Good evening and thx in advance for all help.

I have sought advice from my mobile provider (TMobile - using the dash
phone) and was told by their 3rd level engineers to ask the Outlook experts.

I am using Office 2003 SP 2. I am currently using Vista Home Premium with
Mobile Device Center but have experienced the same issue since XP Pro SP 2
with Activesync 4.5 and earlier.

I have no duplicate birthdays or anniversaries for my contacts in Outlook.
However when I sync to my cell phone and look at the Calendar on my cell,
several (but far from all) of these recurring birthdays and anniversaries
appear as "John Doe's Birthday/Anniversary (1)." Some say 2, 3, or 4 in the
().

I imagine that the () is due to a duplicate entry at some point, just as if
you tried to copy a file with the same name to the same folder and it would
append a (1) to the end of the file name.

Question is why can I not see this in Outlook on my PC? In Outlook,
everything appears spot on. I have had duplicate entries in the past for one
reason or another but I have long eliminated these. I have also tried
deleting the birthday or anniversary from the Outlook Calendar (deleting the
series) and separately tried deleting it through the Activities Tab in the
Contact itself. Then I go back to the respective fields in the contact and
re-add the dates I need. I think this has resulted in the further
appendages, ie. (2), (3), (4). There are also many of my contacts birthdays
and anniversaries that read correctly on the calendar on my cell, but I
cannot discern a reason, as I know I have tried to force a (1) etc. on
certain contacts unsuccessfully.

It is more annoying than anything to not have consistency in the calendar
view on my cell phone. I am sorry for the long post and if I need to further
clarify any part of this issue please let me know and I will do so.

I have searched far and wide for a solution or even just a clue to no avail.
MVPs please shed some light for me.

Thanks for all you do.