METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENABLING SYNCHRONIZING DATA IN DIFFERENT DEVICES HAVING DIFFERENT CAPABILITIES AND UNMATCHED DATA FIELDS

A method and apparatus by which a user of two or more client devices (10 11) each hosting a data store (10c 11c) can have the data stores kept synchronized by a server (12) (in some cases operated as a synchronizing service) in a way acceptable to the user even though at least one of the two data stores (10c) includes a data component (such as a field of a record) that is not in the other data store (11c) (or for which a correspondence from the one data store (10c) to the other data store (11c) in respect to the data component has not yet been set, including possibly a null correspondence). Any such so-called problem field is monitored by a sync field scanner (12g) usually hosted by the server, which alerts the user that a data component is a problem field only when the user first provides a value for the data component. The invention provides that, if possible, the sync field scanner (12g) automatically suggests to the user how to accommodate the problem field that occurs in one data store (10c) but not in the data store (11c).