Copy Contacts

Copy Outlook contacts to subfolder to enhance PDA sync

Download goes here.


Functionality
This program is useful for PDA or smart phone users who want to sync their Outlook contacts but the default contact folder is not appropriate to be used because it is too large. Some sync programs allow to restrict the sync to categories but others don't. This may cause either memory problems on the PDA or the sync may take incredibly long.
With this program you can copy contacts with specific categories to a subfolder of the default contact folder and take this a sync source. Keep in mind that this program does a stupid copy rather than a real sync. When you change or add contacts on your PDA those changes are overwritten when the program runs next time.

Prerequisites
I developed this program for and tested it under Outlook 2000. But there is a good chance that it runs under Outlook 98 as well.

Installation
Download the ZIP file and extract CopyContacts.exe from it. Additionally you need the VB6 Runtime to be installed. If you don't have it yet you can get it from here .

Usage
Make sure Microsoft Outlook is up and running. You can start the program CopyContacts.exe directly and enter the required parameters into the form. But the main purpose of the program is to be scheduled over night to have the contacts subfolder up-to-date when you want to sync your contacts. Therefore the program also supports command line parameters. 

The Command line parameters are:

-categories one or more categories for which the items should be copied. ; is separator
-subfolder name of the contact subfolder. Not requires if there is only one subfolder

Under Windows 2000 you usually schedule a program via Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks > Add Scheduled Task. Here goes a sample screenshot.

How it works
See VB source.

Known issues
Problems occur when you run my program with a Outlook 2002 (the XP version) or with Outlook 2000 or Outlook 98 with the security patch applied. The security patch brings up a popup when a program tries to access Outlook resources. This prevents the program from running properly when it is scheduled.

Revisions

  • 19-Aug-01: Initially submitted