Bought a 2nd Palm Pilot yesterday, a 515. Jan already has the 500. The original idea was to dump all the data from Jan's into mine to save me the data bodging! Whilst a lot of Jan's data is work related, much of the data would have been common to both of us. We couldn't do this in practise. As soon as you insert the new Palm into the link cradle,it's identified at once as new hardware and you need to input user details before you can do anything. Once the details for the 2nd. user are entered, a second data base is started within the Palm software on the desktop. The second user then has no access whatsover to the first users data base!

Would it have been possible to dump the data from Jan's into mine using the infrared on poth Palms?

 

Well, I sync one Palm to two PC's (home and office). I can see problems with synching tow Palms to one PC. (Which data are the "correct" data?)

But, beaming between two Palms should do it. I use a V series and with that you can beam the following info:

The record currently displayed in Date Book. Address Book, To Do, or MemoPad

All records of the CATEGORY currently displayed in Address Book, TO Do list or Memo Pad

Slightly tedious but you should be able to get all from one to the other doing it this way.

HTH

Pete

 

Thanks Pete. It was really the Address Book details we wanted to be common to both of us. Perhaps we should have done the beaming thing first? The software is actually very clever. As far as I can see, you can have a virtually unlimited number of Palms, the destop software will always start a new user data base, and whichever Palm you put in the cradle, it's identified at once and it's own unique data base opened.

We thought we'd be sharing a common data base, but as you point out, with both of us individually adding data to the Palms, the sofware would never know what to to update.

I just love these things!

 

So if you set up you Palm with the Address Book details in a Catrgory set as, say, "Personal" and Jan does the same, you should be able to send all the data for that category via the IR beaming facility. If there's a problem you could just reset the new one and start again with the beaming.

I think I'm right, not having two Palms here I can't check

 

until they break

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by PWE 896
[B]So if you set up you Palm with the Address Book details in a Catrgory set as, say, "Personal" and Jan does the same, you should be able to send all the data for that category via the IR beaming facility. If there's a problem you could just reset the new one and start again with the beaming.

I think I'm right, not having two Palms here I can't check

 

If you want to copy all of the data from one palm to another, you could tell it to use the existing user name for the first hotsync. This is what you have to do if you loose the memory on the palm, it will then rebuild the palm from the backup on the PC. Once you've replicated the two palms, you will need to change the username on one of them, otherwise hotsync will get confused. Hotsync will recognise the new user at the next hotsync and build the pc databases. If you want to start again, you can clear the memory on the palm by performing a hard reset. This will completely clear all memory on the palm, whereas a soft reset just reboots the operating system. Note that because it's not Windows based, you should not need to do this often

If you want you can copy individual files from one palm to another. You will find a subdirectory structure for each user. The hotsync software creates a copy of everything in the backup directory. It's possible to copy files from the backup directory to the install directory and they will be loaded on the next hotsync.

You can beam the selected address or category through the address application on the palm. You can beam some applications and data from the menus on the home screen, or copy them to SD card. Unfortunately databases like the address book are locked, so cannot be copied this way.

To share databases between multiple palms, you have to create a profile within palm desktop. This seems to be similar to a user, but shared. I haven't tried it myself, but reading the help screen, it seems quite straight forward. You may find it easier to use different software. I use Netscape for my e-mail and hotsync the palm address book with this, I then have a common address book between e-mail and two palms. I think that it is possible to hotsync with outlook in a similar way, but it depends how you have the email setup on the pc.

Whatever you try, I would recommend making a copy of the user directories before you go to far. If it all goes fubar, restore the original files and hard reset the palm.

 

CT, Can't you do File/Import on the Palm desktop and browse to the folder for the other pilot?

 

Thanks chaps for your input on this. I've now 'dicovered' I can beam the data from Palm to Palm no probs. Sometimes it pays to really read the manual BEFORE you start!