Methods and systems for managing To do items and/or notes and/or emails (or other electronic messages) are described. A record, such as a To do item, in a database maintained locally by the data processing system is encoded into metadata. The metadata is sent as a false email message by an email client application executing on the data processing system to a remote email message server. An email client application executing on a remote processing system accesses the email message server and receives the false email message containing the metadata. The remote client application then either converts the metadata back into a database record editable at the remote processing system or presents a non-editable view of the database record, for example as an incoming email message.