Problem syncing MS Outlook 2010 Calendar& Contacts to WP8

[kirbybaker#WN]

So my wife and I just got new WP8's this past weekend, and I was trying to setup her work phone (8X on Verizon) to get emails/calendar/contacts. She uses MS Office 2010, with Outlook, WITHOUT an exchange server. I believe her laptop is set up to IMAP the mail from a remote mail server. So I set her phone up with an IMAP connection to the remote mail server, worked fine.

The issues came with contacts and calendar. For Contacts, I simply exported a CSV and imported them into her outlook.com account. Works fine, but any changes that take place on the laptop/MS Outlook will not push to outlook.com or the phone. Not such a big deal, as we could just to the export/import dance whenever she changes contacts, or setup the contact in both MS Outlook and Outlook.com. Is there a better solution?

As for calendar, this is the real P.I.T.A. Tried using MS Office connector tool, that wouldnt sync calendars. Tried to publish her calendar privately (invite only) to office.com, but outlook.com refused to subscribe to it saying that it was private (even though her outlook.com address was on the approved list, and I used the proper ICS link). So I removed the calendar share, and re-shared it as public, and set the Detail Level to "Full" but when it was subscribed to at outlook.com, every calendar event was "Busy". So that was a waste of time. I finally got the calendar onto her phone/outlook.com account by using google calendar sync and an old gmail account of hers that she didnt use anymore. But I dont like the solution, but is this the best option for their current setup?

Ultimately I would like to see them move their email from their current site to Office365 (exchange online plan) which I think would solve everything.

But in the meantime, are there better solutions out there (free)? Appreciate any assistance.

 

[tk-093]

So does her local calendar just exist on her local outlook? It doesn't sync anywhere normally?

 

[kirbybaker#WN]

Correct, only exists in her MS Outlook, or did until I installed google sync.

 

[tk-093]

Outlook Connector is supposed to be able to sync the calender, but I wonder if you need to first export the local calender and import it into her Live account then it will sync back down to Outlook.

 

[kirbybaker#WN]

Ill give it a shot tonight. Thanks.

 

[gapost]

Outlook connector sets up a separate calendar in Outlook (mapi). Have one Outlook calendar, you can copy it to the Hotmail/Outlook.com calendar in your folders. Then start using that calendar as your default in Outlook. Same thing with contacts. You can copy them to the Hotmail/Outlook.com contacts created by Outlook Connector and use that as your default and it should sync to your Outlook.com contacts automatically.

Personally, because I have multiple calendars and a business contact group, I use Sync2 to sync things to google then to my phone. If I only had one calendar and one contact list, I would use Outlook Connector.

 

[jwinch2]

First, you need to set up outlook with either a live/outlook/hotmail.com account and install the program below.

Microsoft Office Outlook Hotmail Connector overview - Outlook - Office.com

CALENDAR

Within outlook in your calendar tab, you should see multiple calendars now that you have them linked to your outlook.com account. It should look something like:

Birthday Calendar
Calendar (This is the calendar for your desktop outlook that you have been using)
Fred's Calendar (this is the calendar from outlook.com/hotmail.com/live.com)
US Holidays

You need to copy all of your information from the native outlook calendar (labeled "Calendar"), to the one designated for your .com calendar (Fred's Calendar). This can easily be done from within the desktop outlook client by clicking on calendar and then going to the "view" tab in the ribbon at the top of the screen. From there, select "change view", and then choose "list". Copy all of your appointments from the "Calendar" just like you would an excel spreadsheet and then paste them in "Your name Calendar", which should also be in the "list" view setting. Once that is done, you can change your view setting back to "calendar"

Then, from now on, un-check the box for the native desktop outlook (calendar) and check the one for the hotmail/live/outlook.com calendar (Fred's Calendar), and you are good to go. The old calendar will stay there, it will just be hidden from view. After that, just treat Fred's Calendar the same way you did your other calendar within outlook. Add all future new appointments to that calendar.

If you ever switch, just do the reverse and you will have all of your appointments back in the native desktop client calendar and can go from there.

This process should take less than 5 minutes and you will be good to go.

NOTE: It may take a couple of hours for all of your appointments to be synced between your desktop outlook, your live.com calendar, and your Windows Phone, particularly if you have many of them. Don't panic and don't think that something went wrong when appointments start showing up in your phone sporadically. Give it several hours to overnight to sync. I freaked out when I did this and thought it didn't work which caused me to have to go through the process again. Then the same thing happened and I just left it alone overnight and in the morning, everything was synced perfectly.

After that, it become a process of minutes when adding or deleting one or two appointments. Since my initial set up where I was trying to sync several years worth of appointments, I have had no problem at all and things sync very quickly.

CONTACTS

For contacts, it is very similar. Once you link your e-mail account (outlook, live, hotmail) to your desktop outlook client, under your contacts tab within outlook, you will see three choices (contacts within your personal folders, suggested contacts, and contacts for your e-mail address). Simply copy the ones from your personal folder over to the one for your e-mail address and then just use that one from there on in. That will sync with your live/hotmail/outlook.com account as well as your phone.

