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Migrating
from a Palm OS handheld to an Android Phone - requires Windows Desktop
(or Windows environment running on a Mac or Linux) and Android phone
running OS 4.1 or later, and Java 7 installed on desktop. After
migrating to the Pimlical environment, you can then export your files
in iCalendar,vCard and Text formats which are compatible with virtually
all calendar, contacts and memo/note applications, thereby permanently
preserving your personal data. |
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Step 1 - get V-6.2 of the Palm Desktop Installed |
Earlier versions of the Palm desktop (4.x etc.) use an
undocumented, proprietary format for the PIM databases. V-6.2
switched to using MS Access databases which are far more
easily accessible and self-documenting and suitable for
migrating to other platforms. Ignore Palm's comments about
compatibility, as you will be installing Pimlical which
overcomes the unnecessary restriction that Palm placed on
getting their sync software to work with older devices. You
can download the Palm desktop from: http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/PalmDesktopWin62.exe.
Before installing the V-6.2 desktop, it is recommended that
you make a complete backup of the palm folder containing all
your data, so you can always recover easily if an error is
made or some other problem arises.
The Palm Desktop will not install on a 64-bit version of Windows.
If that is the case (and these days almost all Win desktops are running
a 64-bit version of Windows), you will need to install Windows XP Mode
which will create a partition in your hard drive and then install a
version of Windows XP which can run the Palm Desktop. After you get
your MDB databases, you can copy them out of the Windows XP Mode
partition to your main hard drive and at that point you will no longer
need the Windows XP Mode software. This web page has useful information
on what Windows XP Mode is and how it works:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7.
Make sure you can see all your calendar, contacts, tasks, memo data in
the Palm Desktop as if you can't see it there, you very definitely
won't see it in Pimlical. If you were using Windows XP Mode, copy those
four files to a folder in your main Windows installation as you will
need them in a moment.
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Step 2 - Install Pimlical/Desktop |
You can download Pimlical from a link on the
home page (click on
Home
at top left). Note that you must have Java 7 installed as Java 8 no
longer has the ODBC drivers which Java requires in order to read the
old Palm MDB databases. If you can not find a version to install,
Pimlical does keep a version of Java 7 on its website at this location:
http://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/jre-7u79-windows-i586.exe.
When
you launch Pimlical for the first time, an install dialog appears. In
that dialog, make sure you check the checkbox labeled: Use the old Palm/Desktop MDB Databases. which is underneath the first checkbox labeled: Install NEW Default.txt (Default Preference File). Click on the button Change Folder and navigate to where the Palm Desktop put its data (you can easily find that by opening an archive).
If
you set the wrong path, or never changed it, Pimlical will still launch
but will display completely empty databases. Either uninstall and
reinstall Pimlical and try again, OR in
menu | Help | About, you will see the path to where your data is
stored, which is usually something like C:\USERS\{your windows
name}\AppData\Roaming\Pimlico. Underneath the Pimlico folder you should
see four folders corresponding to the Palm databases, so copy
datebook.mdb from the Palm Desktop's Datebook folder into
Pimlico's Datebook folder, Address.mdb into the Address
folder etc. (for some odd reason the Todolist.mdb file goes into a Todo
folder and not a TodoList folder).
Launch Pimlical/Desktop again
and this time you should see your calendar and tasks data - you may
need to go into menu | Refresh to see it.
The next step is to
migrate all your data into the new format that is compatible with Java
8: to do that, in Pimlical, go into menu | Options | Preferences - and
in the last (System) section locate the preference SynchronizeWithPalmOS and
change its value from TRUE to FALSE. Then exit Pimlical and relaunch
Pimlical and your calendar and tasks data will be automatically
converted. To convert your contacts and memos, click on the Contacts and Memos
buttons at bottom left and respond affirmatively to the request to
migrate your data. At that point you will then have three sub-folders
in your main Pimlical folder: PimlicalCalendars, PimlicalContacts and
PimlicalMemos. The four original folders with the palm names (Datebook,
address, etc.) are no longer needed and can be removed. At that point
you can exit Pimlical again, remove Java 7 and install the latest
release of Java 8. Relaunch Pimlical again and confirm that you can
still see all your data.
