Synchronizing

• Synchronizing the databases of WinCE is a bit of a black art. Do the wrong thing, and you can end up with long lists of duplicate entries in all of them. To the best of our knowledge, it is impossible to restore the databases to exactly their synchronized condition. Each item in each database has an ID number, which is assigned when it's put in the database. These numbers can not be specified; they're assigned by the operating system. Unfortunately, it's these numbers that WinCE looks at when it's deciding how much has changed since the last synch.
• This doesn't make the situation hopeless, but it does make it inelegant. Under normal circumstances, after a hard reset on the PPC and a Restore, ActiveSync Status (in Tools / Mobile Devices) will show each database with something like "339 deletes, 339 changes". The synchronization process will then delete the entries that are currently on the desktop machine, and replace them with the entries on the PPC. If the BackUp and Restore processes went properly, then this is not a damaging operation, but it is disconcerting.
• There is another way of getting things back together, so that the entries are deleted from the PPC, and copied back from the desktop. See Zap Help for details.