Syncing Treo 680 with Mac PIMs (using Missing Sync)

Question

Thanks to Michael Lafferty's excellent advice, I was ready to start syncing my Treo 680 with Mac's PIMs using Missing Sync. However, after extensive research and asking questions on five different forums, I'm getting conflicting advice. H
Here's my Treo PIMs situation:
Calendar 802K (6378 events/12 categories)
Contacts 1285K (2306/13)
Memos 184K (52/14)
Tasks 79K (250/10)
Here are the issues that I have received conflicting answers about:
1. I have 9 custom fields on my Treo with a lot of information in them. These are critical fields to me. It took me many days to pull this info out of my Contacts notes and enter in these 9 custom fields for 2306 contacts. Is it true that I cannot sync these 9 customs fields with Mac's Address Book? I've been told many times that this won't happen. If it can be done, will changes that I make in data entries for these fields in the Mac Address Book sync properly and be reflected on my Treo.
2. Can the conduits be set to "handheld overwrites Mac"? I've been told that it cannot. This and #1 are deal killers for me.
3. I have seven phone fields on my Treo. They are in this exact order:
work (1701 entries)
home (209)
Fax (291)
email (201)
mobile (201)
pager (31)
main (145)
Will I be able to successfully sync these with Mac's Address Book? If not, is there any reason that I couldn't take whatever fields won't sync and move them to some of the Treo 9 custom fields? The last question is moot if custom fields are not supported.
4. I average about 12 categories for each of my 4 PIMs. Do these all sync over correctly to the Mac PIMs?
5. I also have Treo notes attached to many, if not most, of my Contacts, Calendar events and Tasks. Will these all sync properly with the Mac PIMs such that I can make changes on either side of the equation and have them reflected after syncing on the other side?
6. Are there any other limitations in my ability to faithfully be able to recreate my 4 Treo 680 PIMs accurately and completely in the Mac PIMs?
I realize that any reference to non-Address Book PIMs is off-target. I hope you'll excuse me dumping the other three PIMs into the mix. My primary concern is Treo Contacts/Mac Address Book.
MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   Treo 680 (DateBk6)

Answer 1

Q: I have 9 custom fields on my Treo with a lot of information in them…
A: The Missing Sync does not synchronize custom Address Book fields between a Palm device and your Address Book application, but will not remove those fields from the Palm if the conduits are set to synchronize. If your conduit is set to the nonstandard Overwrite handheld with desktop data, the custom fields will be overwritten. I point this out because it is, at times, necessary to make a choice like this, and as a result: its bye-bye custom field data!
The Missing Sync cannot perform custom field synchronization because the Sync Services framework does not allow The Missing Sync to create new fields in Address Book to match your Palm custom fields.
Q: Can… conduits be set to handheld overwrites [desktop]?
A: No, because again, the framework does not support this specific type of bidirectional data transfer.
Q: I have seven phone fields on my Treo…
A: This is an issue primarily with the manner in which a Palm device handles such information. Though they are displayed in a particular manner on your device, they are not necessarily stored in a specific order by the Palm contact application, and can only be retrieved when labeled with an expected or 'accepted' field label. This issue gets complicated quickly, but in short…
• only the first seven phone numbers sent to your device by the framework are written to the device
• the order is not something that can be controlled by a developer, and it is not necessarily the order displayed in either the Address Book contact record on your Palm device
• the Palm contact application does not distinguish between phone number and electronic mail address, though Mark/Space parses the data to look for the @ character—and, finding it—handles it as an electronic mail address
• only one of the several IM addresses you maintain in an Address Book contact record is transfered, and only one URL is transfered
• Palm categories are mapped to equivalent Address Book groups
As to synchronizing additional data to Palm custom fields, that's not supported. The place to put such data is in the Note: or Notes: field.
Q: I average about 12 categories…
A: As I suggested above, category and group equivalents are recognized and synchronized. Be sure that you name the ones you intend to synchronize identically in both environments.
Q: I also have Treo notes attached…
A: Again, these should synchronize bidirectionally, without issue.
Q: Are there any other limitations in my ability to faithfully be able to recreate…
A: Oh, yeah: because the data field labels and contents do not map 1:1, it is nearly impossible to create identical records in both environments. Look for the common abilities…
• a maximum of seven telephone numbers and electronic mail addresses
• a single IM identifier
• a single URL
…and work within those bounds. You can generally store and synchronize any additional identifiers in a Note: or Notes: record, but this is clearly less flexible and potentially more problematic than storing them in matching fields.
You briefly mentioned the other PIMs on your Palm device, and their OS X rough equivalents. Those controlled by Mark/Space OS X bundled applications will not be an issue: memos, for example. Their are Palm OS quirks which result in inequalities. The most obvious of these is the iCal multiple day event which spans two or more days in iCal, but which is represented on a Palm as only a single day event, displayed on the first day alone.