I have had zero issues with either the calendar or the contacts when using this method.

 

[kirbybaker#WN]

Thanks for the help, its all working now!

 

[jwinch2]

Thanks for the help, its all working now!

Good to hear!

 

[tk-093]

Sweet!

 

[kirbybaker#WN]

I guess I spoke too fast. My wife just sent me a message that her contacts are all wonky.. I think I know the cause. A fix though might be more tricky. She ended up getting 2 WP's, one personal, one work, because she wanted to keep the numbers separate. Reasonable desire. So I had to set her up with a 2nd Live account, as she already had a personal hotmail. Now I have not done anything with the new 'work' Live account in terms of linking it to her old hotmail account, but this morning, she told me that her outlook contacts now include her personal contacts. My guess is that this is because she has logged into her personal hotmail account on the same laptop as her work outlook and connector are installed. Would you agree? I dont know any other way for this to have happened. I did ask her if her 'people' listing on the phone now included her personal hotmail contacts, and as of yet they dont.

Just to clarify, it doesnt sound like she actually has personal contacts in her Outlook contacts, but rather when creating a new email, when she starts typing a name in the To: field, she is seeing both work and personal contacts show up. Thoughts?

 

[jwinch2]

I guess I spoke too fast. My wife just sent me a message that her contacts are all wonky.. I think I know the cause. A fix though might be more tricky. She ended up getting 2 WP's, one personal, one work, because she wanted to keep the numbers separate. Reasonable desire. So I had to set her up with a 2nd Live account, as she already had a personal hotmail. Now I have not done anything with the new 'work' Live account in terms of linking it to her old hotmail account, but this morning, she told me that her outlook contacts now include her personal contacts. My guess is that this is because she has logged into her personal hotmail account on the same laptop as her work outlook and connector are installed. Would you agree? I dont know any other way for this to have happened. I did ask her if her 'people' listing on the phone now included her personal hotmail contacts, and as of yet they dont.

Just to clarify, it doesnt sound like she actually has personal contacts in her Outlook contacts, but rather when creating a new email, when she starts typing a name in the To: field, she is seeing both work and personal contacts show up. Thoughts?

You should be able to use the same account on multiple devices. My initial suggestion is to have her use the account she likes best on both and see how that goes.

 

[Janda45]

Ok, I did as you said. Thank you for the step by step! Your details are better than MS! Nothing is showing up in my Calendar app yet but I'll wait overnight and hope it works.

I've added some contacts in Outlook that ARE showing up in People app now AND in Outlook.com. But I'm also showing people in my People app on the WP8 device that are NOT in Outlook or in Outlook.com. Very, very confusing and this just does not seem to be working well. But as I wrote, I'll wait overnight and see what happens.

 

[jwinch2]

Let it sit overnight and it should work out. It took several hours for things to populate properly when I first did this. Glad it helped.

 

[Janda45]

It wasn't working after about five hours and I then I turned off my normal calendar and clicked the calendar connected to Outlook.com. Instant sync to the Outlook.com and within minutes it synced with Lumia 1020. However, when I schedule items in my normal calendar they don't sync. I can only schedule in the Joel's calendar that I created with the connector. And with that I can't use reminders for some reason. I get a pop up saying I can't use reminders in a web based folder or some such thing. I don't know - I like my categories and Deja Office app better but I hate that I have to open it, then open the calendar and sometimes the alarms don't go off on it. The nice thing with native WP8 calendar is that it shows on my pinned screen things coming and my opening screen displays upcoming appointments to that Deja Office doesn't. Wish there was some way to combine Deja and WP8 functionality to get the best system. I'll give it some time and see how much more I can learn and improve upon my normal routines.

 

[Janda45]

I just ran a test from Outlook where I create appointments off of emails received. This is helpful when there is a lot of information in the email I can access from the appointment. When I create an appointment from the email it puts it in my default calendar not the Hotmail connected calendar. I sync both calendars and the appointments do not show up in the Hotmail connected calendar thus not in my phone either. A workaround is to have both calendars open and then copy the new appointment to the Hotmail connected calendar. I hate to have spent all this time figuring this out only to now want to switch it back to where I had it. It has extra steps but the way it works and the information it has available on the phone is much preferred. Oh well...

Thanks again for the steps to get this working. I didn't think it was the easiest or most intuitive when reading Microsoft's directions. Yours helped and actually worked for me. The part where you told us to uncheck the default calendar and use the Hotmail connected calendar is what worked for me when past attempts would not. Why on Earth Microsoft, Nokia, and WP make this so difficult to sync Outlook with their phones is beyond me. I may need to try Outlook 2013 and see if that will work better without having to have 'two' calendars in order to sync directly with the WP8.

 

[jwinch2]

I have upgraded to Office 365 since I wrote this originally, so I can't give you much to go on with your situation of hotmail not putting things in the proper calendar. Perhaps there is a setting in hotmail that needs to be changed. Sorry I can't help further.