Synchronization of certain contact categories
 

Is there a way to accomplish this? I have more than 500 contacts, over half of which I'm not contacting on a regular basis. I feel all the extra contacts are just taking unnecessary space and competing with the other ones when I come to use voice command. I can't for the life of me figure out how to filter certain contact categories through outlook 2007 so not all are synced. Anyone know a workaround?

Thanks

Suggestion: In Outlook, create a folder for all those contacts you don't want on your phone; call it something like Unsync Contacts; then click and drag all the ones you don't want from the Contacts folder to the "Unsync Contacts" folder. When you connect up the phone, only the people in the "Contacts" folder will be synchronized, and all the others will be removed from the phone.

This has nothing to do with categories and might have some unintended consequences in Outlook. (Just like Activesync, some of the Outlook search functions look only in the Contacts folder by default, ignoring the other folders unless you take positive steps to look in them. Outlook address book might be similarly affected.) (BTW, I used Outlook 2007 for no more than I month before getting fed up and returning to 2003; it's much better for how I work.)

Edit: 500 contacts really does seem minimal. I have over 1000 contacts synced to the phone, and the lags for contact lookups are fractions of a second (once pocket outlook is open, that is).

thanks..actually this method works. As far as searching is concerned, there's an option through the indexing to maintain search options. There's also this non-indexing search option to search within 'all contacts'. But, honestly, ever since I've started upgrading from XP to Vista, Office 2003 to 2007 I've at many times felt like I'm downgrading. Why is it they have all the features in the world but the simple important ones are overlooked? I still wish I could just do it through categories, but it's all good. Problem solved.

Yes, but I have many contacts whose names sound alike. Sometimes I forget people's last names and so I only call them up by first names. Sometimes the extra contacts will get called instead. So I thought, why not just get rid of a few so voice dialing is easier.

Outlook 2007 is a definite downgrade. Its merging of follow-up flags and categories was an absolute deal-killer for me, All the categories you might have developed over multiple generations of Outlook to manage contacts, tasks, life in general - now replaced by a few color codes. Although I don't use Pocket Informant anymore, I would think the development folks at WebIS would be pretty upset. Categories were one thing that PI managed very well.