Synchronizing the Mobile and Desktop Editions

The desktop and mobile editions of Life Balance support complete two-way synchronization through Palm’s HotSync Manager.

Life Balance allows you to make modifications on both the desktop and your handheld, and in most cases it will automatically apply the changes you’ve made to both platforms at the next HotSync. In cases where the same data has changed on both platforms, rather than creating duplicates, conflict icons will appear on the desktop that let you choose the record that you want to keep.

In addition to synchronizing your Life Balance data, the Life Balance Conduit synchronizes your Life Balance desktop calendar with the linked events in your Palm Date Book. If you have enabled To Do List export on your handheld, it will also post changes to your Palm To Do List. If you have enabled Natara DayNotez support on your Palm, your completed tasks from the desktop edition of Life Balance will also be recorded in DayNotez.

Note: In order to HotSync, Life Balance must be stored in your handheld’s internal memory — not on an external memory card.

Selecting Your Life Balance File for HotSync

Because the desktop edition of Life Balance can create multiple data files, and because there may be more than one Palm handheld in your family or office, in order to synchronize Life Balance you must first specify which desktop file should synchronize with which Palm handheld.

Tip: Use the Save As command in the desktop edition of Life Balance to give your data file a distinctive and meaningful name, like “Stuart’s life.lbd”. This will help ensure that you have selected the correct file when you set up HotSync.

Note: You must have already installed and configured the Palm Desktop software on your desktop computer, and performed at least one successful HotSync with your Palm handheld before you can configure the Life Balance conduit. See the documentation that came with your handheld for details.

To configure HotSync from within Life Balance

If your version of the Palm Desktop is at least 4.0 or higher, then you can configure HotSync using the HotSync menu in Life Balance itself. This menu will appear between the Task and Windows menus. The menu will contain a list of the Palm users defined for your desktop.

Each item in the HotSync menu has a mark next to it that indicates what the current synchronization settings are. The marks are:

Checkmark: The current document is set up to HotSync with this Palm user, and the next HotSync will be Synchronize, Desktop overwrites Handheld, or Handheld overwrites Desktop.
Dash (Macintosh) or Bullet (Windows): The current document is set up to HotSync with this Palm user, but the next HotSync is set to Do Nothing.
Blank: The current document is not set up to HotSync with this Palm user.

Selecting a username will bring up a HotSync settings dialog and after okaying the dialog, that user will be syncing with the current document.

If the HotSync menu does not appear, then either your version of the Palm Desktop software is too old, or it is not configured correctly. You will have to specify your file using Palm’s HotSync Manager.

To configure HotSync from the Windows HotSync Manager:

Click on the red and blue HotSync icon in the Windows system tray, and choose “Custom...” from the popup menu. This will display the Custom window.
Select the HotSync name of the Palm handheld that you want to synchronize with Life Balance from the popup menu at the top of the Custom window.
Life Balance should appear in the lower section of the Custom window. Double-click on the words “Life Balance” to open the Life Balance conduit settings window.
If Life Balance does not appear in the Custom window, then you should re-install Life Balance. See Installing Life Balance for more details.
Click on the “Choose document” button and select the Life Balance file that you would like to synchronize with this handheld.

To configure HotSync from the Macintosh HotSync Manager:

Launch the HotSync Manager application from the Palm folder.
Select “Conduit Settings…” from the HotSync menu. This will open the Conduit Settings window.
Select the HotSync name of the Palm handheld that you want to synchronize with Life Balance from the User popup menu at the top of the Conduit Settings window.
Life Balance should appear in the lower section of the Conduit Settings window. Double-click on the words “Life Balance” to open the Life Balance conduit settings window.
If Life Balance does not appear in the Conduit Settings window, then you should re-install Life Balance. See Installing Life Balance for more details.
Click on the “Choose…” button and select the Life Balance file that you would like to synchronize with this handheld.

How the HotSync Settings Affect the Choice of Desktop File

If you select Synchronize or Handheld overwrites Macintosh or Desktop, but do not choose a Life Balance file before you HotSync, Life Balance will create a file named “Life Balance data.lbd” in your Palm Desktop user folder. If you move this file to another location or rename it, be sure to re-select the file according to the above instructions (either with the HotSync menu in Life Balance or Palm’s HotSync Manager) before the next HotSync.

Choosing a file is always required when you select Macintosh overwrites Handheld or Desktop overwrites Handheld. If you do not specify a file in these cases, you will get an error during HotSync.

Choosing HotSync Settings

The settings for your Life Balance Conduit are very similar to other conduits. You reach these settings as described in Selecting Your Life Balance File for HotSync. Life Balance allows you to choose your desktop Life Balance file and the method for handling the differences between handheld and desktop Life Balance files.

The following are the choices for handling differences:

Synchronize

This is the default setting. It copies changes that you have made on your handheld to the desktop, and vice-versa.

