Want to sync Notes and Memos from your Pre to your Desktop and vice versa? I wish I could tell you that you could actually synchronize the notes from the Memos application on your Pre, but then I’d be lying to you. For whatever disappointing reason, the Pre in its current form does not support the synchronization of Memos and there’s not much that we can do about that. There are at least four different ways to deal with this. The first way is to just deal with it. The built-in memos application is both easy-to-use and plenty fast, plus it comes with type-to-search. But... it doesn’t sync with anything.
And then there’s Evernote, currently in free beta form in the App Catalog. You can take the notes in Evernote, in addition to snapping pictures to storing tasks, and all of it will sync with your PC, Mac, and even Evernote’s web services. But, as is so often the reality of betas, Evernote is a touch slow and occasionally buggy.
Have a Microsoft Exchange account? Then you can sync your notes, so long as you’re willing to make them notes attached to your tasks. And we know what you’re thinking, it’s kind of hacky. And we agree, it is hacky, and we shouldn’t have to stoop to using applications Tasks to sync our memos. Palm, are you listening?
Lastly, there’s email. If you’re a Gmail user, you can send messages to yourself with the subject prefix of “Note:”, and then using Gmail’s filters and labels you can have your notes automatically sorted into folders on the Pre. It’s a great magical sync and lets you use the Pre’s fantastic email program, but like the aforementioned Tasks notes syncing, it’s a hacky work-around that we should have to deal with.
So there’s four solutions, and we’re sure there’s more out there. We want to know, how do you sync your memos?
Comments
If you don't create many drafts, another idea is to change the Drafts Mailbox to a new one called Notes or Memos. It doesn't clutter the inbox and is just a little quicker to do than sending yourself and email.
There isn't a great solution for this but I plan to fix this myself as soon as I get access to the SDK. Considering taking a look at the leaked SDK stuff and possibly make a homebrew app, but my primary goal is distribution through the app catalog. Anyways, my solution will sync your notes in the background with my secure web service, exanotes (http://examancer.com/exanotes). This will also allow you to access the notes from any computer with an internet connection. Its a true "cloud" solution.
I still need to do a little work making sure the web service will hold up under a flood of new users. Plus, there are a few features I am working on which would make it a more complete note-taking solution. I am confident the service will be ready when the SDK is released.
The ExaNotes web app is cool and it renders properly om the Pre. Thanks, I'm looking forword to seeing the finished app in the catalog.
Thanks for these tips, and the additional ones in the comments. The bigger challenge, though, is not getting the data to and from the Pre, but reading/writing to it there. Essentially, we need a WebOS version of PalmOS Memopad, supporting categories, that can use one of the existing desktop-to-Pre clients like PocketMirror (http://www.chapura.com/pm_standard_pre.php) or CompanionLink (http://www.companionlink.com/), given that Exchange Activesync doesn't itself support the Notes data (which appears to be the case, per http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998357.aspx). {ProfJonathan}
ActiveSync doesn't support synchronizing Notes data? I've been sync'ing my notes to my iPAQ for years via ActiveSync. It's supported - Palm just didn't implement it.
Not OTA you weren't. You're memos were likely synced via a cable connection, which is supported.
I am so anxious to be able to sync the "core four" apps with Google or my desktop or ANYTHING! I can type much faster on a full sized keyboard than the Pre's. Don't get me wrong, I love my Pre-size keyboard. I just want to be able to do production typing on a PC and download to my Pre.
It would also be nice to beam (bluetooth?) tasks, appts or contacts to another Pre owner like we could do with other Palm devices. Right now, I cannot share any content on my Pre easily. There is no beaming of any content.
This is the solution I am using to sync my notes, from Entourage 2008 on a Mac to my Palm Pré via Exchange ActivSync: I create new Contacts with "Notes" in the company line, followed by a description of the note (like "Notes Restaurants" or "Notes Trip to Paris").
I assume I could have also created new contacts with Notes as a first name and the title of the memo as last name --it should work as well.
All contacts sync very nicely on EAS, and it's easy for me to just type "Notes" on my Pré keyboard and get access to all my memos by alphabetical order.
I first tried using Memo as keyword, but Universal search would direct me to the Memo app on the Pré --useless!
It's not an ideal solution, but it works for me until Palm cleans up its act. Come on, Palm, we should be able to sync our Memos without having to use our Contacts!
Using Contacts is the temporary solution that I came up with as well. I only use Outlook for contacts so I put all of the Notes (contacts) in my Google account so that I can view them separately on my computer. I didn't think to use "Notes" as the contact name to sort and search better. Thanks for the idea.
Better question, what do people use memos for, exactly? I've never used this feature on any phone I've ever had.
What! Memos are great for holding all sorts of information and ideas. Let's see, I have a list of the movies I want to see, CDs to buy, books to read, information that I have to email often, referral lists, favorite web addresses, grocery lists, recipies, restaurants to check out favorite wines and it goes on and on. Categories are a must as well as there are tons of uses for business purposes as well.
