Using a Briefcase to sync Nokia E61i files with a PC
I wondered for a long time how to keep files on my PC and Mobile synced. This would let me use a lot of software on my Nokia E61i phone, that I hadn't used before.
I have been using my Nokia E61i for a couple of months, and it's truly a great phone. Great blackberry-capabilities, wonderful webbrowser, a great inbuilt memo-recorder. But that's just the tip of the iceberg of what this machine offers. Unfortunately the rest of the functions on the phone are not exactly plug and play. Most of them are really confusing. I think symbian 60 has a huge cognitive friction hurdle for new users to overcome.
The tools I wanted to start using was:
- Quickoffice - A lightweight Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I wanted to have documents I was currently working on synced between my PC and my Mobile, so I could edit them everywhere.
- Music Player - for music and podcasts. I have an Ipod, but I wanted to have a couple of podcasts with me on the phone and only have music on my Ipod.
The Nokia PC Suite program, that handles the connection between your phone and PC only offers an explorer-like filebrowser that lets you drag and drop files from file folders on the phone and the PC. This is tedious work, especially since the interface is really laggy due to slow response from the phone.
I wanted to be able to change a file, and have it altered automatically on the other device. If I deleted a file on the phone, say a podcast I had listened, I wanted it to disappear from my PC as well.
The spark that got me started was reading this blogpost by a Swedish S60 blogger. In the article he explains how to make your phone work as a USB-drive and autocopy files with a simple bat-file. You just have to choose "data transfer" instead of "PC Suite" when you plug your USB-cable into your phone. This makes the memory-card in your phone accessible to your computer, typically as the E: drive.
And then it hit me! If I could read my mobile phone like a normal drive, I could just use the simple "My Briefcase" in windows to keep my files updatet.
By right-clicking on the desktop on your PC, you can make a new briefcase. Then drag and drop the filefolders from your Nokia memory card (visible in your explorer as E:).
For my Quickoffice I chose the "Documents" folder and dragged it into the briefcase. For the musicplayer I dragged the sounds folder into it (the musicfiles are in a subfolder called digital)
So now when the phone is connected in data transfer mode, and I open my briefcase on the desktop, I can sync the two devices. Files start zooming back and forth, and then boom: I have the latest versions of all files on both devices.
I'm really happy with solution. It doesn't require extra software. And it works.
Now I can just dump ebooks, podcasts and todo-lists in the briefcase, and sync the devices.
Hope you'll find this useful. Comments are welcome.
- Jens Poder
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I thought about using that solution for my N95, but didn't want to have to think about the manual side of "attaching and syncing". Instead I have switched from the Nseries version of PC Suite back to the original PC Suite which allows you to have a directory called Briefcase under "My Documents" and synchronises that every time I walk in the door at home.
This solution works much better for me and works well over bluetooth. I do find though after a copy of weeks that the files are deleted from my phone and are moved on my computer to a directory called "deleted files" under the briefcase. I have been to mean to pay for the full copy of Quick Office, so I just use it to view my documents at the moment.
Beware of the Nokia Video Manager if you are using Vista though. I removes the default program settings from the registry – I have to re-install everything to sort out my machine.
Marc