If there are any conflicts between the two sets of data, Life Balance will display yellow conflict icons the next time you open your desktop file. Clicking on these conflict icons allows you to choose to reconcile these differences in favor of either the handheld or the desktop.

Macintosh Overwrites Handheld / Desktop Overwrites Handheld

If you know that your desktop file contains all of your data, and you want to discard the data on your handheld, select this option to replace the data on your handheld with the data from the desktop.

Handheld Overwrites Macintosh / Handheld Overwrites Desktop

If you know that your handheld contains all of your data, and you want to discard the data in your desktop file, select this option to replace the data in your desktop file with the data on your handheld.

Do Nothing

This selection will keep the handheld and desktop from exchanging Life Balance information. Your handheld Life Balance information will still be backed up.

Note: By default, any changes you make to these settings will only affect the next HotSync. If you want the setting to stick, you must select the Make Default button (on Macintosh) or the “Set as default” checkbox (on Windows) to make the change permanent.

Foreign Language Support

There are versions of the Palm OS as well as a number of Palm OS extensions that support languages other than English. The Life Balance conduits will convert from whatever character encoding is being used on the Palm to Unicode on the desktop. By default the conduits will attempt to detect the encoding on the Palm and automatically perform the conversion, but not all Palm OS system extensions for supporting alternative encodings are correctly reporting the encoding. For those cases, we have an "Encoding" dropdown list at the bottom of the Life Balance HotSync dialog and the HotSync Manager conduit settings dialog where you can choose a specific encoding to override whatever the Palm is reporting.

The list will always include the choices "Palm system encoding" and "Windows system encoding" / "Macintosh system encoding". The other choices will depend on the encodings supported by your operating system but will potentially include: Western European (Windows), Western European (Palm), Japanese (Palm Shift-JIS), Japanese (Shift-JIS), Japanese (EUC), Cyrillic (Windows), Cyrillic (ISO), Russian (KOI8-R), OEM Cyrillic, Cyrillic (DOS), Cyrillic (Mac), Ukrainian (KOI8-U), Ukrainian (Mac), Hebrew (ISO-Logical), Hebrew (ISO-Visual), Hebrew (Windows), Chinese Simplified (GB2312), Chinese Simplified (HZ), Chinese Simplified (GB2312-80), Chinese Traditional (Palm Big5), Chinese Traditional (Big5), Chinese Traditional (Big5Plus), Greek (Windows), Turkish (ISO), Korean (EUC).

Note: If you have already synchronized your data with an incorrect encoding, and the data on either the desktop or the handheld is garbled, you may need to select the correct encoding and do an "overwrite" HotSync in order to correct the problem.

HotSync Snapshots

The Life Balance conduit automatically creates "snapshots" of your Life Balance data each time you HotSync. These snapshots provide a complete backup of your Life Balance data both before and after the HotSync. You can use these snapshots to restore a previous version of your data if something goes wrong, or you can include a snapshot if you need to report a HotSync problem to Llamagraphics.

By default, the Life Balance conduit keeps snapshots for your last ten HotSyncs. These snapshots are stored in your Palm user folder. On Windows, this folder is usually C:\Program Files\Palm\HotSyncName\Life Balance\Life Balance snapshots. On Macintosh, this folder is Documents/Palm/Users/HotSyncName/Life Balance snapshots.

Warning: You should not keep any other files in the snapshots folder, because they may be deleted to make room for new snapshots.

In the Life Balance conduit settings you can turn snapshots on and off and control the number of snapshots that are kept. Although snapshots can be extremely useful, they do take extra time and disk space, so you have the option of turning them off if you are using some other means to back up your data. Remember, though, that by the time you realize that you need a snapshot, it may be too late to turn them back on!

HotSync Reconciliation

If you have a data conflict after synchronizing the desktop and handheld during HotSync, a yellow conflict icon will appear on the left of the item in the Outline, To Do List, Balance, Calendar, or Place panels. When you click on the icon, a dialog box appears which will ask you to reconcile the conflict by choosing to either keep the information from the desktop or from the handheld.

Synchronizing to Palm Desktop, Outlook or iCal

Life Balance for Mac OS X is now able to synchronize directly with iCal and other Macintosh applications that use Sync Services. See “Synchronizing with iCal” in the Mac OS X edition of the Life Balance Advice Book for more information.

Life Balance does not synchronize directly with Palm Desktop or Outlook, but it can synchronize indirectly with them through your Palm handheld. Events in your Life Balance calendar can synchronize with other desktop calendars, and if you have To Do List import/export enabled on your handheld, the tasks in your Life Balance can synchronize with other desktop to-do lists.

Note: To Do List import/export is an advanced feature of Life Balance for Palm OS. You should read Synchronizing with the Palm To Do List carefully before enabling this feature.