I also used the Memos to take meeting notes with my Palm Keyboard with my Treo. Haven't tried it with the Pre but guessing that it's not compatible yet.
Hey, maybe that the data entry solution for the Pre, a compatible keyboard! Syncing is still a must but a keyboard would be nice too.
Thank you,
I am glad I am not the only one feeling the loss of my memos. For some reason I thought the newer ver. (Pre) would be everything the Treo 755p was and more. Sadly, I was mistaken.
The lack of a proper Memo app on the Pre is one big thing holding me back from wanting it. I use memos all the time to store notes from clients, passwords (as insecure as this one might me), ideas I have, notes from meetings, lists of books to read, groceries, and I've got things archived from as far back as 10 years ago, stuff I wrote in high school on an old OZ-650PC personal organizer!
I've had no problem transferring from the OZ-650, through multiple palm devices, to my blackberry via OTA sync with exchange... I can hardly believe that this worked great in 1998, but now in 2009, it has to come to a dead end :P
Lack of notes sync is one way that Palm has abandoned business users. Lack of desktop sync is even worse. Not many corporations are going to allow users to send proprietary data to an unsecured server on the extranet.
To make notes faster in windows mobile create folders and categorize your notes, it will operate a lot faster. I have 600+ notes and it's worked for me.
I am in the same position as Supacon above... I use Notes massively... I have over 200 of them at the moment. None of these workaround solutions will do for that many notes.
One of the main reasons I wanted to upgrade my phone is that my current Palm 750V is excruciatingly slow when accessing notes (I blame Windows Mobile). All previous Palm OS devices I've had worked very swiftly with notes.
It sounds like upgrading to the Pre is not a good idea for me. Oh, and no SD micro slot??! What the?
A shame... I've been following the Pre with a huge amount of interest... it seems like such a good device otherwise.
I've been wondering how bad my situation really is since I never knew how others use Memos but I knew I really really need Memos in my life. One of a reasons I wished for a Palm PDA and got a Treo years ago. I was lucky because I didn't know how keyboard will actually be crucial to my smartphone usage.
Currently I have little over 1300 Memos on my Treo and you can just imagine what a mess that would become in webOSes Memos app. Palm just needs to step up and not leave this one to the market. Even if they just do a couple of things, most importantly add sync capability, categories support and list view, I don't think this will kill the market for note taking apps. But I really dislike getting a Pre (still can't get it since I'm in Europe) and then having to search for a third party solution just for these three obvious things.
BTW, Mike I use Treo 680 with PalmOS 5.4.9 and I can assure you even with this kind of Memos usage, I've never ever had any speed problems. It surely seems Memos app is as fast as when it was empty. Everything just pops out, no loading or anything slowing down. Sure, everything is sorted in categories but even when I choose "All" instead of a category, everything is just as snappy. So I guess you have every right to blame Windows Mobile. One more reason why I avoid it.
Also, with regards to a hack for syncing notes, does anyone use Google Notebook? I haven't researched it since I still can't buy the device but would that be a feasible option? Either to Palm make Memos sync with your Google account or Google comes out with a standalone app.
Here is another a bit lengthy and mechanical way of Transferring your PalmOS Memos from your PDA to the Palm Pre. This comes directly from MotionApps website. It will involve installing the FileZ application by NoSleep Software to your Palm OS device, and using the external storage card to move the data from one device to the other.
I would prefer to be able to sync this data from Palm Desktop to my Pre (still hoping). But for immediate help moving large data files this certainly beats physically re-entering all your data.
I do not have the required 'Post Count' here to post the link to the MotionApps Support page, which outlines this process. So, go to MotionApps.com and click on their "Support" page on their website; then click "Classic How To" and look for "How to move PIM and other data (i.e., PDB files) into Classic?"
I've been doing that for a while now, since I use the memos to take notes in meetings, keep shopping lists, etc. Just ssh into your rooted Pre and "rsync -auvP /var/luna/data/dbdata/PalmDatabase.db3 yourlogin@yourmachine:" and then, on yourmachine, "sqlite3 -batch PalmDatabase.db3 'select * from com_palm_pim_Memo;'". You can even put the rsync in a cron job, like I have.
If you really want to get fancy, you can go like this (Don't just run people's random command lines without understanding them, but as written, this one will not write to disk at all except for a temporary HTML file):
perl -e 'print "<html><body>\n"; use DBI; $db = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=PalmDatabase.db3"); $q = $db->prepare("select * from com_palm_pim_Memo;"); $q->execute(); while ($r = $q->fetchrow_hashref()) { %r = %$r; $r{text} =~ s/\n\n+/<p>\n/smg; print qq|<div style="border: solid 1px black; background-color: $r{color}; width: 320px; padding: 8px; margin: 8px; float: left;"><b>$r{title}</b><p>$r{text}</div>\n|; } print "</body></html>\n";' >/tmp/myprememos.html; firefox /tmp/myprememos.html
on yourmachine, obviously, not your Pre.
