I live a complicated Calendar life. I keep my schedule in Outlook 2010 on my PC, which syncs to the cloud through Google Calendar but can’t talk to Outlook 2011 on my Mac, which I use for travel. Can Apple’s new iCloud save me? Let’s talk platforms.
iCloud & Outlook 2010 For PC
iCloud is available to PC users, and it does work with Outlook 2010. I downloaded the iCloud Control Panel software, told it to sync with Outlook, and away it went.
After it was done, my first concern was that my Outlook Calendar was completely empty. Oh dear. Fortunately, none of my appointments were lost. iCloud had created two calendars, in a new iCloud section of Outlook.
One was for what I gather is now the new location for my calendar. The other was for conflicts that iCloud wasn’t sure what to do with.
Now, if you want the full story of how I resolved this, keep reading. If you only want some highlights:
- You can’t create a calendar in Outlook and have that appear in iCloud
- But you can create a calendar in iCloud and have that appear in Outlook
- You can’t import into a calendar on iCloud
Merge Conflicts? Start Over!
The iCloud software helpfully alerted me to these conflicts, with a pop-up box promising further advice. That jumped me over to the iCloud Help home page, with no advice displayed for anything I can find when I search for “calendar merge conflicts” or “merge conflicts” or even just “merge.”
I headed over to iCloud, to see if maybe it showed both calendars there in my online view, along with a way to merge them. No. Only the main iCloud calendar was shown. Nor was there any way to import a bunch of events, that I can see. That’s something that Google Calendar supports, despite being online. It’s also something that Outlook supports. I guess if you need to get a lot of events into your iCloud calendar, you’ll have to use a software program like Outlook or iCal (I don’t use this, myself).
Over on Google Calendar, my original Outlook calendar was still active — fortunately, even though I had auto-sync on, there were so many deletions that it was asked to do (because iCloud had wiped out my original calendar on my desktop) that it asked if I wanted to go ahead. I also quickly turned sync off quickly.
This is a good time to say that before you do ANYTHING with Outlook, export your calendar. That way, you can get back to where you where, if things get messed up.
In my case, since Google Calendar still had a clean record, I exported a iCal copy (use the private address option for this; Google’s instructions are out-of-date). Then I opened that calendar using Outlook. That created a new calendar in a new group called “Other Calendars.” I dragged the new calendar into my iCloud group.
That did nothing. Apparently, if you add new calendars in Outlook, even in your iCloud group, it doesn’t care. Those aren’t going to sync. But annoyingly, if you create a new calendar at iCloud, that calendar will sync over to Outlook. That would be a good workaround, if iCloud allowed for importing. As I said, it doesn’t.
Over at the Outlook site, there was a help file that suggested there was a way to merge two existing calendars. No luck, however. Trying that, only my iCloud-based calendars were listed. There was no way to merge the new one I’d created from my Google Calendar data (or that you’d be able to merge if you created from any backed-up data).
Sigh. In the end, I found a help page on how to delete all entries in an Outlook calendar. I wiped everything off my main iCloud calendar within Outlook. That did the same online. Next, I went File > Options > Advanced > Export (yes, Export, it’s a stupid name for trying to import) > Import an iClaendar file. Then I selected my clean Google Calendar export file (or you could use any clean file) and selected Import into my existing calendar rather than “Open as New.”
And that did nothing put repopulate my old, original calendar with what iCloud had cleared out.
In the end, I turned off iCloud. I reimported my calendar into Outlook, into my main calendar, and I started all over again. And it took ages, because iCloud didn’t clear out my old calendars at first. Hint: turn it off, then make sure you sign out.
In the end, the second attempt got all of my items into iCloud and the iCloud calendar in Outlook 2010. Now it was Google Calendar sync time.
Outlook: iCloud Or Google Calendar Sync, Pick One
Why on earth would I want to sync iCloud and Google Calendar? If two clouds combine, won’t there be rain?
Why not? As I said, I really live in Outlook. When I’m traveling, I want my calendar on my travel devices. Often, that’s an Android phone. Google Calendar plays nice there.
