Mobile Favorites not downloading for offline viewing

helicopterpilot · #1 (**permalink**) 03-04-2006, 03:43 AM

X50v, Windows Mobile 2003 SE, 256MB CF.

Help! I'm not using a schedule; just manually synching. I HAVE FOLLOWED ALL THE "HELP" DIRECTIONS. My mobile favorites just act like favorite links (some are greyed out, although all are marked on my PC for offline viewing) instead of having the content downloaded on my Ax. It tries to connect to the internet when I tap on a link. Some come up though, only because I have viewed them while actually online, so they're cached. I have followed the directions in PIEs Help verbatim on "Synchronize a mobile favorite".

Anyone know if this is a known problem? I've seen other people's postings elsewhere with the SAME/similar problem, but no answers/solutions to MY situation. Any suggestions (other than "make sure the make available offline box is checked")

Mahstah · #2 (**permalink**) 03-04-2006, 02:22 PM

If you want to view webpages offline, you could save them as html files either on your desktop and transfer them, or using Pocket Plus options on the PPC. After the html file is on your PPC, open it and add it to your favorites to view it offline from your favorites menu.

Although the option is not available on my PPC (Pocket Plus may have overwritten the File menu with its own Pocket Plus menu), Microsoft's site says that you can save webpages from Pocket IE with File-->Save As for offline viewing.

l0l · #3 (**permalink**) 03-04-2006, 02:27 PM

In IE6 "Make available offline" as well as "Sychronize from Tools", & created in Mobile Favorites, means the page (html) will be saved for offline reading only in IE6. The "synchronize" refers to sync (page for offline use) within IE6. When you're offline, you can return to browse the page in IE6 because the page (html file) has been saved. This is the same effect as "File/Save As/Web page only".

In your Axim, when you "Add to Favorites", a web page is created in "Mobile Favorites" (or sub-folders). You can view this page offline using PIE, or browse (File Explorer) to "\Windows\Favorites\FolderName". When you sync, IE6 will combine the URL from your PIE; emphasis on URL.

In other words, the IE6 has combined "URL and HTML'' in the Mobile Favorites folder.

In IE6, when you tab on a link, those mark as offline FROM IE6 will be displayed as web page. When you tab on the link that were sync from Axim's PIE, you'll be link to an URL ... tries to connect to the internet.

The reverse holds true when you are viewing offline in PIE (Axim):
1. A page mark from IE6 will sync as URL.
2. A page mark from PIE is a web page.

You can view IE6 web page in PIE when offline, when you "File/Save as/ ..html only" and save it to "YourName My Document" folder. When you sync through ActiveSync, it will open as a web page ... which hopefully is what you want to do.

winikmatt · #4 (**permalink**) 03-16-2006, 10:07 PM

I have the X51v and i can't view offline web pages either. This has been extremely frustrating for me and I was hoping to be able to do this when i bought my handheld. I have read a couple of different threads regarding this, does anyone know if Dell knows or is working on it? As far as i know, the Axim is the only handheld with this issue. Does anyone else have Wi-Fi companion on their axim? Maybe we can find a common denominator causing the problem.

allenonline2 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-28-2006, 11:22 PM

I have the axim 50 (nothing fancy) and wasn't able to use the sync option effectively at all when I Had win mobil 5 and xp on desktop. I thought that it was worthless because if you can't automatically update the web pages what good is it. I wanted to set it up so that all my favorite text based websites, including weather forecasts, would update every single day in the morning before i go to work so that when i have a break, my pda has all the latest info on it; but instead, had to use avantgo (which stinks) and setup their little channels deal. When I downgraded to win Mobile 2003 (which is the best thing I ever did) and win 98se and active sync 3.7 IT WOULD SYNC *ALL* OFFLINE WEBPAGE FAVORITES ON EVERY CONNECTION. It was awesome. Now when I got a new laptop and (unfortunately) have to use XP, I went back to active sync 4.1 but now it won't sync the offline favorites

. Why did they give up on that? It worked great the old way!!! Just venting.

I hope someone will come up with a workaround soon. Please email me if you do: allenonline2 (at) coxville (dot) com. I would greatly appriciate it.

allenonline2 · #6 (**permalink**) 05-29-2006, 05:35 PM

I found the trick! (at least in my situation). As I've said in another forum. I was able to use the offline website content effectivly when i was running win 98se on my desktop w/ as 3.8 (the latest supported by win98se). XP w/ as 4.1 just doesn't cut it. So i uninstalled as 4.1 and installed as 3.8 and set up all of my offline content (including 1-2 links deep material) and now I'm happily browsing sync offline content multiple links deep on 5-10 different sites on my PDA!

Windows XP, AS 3.8, Mobile 2003 -- Try it and see how it works for you (don't know what they messed up in AS 4.1)

my email is allenonline2 (at) coxville (dot) com

helicopterpilot · #7 (**permalink**) 07-05-2006, 05:56 PM

I still haven't found a solution because I got so frustrated

with not being able to do something so basic like browsing offline. I'm back at it again and I will try installing AS 3.8. I am running W2K Pro and AS 4.1 currently which doesn't work!!! Reply shortly (hopefully).

helicopterpilot · #8 (**permalink**) 07-10-2006, 08:27 PM

No, that didn't work either... same old story with 3.1. Maybe I'll reset. BTW, I have resorted to the work-around method of trying to do something that's SUPPOSED to be a feature of this thing... Mahstah's manual offline content trick as described above works; but I still think that for the money we all paid DELL for these things, they should work as described.

StaticBoy · #9 (**permalink**) 10-05-2006, 11:08 AM

I've only had my Dell Axim X50v with 1GB CompactFlash for a couple of weeks. The first thing I did was download ActiveSync 4.2 from Microsoft, which is the only version they offer. Everything worked OK until I started wondering about being able to view pages offline and having them updated whilst connected to my desktop.

I followed the instructions in Pocket Internet Explorer, which was tricky as things have changed slightly between IE5 and IE6. Still, I thought I worked it out, but no synchronisation of offline files. I didn't fancy the work-around descibed above of synchronising saved versions of the pages as it would be a manual process to update them.

Then I found this thread and downgraded from ActiveSync 4.2 to ActiveSync 3.8 and... viola! Synchronised offline files! I can set a schedule on the desktop to retrieve updates to the pages as required and everytime I plug my Axim into it's cradle they get copied over.

Once small thing I did notice was that after switching to ActiveSync 3.8 the icons in Pocket IE for those favourites marked as "Available Offline" in IE6 have a small blue arrow in the lower left-hand corner, much like the arror overlay for a shortcut icon. This wasn't present when trying to do this using ActiveSync 4.2. I wonder what Microsoft have done?

Just to confirm: I'm using WinXP + ActiveSync 3.8 + Dell Axim X50v and have successful offline Mobile Favorites synchronisation.