[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] fillippe:
Introduction

Over several years of searching XDA and the rest of the internet, I have finally succeeded in arriving at a solution for synchronising my mobile device with my PC that works for me. It fulfils my requirements and I know from reading many threads, my methods will answer many questions for inexperienced users in particular. So I will share.​

My PC System

Windows XP MCE SP3

MS Outlook

Windows Media Player 11

Activesync 4.5

AV Art Fixer for WMP and MCE (Freeware - donations welcome)

MobSync 2.0.3 (Shareware - This has a 30 day trial period and registration costs $8.)​

My Mobile System

HTC HD2 Leo T8585

Windows Mobile 6.5

HTC Sense 2.5

HTC Audio Manager

HTC Album
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Most of this guide will however apply to variations on these specs. I will arrange my guide into 3 areas.​

1. Contacts and Appointments: Using ActiveSync/MS Outlook/HTC Contacts.

2. Music: Using Windows Media Player/HTC Audio Manager.

3. Pictures, Videos and any Folder or File Type: Using MobSync.​

Contacts and Appointments: Using ActiveSync/MS Outlook/HTC Contacts

ActiveSync does this well but I recommend avoiding enabling the Media option as this just leads to confusion, conflicts and endless loops. ActiveSync, for all its critics at least manages to sync your contacts and appointments. I would avoid using it for anything else, especially the Media option! Now every time you connect via ActiveSync any changes at either end will be synchronised.​

Procedure

1, Download and install the latest version of ActiveSync to your PC.

2. Ensure MS Outlook has your contacts and appointments as you would wish.

3. Give your Device a name you like by going to WinMo Settings/System/About on your device and changing your Device ID. Use underscores instead of spaces. This just means you can see your devices name in ActiveSync and it's very reassuring. If you have more than one device then the benefits are enormous!

4. Connect your device to your PC via USB cable. Bluetooth or Infrared connection is perfectly OK but I figure it cuts out several middle-men-glitches if you just connect the two with wires!

5. Your device should ask you how to connect, choose ActiveSync and Enable faster data synchronisation.

6. A wizard will commence and on the second screen you will have to choose what to sync. I suggest just selecting the tick boxes for Contacts and Calendar. However, if you wish, no harm will be done by selecting the Notes, Tasks or Files options as well. The Files option is not very useful and I will give a much better solution to file syncing later in section 3.

7. Finish the wizard and the sync will begin.​

Music: Using Windows Media Player/HTC Audio Manager

Many of us have had trouble understanding HTC's Audio Manager's relationship with Windows Media Player and I think I've just sussed it! We have all bulked at absent album art and music files listed in Audio Manager but not present on the device. The two golden rules are ensure you have album art in Media Player and never delete music directly from your device. To be absolutely sure you can make sure album art is embedded in your Media Player music files before syncing, but I no longer think this is essential. You will not have to fiddle with "Folder.jpg" files either. HTC Audio Manager will play other music formats but will only have correct ID3 tag info, and so album art, for the MP3 format. So only use MP3 tunes. The upshot is that HTC Audio Manager is quite capable of synchronising with your WMP library using mp3 files without having to separately create Folder.jpg files.​

Main points

1. Change your HTC Audio Manager content ONLY via WMP.

2. Restart your mobile device after every sync with WMP and preferably, after this, visit the HTC Music tab.

3. Remember that the Now playing tab in HTC Audio Manager and hence the Music tab display in Sense will be out of date until a new selection is made to the Now playing list.​

Initial sync

1. Organise your music in Windows Media Player. This can take some doing and some time and some cursing, but is very helpful. Tidiness is next to obsession, but worth it in the end. So try to get as much ID3 tag info as possible, but especially album art. Close WMP before doing anything else. (Optional) Use AV Album Art Fixer to complete any missing media information and album art. I have found this very useful in completing ID3 tag info for media files. It's not very intuitive but worth a fiddle. It will also embed album art if you wish for security's sake or simply piece of mind, if obsessional! Close AV Album Art Fixer before doing anything else. It will ask you to open WMP and click Tools/Apply Media Information Changes to complete its work. If you have duplicates or missing data or missing files this will potentially cause errors with your sync.

2. Create a playlist in WMP. Name it as you wish. The idea is that you will sync this playlist only with your device. However, once mastered, you can develop this idea further. The world will be your oyster! I name my playlist "HD2" so I don't get confused.

