One of our user’s palm pilot crashed in one his trips overseas losing all his contacts and calendar appointments, and the only way to retrieve this information was from his palm software installed in his computer, so I got into the task to get his information from the palm software and import it to outlook, here is how I did it.

Retrieving contacts;

On the palm software make sure you are in the contact tab then go to FILE>EXPORT, choose to export the file as “comma separated (*.csv;.text) and on range select ALL.Choose your preferred fields you want to export to outlook and save the file on any location you want. You will need to modify some of the fields on the comma separated file, for example palm pilot uses CELL as a field while Outlook uses MOBILE.

After you finish modifying the file, open Outlook and go to FILE and choose the Export/Import option, when the export and import wizard comes up choose “import from another program or file” click next and choose “comma separated values (windows) click next and browse to the contact file, choose not to import duplicates items and click next, on the select destination folder choose your CONTACTS click next and then Finish, that should import your contacts to outlook, after the wizard finish make sure all your contacts are there and they are the way you want them.

Retrieving Calendar entries;

Calendar entries cannot go directly from the palm software to outlook like contacts because there is no option to export them as a comma separated file, so we will need to export it as a “dba” file. Make sure you are at the calendar tab and go to FILE>EXPORT and choose to export the calendar data as “dba” file. After you save the file go to www.yahoo.com and login to your account if you have one otherwise create it.

On your yahoo account go click on calendar and then OPTIONS, look and click on the Import/Export option, browse to the dba file on your desktop and click Import. After you finish importing your calendar data to yahoo, you will need to export it to outlook, which is under export/import option on your calendar in yahoo, export them as comma separated value. to import it to outlook basically just follow the same procedure I describe for contacts, just choose your calendar as your destination folder. Hope it helps