Re: Birthdays/Anniversaries & Activesync/WMDC

Raj, I feel a little silly that I didn't recognize the tap and type ability
of that field, when I made my complaint; I have done that before myself.

Is this a proprietary quirk strictly associate to ActiveSync and WMDC? Will
a 3rd party sync software do the same thing?

I may just try and get as many of them as close as possible. It'll probably
take me years but I can try ;)

Thanks for the explanation, for over a year nobody has been able to tell me
anything remotely close to confirming my suspicions. I am surprised all the
experiments I did didn't pinpoint it for sure but I never went far enough
back on a recurring start date to be 100% sure.

"Raj Pillai" wrote:

Hi,

Yes, I do know the problems and annoyances that you are referring to.
Duplicate entries has been a pain over the years but with Outlook 2007,
there have been some improvements which has definitely minimized this. So
if I were to edit a anniversary or birthdate after saving one, it doesn't
leave duplicates in the Calendar. They seem to have got the Contact and the
Calendar event to have an internal link within Outlook which updates the
event instead of recreating it. I am not saying they have solved the
duplicate appointment issue completely since I still see some users having
the odd duplicate issues creeping up at times.

With respect to selecting the year, its easier to simply input the date then
scroll through the months on the Calendar. Just tap the day or month or
year and you can type into them.

At present I am unaware of a way to completely disable the brackets that
appear in the default Calendar application.

--
Regards,
Raj Pillai
Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices
http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/raj


"Sean" <Sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5EA40019-CE91-46BA-8CE8-4A206B4E6BCF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I very much appreciate the continued dialogue Raj.

The problem is you (well at least I) don't know the birthdates and wedding
dates for most people, just the important dates. If it is a milestone,
typically that info would be known anyway. I know when my friend's 30th
birthday is and when my grandparents 60th anniversary was.

A few problems/annoyances in trying to fix that. First Outlook does not
make it easy to go back to an old date. If I create a new contact, go to
the
details tab and set a birthday, it is in 'current month' 'current year'
automatically. You cannot select a year, you have to go back month by
month.
So if I add someone born in the 1940's, I would have to make 700 clicks to
get to the correct year. Multiply that times many contacts and it is
ridiculous. Secondly, when you change an existing date, it creates a
duplicate entry. Then you have to figure out which one is the old one and
delete it. Another huge pain.

This feature seems a little pointless and unnecessary. I wish there was an
EASY way to do this without time wasting manual editing or writing a
script.

"Raj Pillai" wrote:

Hi Sean,

The feature is pretty useful if used with the correct dates to remember
the
landmark years. So if you were to put the correct year of birthday in
your
example, 1974 (2007-33), you would get the bracket to display 33. I
don't
know of a way to disable the feature permanently. Additionally this
feature
has been part of Windows Mobile devices for quite a while and I am pretty
certain its there on all of them (even the newer ones).

The figure is calculated using the Starting date of the recurrence. So
the
only way you can avoid it completely is if you can set the year of the
date
to the current year. For example, if you have a event which is scheduled
for today's date with 2006 as the year, it will appear with (1). But if
you
set it to 2007, then the bracket won't appear. To edit the recurrence
date,
open the recurrence pattern and set the Starting date

If its annoying you a lot you can consider writing a vba macro which will
automate this task to set the dates of birthdate/anniversary to current
year. If you decide to do this, you would need to run the macro once
every
year to set the year of the date to that of the current year.

--
Regards,
Raj Pillai
Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices
http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/raj


"Sean" <Sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5A4FE513-7356-40B8-AA93-1B5DD5916BC8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you so much Raj. I had my suspicions that could be the answer.

Unfortunately, that number is based on when the event was input into
Outlook. I always input a birthday or anniversary for the next
occurance.
So someone who may be turning 33 whose birthday I just happened to
enter
appears as (1) not (33) because I do not put the date of birth or day
of
the
wedding for anniversaries.

Is there anything that can be done to circumvent that field? I do not
like
its appearance on my phone. Would it appear the same on all phones? I
am
surprised none of the engineers at T-Mobile had ever heard of this. It
definitely looks peculiar on the calendar.

THanks for your time very much sir.

"Raj Pillai" wrote:

Hi Sean,

The figure in the bracket is the number of years of the particular
event
based on the starting year of the event. For example if the birthday
or
anniversary date was in the Jan 2000, this reminder would appear with
as
(7)
for the current year on that date. So 7 here would mean either 7th
Birthday
or the 7th year of Anniversary depending on the event.

--
Regards,
Raj Pillai
Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices
http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/raj


"Sean" <Sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2410E754-AF62-4209-A22A-E7AB4E866280@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Good evening and thx in advance for all help.

I have sought advice from my mobile provider (TMobile - using the
Dash
phone) and was told by their 3rd level engineers to ask the Outlook
experts.
The Outlook experts concluded this was a sync issue with Activesync
and
WMDC.

I am using Office 2003 SP 2. I am currently using Vista Home
Premium
with
Mobile Device Center but have experienced the same issue since XP
Pro
SP 2
with Activesync 4.5 and earlier.

I have no duplicate birthdays or anniversaries for my contacts in
Outlook.
However when I sync to my cell phone and look at the Calendar on my
cell,
several (but far from all) of these recurring birthdays and
anniversaries
appear as "John Doe's Birthday/Anniversary (1)." Some say 2, 3, or
4
in
the
().

I imagine that the () is due to a duplicate entry at some point,
just
as
if
you tried to copy a file with the same name to the same folder and
it
would
append a (1) to the end of the file name.

Question is why can I not see this in Outlook on my PC? In Outlook,
everything appears spot on. I have had duplicate entries in the
past
for
one
reason or another but I have long eliminated these. I have also
tried
deleting the birthday or anniversary from the Outlook Calendar
(deleting
the
series) and separately tried deleting it through the Activities Tab
in
the
Contact itself. Then I go back to the respective fields in the
contact
and
re-add the dates I need. I think this has resulted in the further
appendages, ie. (2), (3), (4). There are also many of my contacts
birthdays
and anniversaries that read correctly on the calendar on my cell,
but I
cannot discern a reason, as I know I have tried to force a (1) etc.
on
certain contacts unsuccessfully.

It is more annoying than anything to not have consistency in the
calendar
view on my cell phone. I am sorry for the long post and if I need
to
further
clarify any part of this issue please let me know and I will do so.

I have searched far and wide for a solution or even just a clue to
no
avail.
MVPs please shed some light for me.

Thanks for all you do.






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