Because your data must travel to your handheld and back, you may have to HotSync twice before your data will be completely synchronized. Whether you need to HotSync once or twice depends on where you entered the data and what order your HotSync conduits run in.

Synchronizing One Handheld to Two Computers

Life Balance supports synchronizing one Palm handheld with two or more desktop editions of Life Balance. You need to purchase a separate license code for each of the computers to continue using Life Balance beyond the 30 day trial period.

Start by getting HotSync working with one desktop computer. Once you have one desktop working, the next step depends on how easy it is to transfer a desktop file from the first desktop to the second.

If this is easy, then on the first desktop, save a copy of the .lbd (Life Balance Data) file you are HotSyncing with by opening it in Life Balance and then using the Save As command in the File menu. Give the new file a distinctive name so that you can keep track of it. Then transfer the copy to the second desktop and configure the Life Balance conduit to HotSync with it. Using the Save As command is important as it ensures the copy has a unique id so that the conduit can distinguish which desktop it's HotSyncing with.

If transferring files between the two desktop computers is difficult, we recommend creating an empty .lbd file on the second desktop, configuring the conduit to HotSync with that file, and then doing a "Handheld overwrites desktop" for the first HotSync.

Note: If you are actively editing your Life Balance data on multiple platforms, then you are more likely to get conflicts where two items have been changed in inconsistent ways. This will appear on the desktop in the form of a yellow conflict icon next to the item in question. If an icon appears, you can click on it to get a dialog which will let you resolve the conflict. HotSyncing more often will reduce these conflicts.

Synchronizing Multiple Users on the same Desktop

The desktop edition of Life Balance supports multiple users with separate data files, and each user can synchronize their data with a different handheld. Since Life Balance is licensed per computer, you only need one license for the desktop edition, but you will need separate licenses for each handheld device.

Tip: Use the Save As command in the desktop edition of Life Balance to give each user’s data file a distinctive and meaningful name, like “Stuart’s life.lbd”. That will make it easier to set up the HotSync settings correctly.

To set up HotSync for multiple users, open the first user’s desktop file in Life Balance, and then choose the matching handheld name from the HotSync menu. When the HotSync settings dialog appears, just click OK. Then open the second user’s desktop file in Life Balance, and again choose the matching handheld name from the HotSync menu and click OK.

If you are running an older version of Palm Desktop and the HotSync menu does not appear in Life Balance, then you will need to use the Palm HotSync Manager to set up synchronization. Follow the instructions To configure HotSync from the Windows HotSync Manager: twice, once with the Palm user name and desktop file of the first user, and again with the Palm user name and desktop file of the second user.

If Nothing Changes after a HotSync

If HotSync completes without errors and yet your data still doesn't seem to change, then it’s possible that your Palm handheld is synchronizing to the wrong desktop file.

If the HotSync menu is available inside of Life Balance, then the easiest way to fix the problem is to open your desktop file and then select the name of the corresponding handheld from the HotSync menu. You may get a message that the handheld is currently synchronizing with a different document — just click OK. Once you click OK in the HotSync settings dialog and perform another HotSync, your handheld data should show up in your desktop file.

If the HotSync menu is not available inside of Life Balance, you will need to search for multiple .lbd files on your desktop computer. It's possible that you are saving to a different file from the one you are HotSyncing to. On Windows you can use the Search or Find command from the Start menu to search for files. On Macintosh you can use the Find command from the File menu in the Finder. You should search all your local hard drives for files named "*.lbd". If more than one file is found, you'll need to carefully determine which is the correct file to use and make sure both the desktop application and the HotSync Manager are using the same one.

Once you have located the correct data file, you may want to rename it so that it has a distinctive name. However, if you decide to rename the file, you will have to set up HotSync again.

Dealing with HotSync Error Messages

You may get messages in your HotSync log to the effect that the Life Balance conduit detected problems in your Palm data, followed by a list of problems, followed by the message "Your data has been repaired prior to synchronizing with the desktop." Be assured that your data is fine on the desktop. Usually the conduit will also fix the problems on your Palm. However, the conduit doesn't always have sufficient information to repair everything, so if you continue to get these messages every time you HotSync, you may need to repair your data on the Palm.

To fully repair your handheld data, launch Life Balance on your handheld and choose Verify Data from the Options menu. Life Balance will display a dialog box describing the checks it's performing. If it finds any errors, it will ask you if you want to correct them. It is generally recommended that you allow the data to be repaired by the utility unless you have instructions from Llamagraphics technical support to do otherwise.

Tip: If you have Palm system extensions or “hacks” installed on your handheld, it is safest to disable them before using the Verify Data command. Disabling hacks will sometimes allow the Verify Data command to run much more quickly.

If you encounter other error messages in your HotSync log that you don’t understand, please copy the text of your HotSync log and send it to us so we can take a look at the problem. Contact information is listed in Technical Support.