So, I’m not really syncing iCloud and Google Calendar. I’m syncing Outlook with both iCloud and Google Calendar. Does that work? No. Oh, no it doesn’t.
I have happily used Google Calendar Sync as a lightweight way to keep Outlook and Google Calendar talking to each other. Every 30 minutes, the two talk. If I’ve made a chance in either place, they swap info. This has allowed me to always have my calendar on any device — even my iPhone.
Google Calendar Sync will only talk to your default Outlook calendar. iCloud, as I’ve explained, clears that out and makes its own iCloud calendar. That’s not the default, so Google can’t get at it. Why iCloud can’t just use the default, as Google does, I don’t know. But it means you have to make a choice.
You can sync between Outlook and Google Calendar, or between Outlook and iCloud. But you can’t do both.
Outlook 2011 For Mac: iCloud & Google Calendar Both Hate You
My real dream, since I started using Outlook 2011 on the Mac last year, was that it would be able to sync with my calendar as Outlook on the PC can. But Google has never made a calendar sync option that worked. Or Microsoft hasn’t helped. I don’t know. But you’ve been screwed.
Now Apple doesn’t care, either. iCloud has no ability to sync with Outlook 2011. There’s nothing there. Checking further on the Apple site, only iCal on the Mac is supported.
In the end, I’m kind of disappointed. In terms of calendaring, iCloud isn’t solving my cross-platform issue at all. It’s also being more invasive than the current Google solution that I’m already using, coming along and pushing my Outlook default calendar out of the scene.
Why on earth didn’t Apple support Outlook 2011 on the Mac?
It’s also bizarre that the calendar app on my iPhone itself, it merrily deals with both.
Of course, if you’re an all Apple person, iCloud calendar is probably awesome. If you’re using a PC and Apple devices, still lots of awesome. If you’re trying to use Android, staying with Google makes sense. If you do everything like me, well, you probably deserve all the pain that comes your way 
{ 145 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow – iCloud is so disappointing!! Aside from ALL the default calendar/iCloud calendar (in Outlook) issues – which are a big deal if you receive a lot of iCals like I do, I’ve discovered that now the NOTES field of Outlook contacts is no longer searchable or indexed (in the iCloud folder – which is what you have to use if you want it to sync). I often put client assistant’s names or other miscellaneous notes in my Contacts and have always enjoyed that you could quickly type ANY keyword in Outlook and it would show you the matching Contacts. Now that Contacts are moved to the iCloud contacts, when you search in Outlook, it DOES NOT FIND keywords listed in the Notes field.
In addition, someone suggested a way to move iCals that were accepted and put on the default calendar to the new iCloud calendar. That works BUT you get a warning saying that any changes made by the iCal creator will no longer be synced! Another major bug.
I’m pretty stunned that iCloud (which was supposed to be a redemption of MobileMe) has actually gotten worse on an order of magnitude. Shame on Apple for such shoddy work!
Great article and very timely for me, Danny. I helped a friend transition from a company’s Exchange server to a private setup. I backed up all files to .pst, and then set up:
1) GMail
2) Google Calendar
3) GMail Contacts
I needed to have this user stay on Outlook 2007 and her iPhone—I wanted the transition to be as transparent as possible.
I thought I was all set with this solution. But, I couldn’t find a two-way Contacts sync for GMail (only for Google Calendar, she doesn’t have Google Apps). So I thought of iCloud. Great! I moved the Contacts and Calendar over to iCloud. The Contacts worked OK (so far it seems).
But the iCloud calendar setup really made things confusing for my user. Even after I configured things as well as I could, one thing killed it. Outlook 2007 shows Reminders/appointments in the right pane of its window. BUT, it will only show things from the default Outlook Calendar, NOT the iCloud (or any other) calendar. So much for transparency. My friend uses that feature constantly. So, I moved the calendar back to Google Calendar and reinstalled Google Calendar Sync.
So, only Contacts are iCloud and mail/Calendar are now Google, right? OK.
But then, Google Calendar Sync wiped out the Google Calendar at the server. Seriously. It’s apparently happened to a small percentage of users. I had to uninstall and reinstall the plugin, and I _think_ it’s working now.
