is clicking Next in the lower right corner.

On the next screen, you can fine-tune what should happen to the already existing records in your local Appointments database. Make sure you do NOT use the default “Delete all existing appointments from the database before restoration” if you want to add the new records to the existing ones, keeping the latter. That is, select either the second or the third record, depending on whether you’d like to just blindly insert the new records, or update the existing, changed ones.