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Davton ContactSync v3.1
Download here (1.1MB installer file) Davton ContactSync is a free of charge tool which will synchronise contacts in one contact folder to another. It is designed to synchronise contacts from a shared Microsoft Outlook ‘Public Folder’ to a personal folder - so that the contacts can be synchronised to a PDA using ActiveSync. It is a one way synchronization - changes made in the local folder or on the PDA will not be reflected back to the Public folder. The synchroniser can filter the contacts it copies to your local folder, based on a categories. So for example if you just want the contacts with category 'Customer' to be moved to your local folder, Davton ContactSync can handle this. (For more complex filtering requirements you will need to contact us about creating a custom version of the tool.)
How it worksDavton ContactSync will not touch any existing contacts in your personal folder. When it moves contacts across from the public folder, it adds some extra information so that it can keep track of where the contact has come from. In fact it adds a note to the little used field 'Organizational ID Number' to say where the contact has been copied from. When it checks to see if the contacts are still up to date, and meeting the filter criteria, it will ignore any contacts that don't have the right information in the 'Organizational ID Number' field. If an update is made to a contact in the public folder, the next time you run the synchroniser, it will delete the (now out of date) copy of the contact in the local folder, and add a new updated copy. If you make a change to a contact in the local folder or on the PDA linked to the local folder it WILL NOT update the public folder. The changes will be over written next time a change is made to the contact in the public folders. The idea is that you use the public folder as the 'Master' contact folder - and make any changes or updates there. It may be that Davton create a 'two way' synchronisation tool in the future (no plans currently) but be aware that two way synchronisation requires that you consider what to do when two people update the same contact and then try to synchronise the changes. Handling the conflict - who wins and how to you notify someone that there changes have been overwritten is a tricky question! It is easier in the long run to have one shared master folder and make all the changes there.
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