So, to sum up, I just don’t have confidence that my friend has a solid solution with iCloud/GMail/Google Calendar, and her frustration level is off the charts. She wants to know “why can’t it just work like it used to?”
I’m looking at a hosted Exchange solution now from a provider. Do you see any alternatives? I don’t see anything else that’s feasible and solid.
re: Dave
I use Google Calendar Sync because it is free.
If I was not managing my own data and taking my own risks and backups I would strongly desire to use an Exchange server.
I have had several occasions including after the recent iOS update where Google Sync at Windows warns me that it is about to remove a few thousand calendar items (very good warning!). To get past this deletion, I have been deliberately moving everything out of Outlook’s calendar, then checking Google to be sure it is empty and then repopulate Outlook to resync to Google.
@ThomasM
I think you have double calendar and contacts on your iPhone – is that correct?
@JorgenN
No, I do not have duplicate content in iDevice or Outlook Calendar or Contacts.
I do have two calendars which can be viewed at the same time in either iDevice or Outlook. I do not put content in the iCloud calendar b/c of its limitations (no Outlook indexing, not default calendar). I set the iDevices to use the Google calendar as default. I do not display the iCloud calendar on the iDevices to avoid accidentally adding content there, too.
I use the iCloud Contacts and keep the default Outlook contacts in the Personal Folder empty. I have iTunes sync that empty Outlook contacts folder to my iDevices. I do not display the “group” on the devices to avoid accidentally adding content there. Outlook cannot index the iCloud Contacts but that is okay for me.
I am glad that iCloud functions are not crashing my Outlook or my iDevices even though I do not use it for content in every case.
@Tom Davis:
This is also exactly the configuration I found out to work for me.
The important thing is to avoid a “i-cloud” data file in outlook.
Calendars: Google sync add-in (no i-cloud sync)
Mail: Google Mail (no i-cloud sync)
Contacts: i-Cloud
Bookmarks: i-Cloud
Photostream: i-Cloud
I am pretty disappointed with iCloud’s interactions with Outlook. I was fine with the manual iTunes calendar synching that I had been using for a few months. I thought that iCloud simply eliminated the need to connect via a wire, using WiFi instead. However, it not only created a new iCloud calendar in Outlook, but it left my default calendar intact so that all of my meetings were doubled. I had to go through my default calendar and manually delete all of my appointments and use only the iCloud calendar.
The problem with that is that when someone sends me a meeting invite in the iCal format, I used to just click “accept”. If I do that now, it saves that appointment to my default calendar. I have to retype it into the iCloud calendar and delete it from the default calendar. If I open both calendars and just drag-and-drop it from default to iCloud, it erroneously sends the invitation back to the originator and everyone else who had been invited, as if it is a new meeting invitation from me.
If I would have known this from the beginning, I would never have elected to manage my calendar in iCloud. I would have stayed with the manual iTunes synching. However, as mentioned above, you can’t go back. So, thank you Apple for taking a nice, simple calendar process and turning it into a manual headache.
Don’t get me started on Notes. I now have two more Notes accounts on my iPhone thanks to iCloud. So, I am just using Evernote instead, since it syncs among my PC and the iPhone seamlessly, with just one account.
OK–So, my user does not want to go to a hosted Exchange Server (btw, paypercloud.com looked pretty good as an Exchange hosting company).
She wants things to sync reliably. So:
1) Mail in Outlook is a GMail account as an IMAP account, no problems here once I made that account the default (I can’t recall at the moment where I had to do this)
2) Contacts are in iCloud. I’ve not had a problem with this, especially after I set Outlook to use the iCloud Contacts for address book lookups with email.
3) Calendar. This is the trick. Currently Google Calendar Sync. I don’t trust it since it wiped out data. I uninstalled it, deleted the data files, and reinstalled it.
BY THE WAY, not to yell, but apparently when I uniinstalled Google Calendar Sync it (without notice) emptied out my user’s online Google Calendar, and thus her iPhone calendar, which understandably freaked her out.
