vB Easy Archive - Syncing your Cellphone with Lotus Notes

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Syncing your Cellphone with Lotus Notes
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Posted by: akhenax

Hello Forum,

This is a tutorial describing how to sync Outlook with Lotus Notes and how to sync your phone with the Outlook Calendar. These steps were used to ultimately sync my LG Voyager (on the Verizon network) with my Lotus Notes 8 Calendar, making my Voyager dumbphone into a somewhat less dumbphone.

Software you need:
M$ Outlook 2002 (2003 may also work)
M$ Office Outlook Connector for IBM Lotus Notes (2.0.4007.0) (free)
outlook2icalv1.04.zip (free)
BitPim 1.05 or higher

Prerequisites:
Windows XP SP2
Lotus Notes 8 (older versions may also work)

Note: This procedure has not been tested with Outlook 2007. The Connector addin for Outlook may already be implemented in this version of Outlook during the build.

My problem was that I could not put calendar entries from Lotus Notes onto my phone. I can export my calendar in Notes as an .ics (iCal) file, but when I would import it using Bitpim, items were not showing up correctly, because Lotus Notes uses repeating entries. Repeating entries are not supported correctly when exporting the calendar as an iCal file. Also, Lotus Notes doesn't have the functionality to "convert repeating entries into stand alone events" which would solve so many issues, and leave out Outlook as the middle man and make this procedure 100% free. Outlook doesn't treat repeating entries the same way when exported to ics.

If I didn't have a license to use M$ Office I would not be able to do any of this. Thunderbird or Sunbird (by Mozilla) does not have anything similar for the purposes of syncing the calendar with Lotus Notes, or none that I've seen. Also, I could not locate any email clients that could connect to Lotus Notes. If you find something that will do this for you without Outlook, let us know.

Steps:
1. Install Outlook 2002 (if you already have it, great)
If you have just installed Outlook, do not start it up yet.
2. Download the Outlook Connector from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en
3. Install the Connector
4. Start Outlook after the connector has been installed. Doing this should automatically start the new

Email Accounts setup wizard, but if this has not happened or you already have Outlook installed, then start this wizard manually by going to: Tools --> Email Accounts
5. Select: "Add a new email account" and click next.
6. Select: "Additional Server Types" click next.
7. Important - Select: "Microsoft Office Outlook Connect for IBM Lotus Domino" and click next
8. After doing so, the connector will look at the Lotus Notes settings and should automatically get the mail server and id, if not, please specify this information (it should already be looking in c:/notes/data, so you do not have to specify the path, also the mail server should be the fully qualifying name, not the internal Lotus notes server name, for example MYMAILSERV01.lotus.com instead of MYMAILSERV01/LOTUS/US).

9. Put in your password for the id.

After this is complete, M$ Outlook should start downloading mail from here from your server. For example, the Address in Outlook should say, "outlook:\\Domino Mailbox - Antonio\Inbox" for the Calendar, it should say "outlook:\\Domino Mailbox - Antonio\Calendar"

Important: YOU WILL NOT SEE ANYTHING IN YOUR OUTLOOK CALENDAR FOR A LONG WHILE. Don't be fooled and think, it's not working. Outlook takes its time in downloading the Calendar entries, a very long time. My computer took 35 minutes to download it, and finally I was able to see everything in my outlook calendar
that was in my Notes Calendar.

Exporting your Calendar file.

In order to export your calendar, you need to install a sourceforge application called "outlook2ical".
The outlook2ical utility is a VB macro that can be used to export a set of appointments from an Outlook

Calendar to the iCal format.

Basically, download the zip file and extract it to a directory of your choice.
1. In Outlook, you need to change your Macro security setting to Medium ( Tools--> Macro --> Security )

2. Next incorporate the files you extracted by going to "Tools--> Macro --> Visual Basic Editor"
3. Right click on Project1 and select "Import file". Select the first file in the outlook2ical directory.

4. Import the rest of the files, one at a time.
5. Run the macro (Run-->Run Macro, select "export_icalendar" and click "Run"). The iCalendar tool starts.

1. Select "Other Calendar" and click the "Select Calendar" button
2. Select "Domino Mailbox - Antonio" and click on the Calendar 'folder'. Select "OK". Click "Next".
3. Make sure "Export all appointments in calendar" is checked. Click "Next".
4. Select "Save to local disk/network directory" and put the path of the file to be saved with the file name. Click "Finish" (select allow access for 1 minute and click yes for the security window).

Now that the .ics file is saved. You must now use Bitpim to import the data to your phone.

Syncing using Bitpim

At this point, your phone should be connected to your computer via a Datalink cable, (for the LG Voyager, select "Data" on the screen when you get prompted). Open Bitpim and make sure it recognizes your phone.

Click on Calendar on the left navigation pane. This is Bitpim's representation of the Calendar.

1. In Bitpim select "File-->Import---> Import Calendar Wizard".
2. Select "iCalendar". click "Next".
3. Click "Browse" and select the .ics file you saved.
4. Select "Data Filtering Parameters", and click "Next".
5. Select the dates you want the calendar to include and exclude. Click "ok".
6. I suggest selecting "Replace All", so that your phone doesn't save old data. Click Finish.
7. Verify that calendar entries have been successfully added to the Bitpim Calendar.
8. Select "Data --> Send Phone Data". This should update your phone, and do a reboot of your phone as well.

Now your cellphone has your calendar entries from Lotus Notes. Repeat exporting the iCalendar file when you see fit, so that your phone is always up to date.

Akhenax

Posted by: akhenax

FYI: use the latest version of Bitpim.