Outlook Contacts and Truncated Notes

I recently came across a situation where half of the notes in an Outlook contact had disappeared and replaced with a message that the notes were truncated. Come to find out, this happens quite often. Why does this happen? It's because of your cell phone.

If you have a cell phone that synchronizes with Microsoft Exchange email server, then you know that not only can you pull your email to your phone, but also your contacts, calendar and notes. You are also aware that if you make a change on your phone that Exchange is updated the next time your phone syncs.

So here's what happens: Let's say you need to visit your client, and you have his information stored as a contact in your Outlook. You need to get directions to his business and figure that there's no better place to put the directions than in the notes section of his contact info. Makes sense, right? What you didn't plan on was the amount of turns, landmarks and forks in the road you were going to have to keep track of. Now your directions read more like a novel.

When your phone syncs with exchange, it is programmed to only accept a certain amount of the data in the notes section. This way, it won't eat up all the phone's storage space. The phone will download the notes until it hits a certain amount of data, then replace the rest with a message that the data has been truncated (stopped because it has reached its limit).

On your phone, the note for that contact says "...turn right at the dead cow carcass, go down the one lane road for a mule's kick. If you past Billy Bob's bird fee... [message has been truncated]" If you're like me, your first thought would be to sync again in hopes the rest of the message will appear. Don't do it! Actually, if that note is that important, turn off the sync. Actually, take out the battery. What's going to happen is that the exact note on your phone is going to replace the note in Exchange, truncated and all.

So what if this has already happened? What can you do? Nothing. If you have a good backup system, your only hope is that it does a good job of backing up Exchange servers and you can restore that contact. There is a way to "hack" the phone and force it to allow larger contact files, but let's save that for another discussion.

Thanks for reading.

Thomas Johnsen - CCNA, MCSE+Security, MCDST, A+, Net+, Security+
Lead Engineer
Networthy Systems
7060 Phelan Blvd. Ste. 104
Beaumont, Texas 77706
(409) 861-4450
http://www.networthysystems.com