I have had my iPhone 4 for almost a year now and I heavily rely on it for keeping my appointments and contact details. Now that I have an iPad 2, needless to say, I want to use the iPad for keeping up with my appointments and having my contacts on it as well.

From what I have read, MobileMe seems to be able to keep the information in sync but I don't have that and don't want to pay for it if there was a different way of doing it. Also, I don't it to have the same info on both devices. I just want to transfer what I have now on my phone to my iPad and any subsequent new dates or changes I will make it on the iPad alone.

Thanks in advance.

Another possibility is to use a third-party app on both devices and synch between them.


I looked at several apps for this and, in the end, chose Pocket Informant HD.

I read that Pocket Informant was buggy but, in my (admittedly) limited experience, I’ve found no problems at all. It has a very nice user interface that's almost infinitely configurable - a complaint that many Forum members make about the iPad’s native ‘Calendar’ app. So you can choose how tasks, events, projects, appointments are colour coded and there is a wide choice of notifications and alarms - so, for example, you can have different alarm sounds for different categories of notifications.

Pocket Informant ‘sits on top’ of the iPad's native ‘Calendar’ app and (optionally) imports all entries that it finds there. They can be colour coded so they can be distinguished from entries made in Pocket Informant itself.

This is important because many other iPad apps use the native ‘Calendar’ app as the default place to put events, invitations etc. So, for example, if you are invited to a meeting by email and you receive that invitation in the iPad’s native ‘Mail’ app, that app can automatically (and quite cleverly) insert that invitation into the default calendar app. Without that integration between the native app and Pocket Informant, you'd have to enter those invitations all over again.

Pocket Informant has lots of ‘hidden’ features too. One of the reviewers remarked that part of the ‘fun’ of using Pocket Informant was discovering them!! The display is infinitely configurable - day, week, month, year at a time. Tasks, events, overdue tasks, projects, projects in progress etc etc all can be optionally displayed on the main calendar. Projects and tasks can have infinitely nested sub-tasks and projects - these can cleverly be integrated with GPS - so, say you needed to purchase some goods from the hardware store. Put that in a To-Do list and link it to the location of the hardware store using the iPad’s native ‘Maps’ app. Next time you’re driving past the hardware store, up pops the notification (‘Remember to purchase some 2”x4” timber’).

Repeating events are very flexible too, with the ‘custom’ mode being infinitely (I keep using that word!) configurable. So, meetings that occur on the last Thursday and first Monday of every other month - no problem.

It can sync with external calendars - Google for example - and back-up is cool, it creates a backup file that you can email to yourself for safe keeping. If you lose your iPad or all your data is corrupted, that backup can be imported back into Pocket Informant with a single click.

You can create multiple diaries within Pocket Informant - say ‘Work’, ‘Family’, ‘Golf Club’ etc and have their entries optionally displayed on the main screen or restricted to the display of the individual diary. So it’s easy to check if there’s a clash between the golf tournament and your wife's birthday - and hide it if there is......

If you surf to the developer’s web-site, you can download for free a very comprehensive User Manual that will show you in detail what Pocket Informant can do.

The developers are constantly updating the program - always a good sign in my view.

As I said at the beginning, perhaps I'm not a particularly demanding user, but I’ve had no stability problems at all. I should add the usual disclaimer that I have no contact or other relationship with the developers of Pocket Informant other than being a very satisfied customer.

Tim
Scotland

Use a email provider that allows you to setup exchange accounts, like Gmail, Hotmail.

Setup the exchange account on both your Iphone and ipad and everything will sync between them ota. For free as well.

Thank you guys for your reply. I will certainly look into both options.

I synch my iPad with my google calendar. But so drying weird has happened. Google and iPad are in GMT +6 time zone, but the iPad calendar seems to put all the appts in GMT, i.e. 6 hrs too early. Kinda defeats the alerts system! Any suggestions for how to fix?

Originally Posted by annbg

I synch my iPad with my google calendar. But so drying weird has happened. Google and iPad are in GMT +6 time zone, but the iPad calendar seems to put all the appts in GMT, i.e. 6 hrs too early. Kinda defeats the alerts system! Any suggestions for how to fix?

'Settings', 'Mail, Contacts, Calendar', 'Time Zone Support'.

It's the way the iPad allows you to be away from the office - in another time zone - but stay synchronised with your home office time zone. You can either set it manually or let the iPad detect the time zone you're in and adjust it automatically. It's actually rather clever because it automatically adjusts appointments to the new time zone. So, if you were in the UK, where I am, and your company arranged a conference for 1700 local time and then you flew to California, it would automatically adjust that time in your calendar and any reminder alarms to 0900 local time - which is 1700 in the UK. Of course, you can disable this if you want to.

Tim