3. Add all music that you want on your device to this playlist in WMP. You'll have to work out how to do this for yourself.

4. Connect with USB cable. Use ActiveSync connection.

5. Set up sync partnership. A one screen "wizard" will start where you can name your storage card and that's all! Choose a memorable name, it's going to be helpful. Click on Finish and as soon as possible Click Stop Sync in the bottom right corner of the screen. If this Stop Sync button is not visible click on the Sync tab at the top of WMP and it will be there. If you don't stop sync WMP will fill up your phone with everything its got room for!

6. Change sync relationship to only sync your intended playlist. In the left hand pane of WMP your device should be listed. Right click it and select "Set up sync...". A dialogue box will appear which is very important.

1. In the right hand pane there are lots of possible playlists to sync. Highlight them and remove them all to the left hand pane.

2. In the left hand pane select your special previously prepared playlist (See step 4 above) and add it to the right hand pane.

3. Select shuffle if you want but it's not necessary, you can do it on your device later.​

7. Click finish and hey presto! Wait for sync to complete.

8. Restart your mobile device. After syncing it is necessary to reset/restart your device in order for HTC Sense/Audio Manager to register your changes. Then when you next visit the HTC Sense music tab the revolving circle in the top left will indicate that HTC Audio Manager is updating its records
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Changes to sync

1. To remove songs from your device. Remove them from the WMP playlist and do a manual sync.

2. To add songs to your device. Add them to your WMP playlist and do a manual sync.

3. Change what's "Now playing". Also note that the "Now playing" HTC Audio Manager tab will be confused after you change the music on your device until you select another tune, album, artist, genre or playlist to play. The Sense music tab dictates what is in the HTC Audio Manager "Now playing" tab.

4. Delete sample music. You may with impunity delete the sample music from your devices file memory without a problem. You won't find it in WMP as it is only your storage card/internal memory that is synced.

5. Deleting from WMP. If you want to delete a song from your PC and it is synced to your Mobile device, it is wisest to remove it from the WMP playlist before deleting it.

6. Dummy playlist. A trick I use if it all goes wrong: Create a playlist in WMP containing one tune or even one picture. Then in the "Set up sync..." WMP dialogue box move the Music playlist out of your sync list and the new single item playlist into the sync list, and sync. This will remove all your tunes and add the single item. Restart your device and then reverse the procedure to get your music back to your device. WMP will not let you have a sync setup without a playlist in the sync list.​

Pictures, Videos and any other Folder or File Type: Using MobSync

Procedure

1. Download and install MobSync.

2. Create folders on your PC where you wish to sync files. I chose to make a folder in "My Documents" called "PDA Pictures" for my phones pictures and a similar folder called "PDA Videos" for my phones Video files. You make whichever folders you wish with names you like, appropriate to the files you want to sync.

3. Locate where on your device the files you wish to sync reside. I find it best to let the phone do its thing here. By that, I mean, set your camera to use your storage card/internal storage for saving images/videos and they will then appear in the Storage Card/DCIM/100MEDIA folder

2. Connect your device using ActiveSync method.

3. Open MobSync.

4. Now add a Sync "Job" by clicking Job menu and then Add. Then you will have to decide what folder and files you want to sync.

5. In the dialogue box that ensues, name the "Job". I chose to have one job for pictures and one for videos so as the two types of files would be synced to my newly created PC folders separately. My first Job name was "Pictures" and my second "Videos".

6. Using the ... button below next, navigate to your chosen PC Folder ("PDA Pictures" in my case for my first Job), to direct your phones pictures to the correct folder on your PC.

7. Using the ... button below next, navigate to your chosen WM(Device) Folder, to direct MobSync where to find your phones pictures, in this example. This will be Storage Card or Internal Storage/DCIM/100MEDIA, as we decided earlier.

8. Now use the "Target File" box to decide what files within these folders you wish to sink. In this example, I chose to delete the "*" line and to edit the "*.*" line to "*.jpg". So you can see already how you can use this method to sync any file type from any folder as vaguely or precisely as you wish.

9. Click OK to complete the Job creation.

10. Repeat as you see fit. I then created a similar Job for videos which differed only in its name, PC Folder and the Target file type being "*.mp4".

11. Your Jobs will appear in the main window now and you can choose to sync when you're ready and set it to sync on connection and how often if you edit the Job.
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So there it is! The music procedure is a little exacting, but in the end you get the hang of it. Feel free to suggest any changes in content or readability. Hope it helps.​