Plaxo's hidden gem...

I signed up for Plaxo a while back, thinking it'd be cool to have a "professional" email signature. That was a good marketing trick because I could have created the same professional looking business card signature without Plaxo. But they packaged it up and gave it away. So there I my in.

Then the next feature I knew about - and the one I thought was their core draw - was getting these updates so you're always up-to-date with your friends' contact info. Except that's proven to be of minor value. Most friends are not on it, and every time I update my contact info I fear it sends everyone an alert. That's fine if I really did move or change jobs. But it does it when I merely change a fax number or add an icon.

But recently I figured out the money feature. Don't tell them, but I'd actually pay (some small amount) for this feature: syncing Outlook between 2 computers. Now they don't shout about this feature from the hilltops, nor do they have any decent documentation on it, but I don't know why.

Doesn't everyone nowadays have a work computer and a home computer? And furthermore, doesn't everyone have a Palm, PocketPC, Treo, Blackberry, or whatever? And how in the world do people keep all their calendar items and contacts in synch?

So enter Plaxo. You can still use Outlook on both machines, and you can use Plaxo Online if you wish. And you can synch them together. But how?

The secret is this... If you already have different address books (or calendars) on each computer, when you try to synch it, it will create separate folders and both machines. You'll never be able to combine them. Some people might want to keep their work calendar and home calendar separate. I can see the value in that, except that when in comes to syncing everything with your handheld device, if you're using a PocketPC with ActiveSync like I am, it's only going to let you sync with the main Outlook folders, now the secondary folders that Plaxo creates. [If I'm wrong on this, please email and tell me how to do that.] Even so I think there are many benefits to just using one folder for all the computers, albeit with Categories in case you do need to view just one type (work or personal).

So what you need to do is on one machine, copy your folder to some other renamed folder. Then delete all the contents of that main folder. Now it is a completely "empty" folder. Now when you sync it with Plaxo, it will really sync - not create a second folder. So it'll download all the items from the folder on the second computer. Now that you've got that worked out, you need to drag and drop all the events or contacts from the duplicate folder you moved into the main folder. Sync again, then sync on the second computer, and you're all done.