I have an O2 xda Orbit since Sept2007 (German edition) with Windows Mobile 6 Professional, CE OS 5.2.1238 (Build 17745.0.2.3).  The mic has just packed up (screen + touch-input still work fine) so it will have to go for repair.  I have collected about 200 persons inthe phone's Contacts list which I use to make phone calls and send SMS (but not for E-mails), some are on the SIM card and some in (mobile) Outlook.  My phone's Calendar also has accumulated quite a lot of entries.  I want to back up Contacts + Calendar before sending the phone for repair, so I took the CD and installed  ActivSync and Outlook 2007 (60-day trial) on my laptop PC (Win XP SP2).  I did not define E-Mail accounts in Outlook as I don't intend to use it for E-mail (nor the phone for E-mail either).  I started (PC) Outlook (no login dialogue appears)  and selected the Contacts tab (empty of course). I started (PC) Active Synch which I configured to synchronise Contacts and Calendar. I connected the phone via the USB cable.  and ActiveSync showed "synchronising" for quite a long time (maybe 10 mins... I left it to get on with it).  At the end of that the PC Outlook "Contacts" list still showed empty.  The contacts list on the phone appeared unscathed (thank goodness...).  I tried creating a new contact in Outlook (PC) and the new contact appeared there.  ActiveSync showed brief activity and the new contact had been added to the phone.  I tried creating a new contact on the phone; it appeared in the phone Contacts list, there was a brief ActiveSync activity and the new contact was added to the list in Outlook(PC).  So now my PC Contacts list has just two (test) entries.

Q1.  I don't understand where the Contact list (and Calendar) from my phone, which I synchronised first, has been put (if at all) on the laptop PC. Could the problem have something to do with the fact that no E-Mail accounts were defined for Outlook ?
I think that after the initial ActiveSync attempt, I changed an option of ActiveSync to select "in case of conflict, preserve what is on the phone" (or something like that), before I tried syncing again (several times), but these attempts just show "synchronising" for a few seconds, with no apparent change at the end of it.

Q2.  I don't really feel like spending upwards of EUR100 to purchase MS Outlook when the 60-day trial expires, just for backing up my phone's Contacts list and Calendar.  I tried to see if I could simply copy these files to the PC, but I could find no named files or folders on the phone filetree (using File Explorer or ActiveSync's "Search phone" ) which looked like candidates to hold the information.  Does anyone know of a cheap or free alternative to using ActiveSync with Outlook 2007, to back up the phone's Contacts and Calendar, and which does not require intimate knowledge of the phone's Outlook application to know where these data files are ?   Alternatively, will ActiveSync work with Outlook Express, which is already installed on my laptop (I have never tried to use it)

Any help will be much appreciated.