Transferring contacts from Palm Treo

[tlutzy]

Hi,

I just tried importing my Palm Contacts as a vCard file to Google contacts, but Google rejected the VCard format. Can anyone help me out? (I'm buying a Droid and want to import my contacts from my Palm Desktop.)

Many thanks!

[shosh]

I used to love my Palm -- guess we all did. Hung onto that last Palm
Treo until it froze so much I just couldn't stand it. Took me almost
two years to find a way to get my data onto a contemporary system.
Finally did it! Google is the answer, people. I can't recommend which
"smartphone" is the best one to use to sync with Google, but there
are more and more of them out there. The point is that Google's Gmail
system has enough flexibility to handle all the "extra" fields that
former Palm users have in our data -- like multiple mobile tel no's
for a contact, etc. I haven't found anything else.


Whatever you do, don't get a Blackberry and don't try WinMobile.
You risk losing lots of data because there just aren't enough fields
to handle everything. You have to get your data over to Gmail. Just
set up a free Gmail account. It wasn't easy to find the applications
to get my data from Palm to Gmail because most of the app's leave
some data fields out. I am happy to share the info that I finally
nailed it. You just have to buy a couple of inexpensive programs, but
it's well worth it. Here's what to do:


First, tranfer your data out of the Palm Desktop into Outlook using
the Chapura PocketCopy Software. Look, I am not suggesting actually
using Outlook. (Outlook hides many fields, like that 2nd mobile tel
no for a contact, into obscure locations where it's very hard to
find. Yuck.) Outlook is just a conduit for getting your data onto
Google. Read on.


To transfer all your data (contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks)
including all fields from Palm Desktop go here:


http://www.chapura.com/pocketcopy.php


Then, back up all your data for safekeeping from Outlook into PST
files. You have to do that separately for each of Contacts, Calendar,
Notes, and Tasks. Just go to File, Export, etc.


Now, here's the gold -- The one and only program that I have found
which will actually copy 100 percent of all your Contacts, Calendar,
and Notes fields from Outlook onto Google's Gmail is Gsyncit. (V-cards do NOT transfer all the fields BTW -- contrary to someone's suggestion earlier in this thread. But Gsyncit does.) Works great. You can get it here:


http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/index.shtml


Just read through all the Settings in Gsyncit very carefully. (You
can even use it to periodically back up all your data from Google
onto Outlook, which is way more convenient than those awkward CSV
files.) Here are some settings that I highly recommend in Gsync for
your initial upload to Gmail, and then it works like a charm:


CONTACTS:
-Check Automatically continue synchronizing on failure (in case your
internet goes down)
-Check to sync everything -- and especially User Defined Fields at
the very end of the list
-Uncheck "allow contacts to be deleted"
-Uncheck "removing duplicates when syncing" (Trust me -- you can
merge duplicates in Gmail after uploading.)
Read the other options and do what you want, but I strongly advise the above.


CALENDAR:
Read the Settings options and do what you want, but here's a taste of
what I did and I was happy:
-Check Automatically continue synchronizing on failure (in case your
internet goes down)
-Check to sync or not what you want - read carefully
-Uncheck "allow events to be deleted"
-Uncheck "removing duplicates when syncing"


NOTES/Memos:
You can upload by Category (hooray!!!) to Google Docs using GSyncit.
There are detailed instructions on the GSyncit support page. I did it
and was very delighted. I have almost 500 Memos from my Palm Treo
which are all organized by category and I was very concerned about this.


TASKS:
Apparently, Google has made it impossible for any developer to get
access in any way to upload into their Tasks system on our Google
Gmail accounts, despite the fact that people have been asking for
over a year. GSyncit has a way of uploading to a separate calendar,
but it's not ideal because you lose your categories from Palm. I'm
about to try a separate app called GTasks, but I don't know if it
works or not -- I don't think that the GTasks app works with Google -
I think it's maybe a standalone. So, if you don't have a lot of
tasks, and you want everything on Google, the GSyncit workaround
might work for you.