I'm sure someone will come up with some nice gesture-based sync mechanism with glowing primary-colored buttons where you kind of throw your memos at a virtual representation of your PC, but this way is really easier unless you're not a total nerd.
This is an awesome solution. I can't believe how far into this I am just to get memos syncing, but at least I now have a way to get my memos off. Anyway, if anyone has any perl questions on how to get this setup feel free to ask.
Just occurred to me that some people might be interested in writing these little post-its on their PCs and syncing them back to the Pre, and that's what solutions 3 and 4 are about. I personally wouldn't suggest making changes to PalmDatabase.db3 and copying it back up to the Pre, so I guess what I'm doing is less of a sync and more of a backup.
Is there even such a thing as a networked post-it-type memo program? Surprised "Google Notes" doesn't exist. I guess someone could hack support for Tomboy's online sync feature onto the Pre, but Tomboy kind of sucks. Personally, when I want to send information to the Pre I email it to my otherwise seldom-used gmail account, so I guess I use both my own solution and #4 above.
What a shame! I use Memos from my Palm III, them Palm Vx, Tungsten T2...
My Nokia E51 does NOT sync notes over air (EAS), iPhone does not sync. Well, Windows Mobile might be better at this, but user interface they offer is not suitable for me.
So, I am stuck with almost 300 memo entries stored in my Exchange mailbox and wait for a solution. Seems like Pre is not the solution! What to say??? :-( :-( :-(
I copied and pasted all of my Memos out of my old Palm desktop and stored them in text files or word documents. Then, I plugged in the Pre as a USB device and copied these files to the device. I use the Doc View program to see them.
Granted this is a manual solution, but it enables me to use a keyboard to update them and the copy is really not that big of a pain....
That's what I'm doing at the moment - emailing my notes to myself, saving them as word docs, then syncing back to my Pre. Thing that sucks at the moment is that you can't yet edit the notes on the Pre - just look at them. The software will supposedly let you do that at some later date, but for now, it's read only.
C'mon Palm - get it together. This is a CORE program that is key to making your products useful.
You can use Yahoo Notepad for notes....Just use the Pre browser to sign on to your yahoo email and go to the Notepad tab....once you set up your notes on Yahoo notepad you can access them from any computer anytime and of course from the Pre!...also yahoo notes sync with Outlook and Palm Desktop and Blackberry Desktop...
I exported all my old Blackberry memos to Yahoo Notepad now I can access them on my Pre!...cool!
Well, there are plenty of web apps that provide online notes. Google has one too (I'm a little surprised the Pre's notes app doesn't sync to it, but I guess Google stopped working on it earlier this year.)
But the Pre is slow enough at starting apps, like most smartphones, that I think bringing up the browser and navigating to a bookmark and possibly logging in would be way, way too cumbersome for the kinds of things I've been using Pre memos for.
Well, some smartphones, like Pre have the ability to make a bookmark launchable like any app, from a launcher. So this saves you the time of opening the browser and opening the bookmark and from what I've experienced, granted on a Palm emulator (so somebody with a Pre should confirm this), Pre will automatically save your cookies and you will be logged in unless you have logged out before.
But it's no way a solution because you need network access for it to work and I expect my note taking app to work at absolutely all times.
I think too many people struggle to make their prē work *just like* their old Treo (or whatever PalmOS device). This is a new device, a new OS, explore doing things differently.
I've begun moving my (still relevant) old notes to Evernote, and so far this is working for me. This way I can create notes on my PC (read: with a full size keyboard) and have them available on my prē to edit, etc.
Yeah, people are usually afraid of changes, and I would really like a Pre but my fear is obvious since note taking on my Treo is, I'd say even more important than making/receiving calls. And we all know how a working phone is important on a smartPHONE... ;)
I'd also think that people just don't wish to go backwards in terms of usability. Nobody with a Treo thought listing or categorizing memos would actually be a well received feature compared to a newer device. What hurts most is that device is from Palm, known for it's most usable PIM.
Good evening!
Like the responder that uses contacts, I use contacts also. However, I do not use notes as the name. I use the descriptive title, such as project name and date, or shopping list, or movies to see or buy, etc. It works great for passwords and such because for example if you need password for a bank, just enter the name of the bank plus you may want the phone number, url, etc.
By using contacts over memo allows more search options. Really try it, you will like it. Think of the contacts not as contacts but as topics. Not to be cold, but a contact is also a topic. So your topics would be something like John Doe or Windows 7 upgrade or Sugar Cookies receipe. You can not search on memos.
raindog469 -
I have connected to my pre and ssh, however when I run those commands it says there is not such table in that database file.
Does anyone have an update to a working function to be able to retrieve memos off of the Palm Pre? I don't need to add memos, I need to be able to get them off of my Pre onto my laptop.
Thank you for your help!
No graffiti, no complete sync with Mac Palm Desktop? Palm Pre? No thanks.
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