The Bull Og

Offline since 1976. Online since 1994.

Tip on Using PlanPlus in Outlook

I installed PlanPlus (v4.0) several months ago and have been fighting with it ever since. The problem has been when I tried to sync tasks. I kept getting... 
OK Outlook Tasks
HR[8000FFFF] Catastrophic failure
OK FranklinCovey PlanPlus for Outlook TaskList Conduit
Conduit 'FC Task List' Error: Unknown error. (65535)
I went back and forth with Franklin Covey and their support was good but in the end, it looks like there were some characters in the fields of a task or some tasks (don't ask me which) which were problematic. The workaround? WARNING/DISCLAIMER: I am about to suggest deleting all of your tasks (with a way to get them back of course.) I provide the advice below as-is with no warranty. So here's what you do...
  1. Export all of your tasks from Outlook into an Excel file
  2. Now (right now!) make a copy of that Excel file and put it somewhere safe
  3. Delete all of your tasks from the tasks folder in Outlook
  4. In the export, check the tasks one-by-one (pay special attention to the "Notes" field1) to see if you see anything suspicious which you delete and then...
  5. Import the tasks from the Excel file back into Outlook
If anything goes wrong, you can always import the backup of the Excel file (step 2!) back into Outlook.