Rated 
it works, but but not seamlessly
Syncing works very well as long as you can organize our contacts to fit the way the software works.
There are a number of annoying problems with the software.
Posted Feb 12, 2006 - When I first installed PhoneTools it couldn't detect my phone (a V180). Detecting the phone worked better after updating PhoneTools to a later version. The Live Update process to update PhoneTools gives confusing feedback: the progress bar goes about halfway across and stops, waiting for the user to press next. It looked like it was hung, but it just waiting for me. The CD came with version 3.18. After many upgrade steps and several reboots, it was finally updated to 4.04. I couldn't immediately figure out how to get the software to notice newly created Outlook contacts folders. I closed and restarted the application, but then it couldn't connect to phone again. I again closed and tried to restart PhoneTools, but it didn't start -- its logo came up for a few seconds and then went away. This happened twice. I believe I rebooted to get it working again. One other day I sync'd to the phone then left the software running and connected to the phone for an hour or so. I was fiddling around with my Outlook address book for a while. When I went to do a sync it told me the phone isn't connected or isn't on. But I know that it was connected and on because I had recently done a sync. I had some trouble syncing some calendar entries. I don't know why. It said there was some feature the phone didn't support, but it didn't give me enough information to figure out what calendar entry or feature wasn't working. My biggest complaint is that PhoneTools can't sync multiple contact folders at once. PhoneTools syncs both ways, so if I sync several folders one at a time it messes up my folders! (Entries from the 1st contacts folder sync down to the phone and then get sucked up into the 2nd folder and so on.) So, since I have organized my contacts into multiple folders, I have to use a more manual approach than just clicking sync. Instead, I have to use the phonebook view, work with one contacts folder at a time, and select contacts to be sent to the phone. This also means I can't use a nice feature of the sync which is the ability to only sync entries that match some condition (such as a specific category). But, I can accomplish the same goal manually: I can search and sort on the Outlook category field in PhoneTools. (You just have to right click on the header to add the category column.) (Unfortunately, this only works on the left (outlook) side of the UI; this doesn't work on the right (phone) side of the UI.) Another annoying thing about PhoneTools is the Outlook contact's full name that is sent to the phone doesn't include the suffix, such as Jr and Sr. To the phone, Fred Smith Jr and Fred Smith Sr. look the same, so the phone can only store one of those two contacts. If you only have one contacts folder, the software (after it's updated to 4.04 or later) should work well for you. If you have multiple contacts folders, PhoneTools is still worth $20 or less, but be prepared to do the syncing somewhat manually. In either case, if you don't want all your contacts stored on your phone, be prepared to spend some time reorganizing your Outlook contacts folders and/or setting categories on contacts you want to push down to your phone.
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I cannot synce my Razr phone to Outlook. It will o ...
Mobile Phone Tools 3.0 review