Finally, make sure any of the old preferences associated with the PalmOS are properly reset:
PalmUserHasDateBk = False
SynchronizeWithPalmOS = False
SynchronizeDateBkTemplates = False
WarnOnChangingColorPalette = False
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Step 3 - Setup Pimlical to migrate your calendar data to
your phone |
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If you have a phone other than Android, you will be syncing
Pimlical/Desktop to Google Calendar which you
can then sync with your phone (iPhone, Symbian, WinMob,
Blackberry, etc.). Launch Pimlical to view the calendar,
select the items you wish to export in Advanced Find (or hit
Clear to select all of them) and then use the Export ICS:
button to export the calendar in iCalendar format to your
desktop. You can then use Google Calendar's import feature to
import that calendar into Google Calendar (try and keep such calendars
under 5k events or so for best performance). From there you can
use Google's sync software or your phone's sync software to
migrate your calendar data into the phone. If you have an
Android phone, you can use Pimlical on the Android
phone, and will benefit from continuing to use Pimlical Desktop, in
which case proceed as indicated below.
Install Pimlical/Android on your Android phone. To migrate all your data, use DirectSync or AutoSync (see
documentation in menu | Help | About on desktop), or manually copy the
three sub-folders to the corresponding position in your phone (all
database formats are 100% identical on all platforms):
Pimlical/PimlicalCalendars, Pimlical/PimlicalContacts,
Pimlical/PimlicalMemos. If you have a custom icon collection, you can get that
migrated into Pimlical by following the directions in the
Pimlical manual (see menu | Help for the reference manual or consult this document). You will
need to export your icons (using the Export button in
Pimlical/desktop) in a different format for use by
Pimlical/Android. But when this is done, icons that you used
in DateBk will also appear in Pimlical on both the desktop and
the handheld.
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Getting your contacts into Gmail Contacts and Native
Android Contacts database |
Pimlical
has its own Contacts database which is separate from the standard
Android contacts database. If you prefer to use Android contacts you
can easily migrate your contacts into Android contacts/Gmail Contacts.
Using the Pimlical/Desktop, export your (contacts) as
a vCard file ( Export button). Then go into Gmail,
select contacts (link at top left), then go to bottom of page
and select Import from the More Actions dropdown list.
You can then import this file into your Gmail contacts.
One user following this procedure offered this helpful advice:
In doing this, I discovered all my contacts that had
company names but NOT
first/last names, were imported into Google Contacts with
"-Unnamed-".
My first few hundred contacts were all "-Unnamed-".
The solution was to 1st export the contacts to vCards. The
hand edit the
text file to globally remove all "-Unnamed-". It didn't
have to be replaced
with anything. This took all of 10 seconds using VIM.
If you have custom fields and want to get them into the
Note field, you can do that too with these steps:
1.
Edit the VCF file with a text edit (I used GVIM). Replace
any instance of "X-PALM-CUSTOM;1:" with "NOTE:". Also, if
there are instances with "X-PALM-CUSTOM;2:",
"X-PALM-CUSTOM;3:", "X-PALM-CUSTOM;4:", these must be
deleted and the field contents made a part of the line
"NOTE:". Note if you try to use Openoffice writer instead
of gedit the non-printing characters are messed up and
file is not recognized properly as a VCF file when trying
to import (yes I tried it and it failed)
2. Save the file with a new unique name in case you made a
mistake editing the file.
3. Go to Gmail, select "Contacts", then Import
4. Locate your newly edited *.vcf file and import your
Palm contacts into Gmail account
I then imported to Google Contacts (using the web page)
and all looks great.
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Memos, Contacts and Tasks |
Pimlical/Android supports both memos and contacts in a local database
and they can be synced back and forth with Pimlical/Desktop. Contacts
and Memos are stored in a different format, so there is a one-time
migration from the old MS Access database into a folder
(PimlicalContacts/PimlicalMemos) where they are stored in a DAT file.
Tasks can be synced EITHER directly using DirectSync, or they can be
synced through a google calendar - there is no direct support at this
time to sync to GTasks. Contact linking is supported by
Pimlical/Android both with the native contacts database and with P/A's
local contacts database. The local contacts database syncs to the local
contacts database in Pimlical/Desktop. Note that although Pimlical uses
proprietary databases, Pimlical supports FULL Import/Export in
industry-standard formats (iCalendar, vCard, ASCII Text files) so you
will never have any further, future migration issues.
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| Need further help on getting this migration done? |
If
you need further assistance on migrating your data, there's a very
helpful forum on Groups.io with many users who have been through the migration process and can
help you with some of the more estoeric issues such as converting an
existing, custom, Icon collection used in DateBk5/6, etc.
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