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There are an increasing number of reports that not all views display correctly after a mobile sync process in addition to other various strange behaviours.

 

The fields primarily involved in the reports reviewed to date involve <FullName> (which may or may not include component <FullName> fields), <FileAs> and <EmailDisplayAs>.

 

A frequent complaint seen is that the AddressBook display is no longer correct (did not reflect the AB display settings) after a "sync" process. This resulted when the <FullName> field was modified (it was also an issue for CTK when standardizing the <FullName> until corrected in CTK v1.4.1). For these particular cases, the <FullName> and/or <FileAs> fields need to be reset after each sync process. Also, this is not a global AB issue, only those contact items that were modified during the sync process are affected.

 

Another scenario that is that a mobile sync would no longer function correctly until the <FileAs> field was reset to its original value (a <FileAs> option has been included in v1.5.3 to reset the FA field using the existing value which then enables to sync process to function normally).

 

The problems reported involve various sync programs and do not appear to be exclusive to any single sync product based on the various reports sent directly to us as well as those seen on various forums/blogs.

 

Whatever the cause of the various problems, it is not an Outlook issue but rather on <how> particular fields are being updated via the sync process (and in some cases - non Outlook import processes). More specifically, when a contact item is updated via the Outlook UI or via OOM (Outlook Object Model) for programmatic updates - none of these issues appear. However, many 3rd party programs (including ContactGenie products) utilize a MAPI library to perform many of the functions. It is apparent that some undocumented flags and/or fields are also being updated by the Outlook UI or OOM in addition to the primary fields (such as <FullName>, <FileAs> etc) which are not similarly updated via the MAPI library in certain cases. Aside from AddressBook display settings, various views could also show missing or inaccurate field information even though the underlying data appeared correctly when displaying the full contact detail screen (an issue that was addressed in CTK very early on).

 

In reference to the Addressbook problem which enables you to set different sort order (First Last or FileAs), CTK has been updated as of v1.4.1 to use a modified hybrid update process to ensure that the AddressBook display settings are always in effect regardless of what standardization format option is used (i.e. regardless of the <FullName> format setting selected, the AB will always correctly show First Last if that is the sort order in effect).