Now, you CAN sync Outlook directly, no cloud required

[Paul Verizzo]

Discovered this last night on a MS forum, and it works. . You can set it up to just use your home wifi network, or over your data network from anywhere. While even the wifi setup isn't near as simple as plugging a USB cable into a suite, it's not bad. Be sure to read the FAQ, it's very thorough, to see if it's for you. Free to try for 7 days, $20 to buy.

I did discover:
1. When it came time for my phone's IE to open a particular numeric URL during setup, it just gave me search results. If this happens, delete your history.
2. It syncs to "Calendar," pretty logically. But LookOut in its original setup, set me up as "Paul Verizzo's Calendar."
3. You must have Akruto Sync running on your home computer for it to work, quite logically.

Ahhhhhhhh.....................

 

[rdubmu]

I just use outlook 2013 and use outlook.com to keep everything in sync, works great. My calendar, contacts and email are all in outlook 2013 and on my phone. Outlook 2013 comes with a built in Hotmail connector which was a separate software that you could download for outlook 2010.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

I just use outlook 2013 and use outlook.com to keep everything in sync, works great. My calendar, contacts and email are all in outlook 2013 and on my phone. Outlook 2013 comes with a built in Hotmail connector which was a separate software that you could download for outlook 2010.

Not the same. Not at all. Regardless of your success, which has thus far eluded and frustrated me, Akruto leaves MS and the cloud out of it. Maybe you are just happy as a pig in mud, but many of us want control of our data at the PC level.

If you Bing around searching for issues that many people have trying to sync well, well, you could spend a year reading horror stories.

If you are happy, don't buy Akruto Sync. I will.

 

[rdubmu]

I am not sure why people are so scared about having your information in the cloud. It is just contacts, calendar and email. All email programs are in the cloud anyway. I have never seen any information loss on hotmail servers, ever. You might be able to bing or google something that may have happened many years ago, but if you need to have direct access to your information, maybe windows phone isn't the solution you need. You may need to go to another OS. If you are paranoid because you are doing something you shouldn't be, I suggest maybe you stop doing whatever makes you paranoid.

I have personally lost information when my computer had crashed before when I had a blackberry. I prefer having my information in the cloud so that I have my backup in case if my devices ever fail.

I also use gmail to backup my contacts as well as a 2nd choice with outlook.com, my outlook account is the most updated and every so often, sometimes 2-3 months, I update my gmail contact list. I have a third backup on icloud, but I haven't updated that since I got rid of my iphone.

 

[rdubmu]

I do have to add one thing that frustrates me of my solution. Outlook 2013 shows calendars shared to me within my organization and it appears on the my office 365 email domain. Outlook 2013 also shows everything from my outlook.com (hotmail account) But with Outlook 2011 for the MAC, I can not sync my hotmail account nor will shared calendars (my bosses) show up.