Speed Dial and People contacts disappear

[MikeL]

Every few days both my speed dial phone numbers and 'People' contacts disappear and I have to re-enter them.

Any ideas as to why this is happening and what I can do it to stop it happening.

[tonybro]

That's a strange one MikeL!

Is this a vanilla device? If not what's installed?

Are you synching to a desktop? Vista or XP etc....

[MikeL]

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your message.

My phone is Orange branded.

I am syncing, via ActiveSync to desktop PC with Windows XP.

Which has just given me a possible cause.. yesterday there was an ActiveSync message saying that it had to resync everything, which I have had before. Could this delete out favourite people and speed dial, even though those functions are not synced?

[tonybro]

Hi MikeL,

Ordinarily I would say no but as you had the AS problem I would say yes because it may have deleted the phones contacts and replaced them with the contacts from Outlook on the PC (even though they are the same, they will be tagged as different in the databases). The phone will then say speed dial number 2 was database ID XXXXX and doesn't exist whereas its now database ID YYYYY due to AS repopulating the device.

If you have a similar problem see if there's a program on the device called PIM Backup or similar, it can do a local backup (i.e. on the device) of Calendar, Contacts etc but I don't think it backs up speed dials etc....

[waveydavey]

I think you're correct Tony, the resyncing will effectively delete and recreate the contacts meaning that although the new contacts will hold the same data the old ones do, they are in fact different from a "behind the scenes" perspective. This means that the speed dial etc no longer has a contact to point at.

The key is identifying the resync issue and why it is happening. Which version of Outlook are you using?

[MikeL]

Thank you both for your replies. That makes sense that it speed dial will no longer reference the contacts after a resync, it is a relational database.

I have ActiveSync version 4.5.0 on a standalone PC running XP. Outlook version is Outlook 2003.

I am syncing via USB.

I cannot recall the exact error message, but it is telling me that due to changes in the server I will need to resync.

I also separately get other error messages telling me that it cannot sync due to problems on the desktop, usually cured by taking out the USB lead and reconnecting.

[waveydavey]

Do you think one issue follows the other?

[MikeL]

waveydavey,

I am not sure if the two are connected, it only occurred to me that they might be when tonybro asked about syncing.

Next time I get the error message I will check my speed dial immediately afterwards to confirm it.