She asked if iCloud would be reliable and she’d just live with it, but since I can only go so far to make the iCloud Calendar the Outlook “default,” a) the Task bar upcoming appointments in the rightmost pane of the Outlook window would go away, and b) she won’t be able to seamlessly accept calendar appointments and have them go to the iCloud calendar.
Also, by the way, @Johnny, I manually dragged several hundred appointments that my user’s colleagues had initiated/owned. I sincerely hope that Outlook did not sent updates all around to these people again. Is there a way to tell? I checked Sent mail, but saw nothing.
FINALLY (sorry to shout), I am looking at gSyncIt as a replacement for Google Calendar sync. It seems to have a good rep, it’s actively being developed, and $20 is nothing to give me reliable syncing. What do you think?
Oh–sorry to add to the post, but to clarify, @Johnny, when I had iCloud doing the calendar earlier in this process, I manually dragged several hundred calendar events to the iCloud calendar. These were all events that someone other than my user had initiated, so they were owned by these other folks.
I sincerely hope that calendar updates were not sent to all of these people in this process for meetings years past. Is there a way to tell? I looked in Sent mail, but Outlook is not as familiar to me as well, OS X Mail, Thunderbird, or just about any other mail client (and I’m even including my old QuickMail system here, heh).
@ Dave / @ Johnny – re the below
“Also, by the way, @Johnny, I manually dragged several hundred appointments that my user’s colleagues had initiated/owned. I sincerely hope that Outlook did not sent updates all around to these people again. Is there a way to tell? I checked Sent mail, but saw nothing”
I can tell you whenever I drag invites to the iCloud calendar (colleague initiated/owned), everyone got an update (or cancellation) notice. I had dozens screaming at me about this. Really unprofessional looking but haven’t found a way around it except leaving it on the default (non-synched) calendar – which defeats the purpose of iCloud/Outlook syncing.
Wow. If that happened, maybe I’ll blame that on her old company’s Exchange server.
gSyncIt seems and feels a LOT more solid. I think it’s a winner, well worth the $19.99. And it’s syncing 6 years worth of calendar data, over 2700 events.
After getting everything ‘clean’ and rebuilt recently, Google Calendar Sync gave me another one of those warnings. “Google Calendar Sync has detected that you have deleted 939 events from your Google Calendar. This will delete 939 events from your Outlook calendar. Proceed with the operation?”. Answer is “NO!” of course.
My resolution is to *again*
1. Move all 3543 Outlook calendar content items to a temporary calendar folder.
2. Acknowledge to Outlook for each of the dozens of unspecified items with invitees that updates will not work.
3. Re-start Google Calendar Sync and *let it delete* the 3467 items at google’s calendar (huh? yes, it has a different count already)
4. Inspect the gmail Calendar to be sure it is empty
4. Move the calendar items back into Outlook default calendar folder
5. Re-sync Google Calendar Sync
‘Another half to an hour lost (now in process). And a reason to use Google Calendar Sync for *yourself only* because you are cheap like me… but not for Mom or friends or clients who might call you with calendar crises.
Exchange does not do this with Outlook, in my experience.
I wish well to those trying out the gsyncit.
@Dave – I had no idea it sent the duplicate invitations until, like Jason said, people who received the invitations let me know about it. Yes, it is very unprofessional.
The first time I thought I had somehow clicked on the wrong thing and sent them. The second time I realized it was iCloud doing something stupid. There won’t be a third time, as I now hand key in all externally-created appointments. Thanks iCloud for making a simple task a pain in the neck. I have warned my colleagues about this and have told them not to use iCloud unless they want to deal with these shenanigans.
Okay. for me I am switched from Google Calendar Sync *to iCloud* for Calendar because:
- Google Calendar Sync keeps telling me nicely that I am about to delete hundreds or thousands of appointments from my Outlook 2007 if I continue because they have been deleted from the Google Calendar.
- I cannot reliable edit appointments at the iDevice (iPhone 3GS, iPad2 both on iOS 5). Edits to new item date/time and notes can be lost unless left untouched for long enough after creation or the last edit.
I had the already-described issues of
- re-notifications of old appointments to others (Maybe I should have worked offline when moving calendar items to iCloud folder in Outlook so I could have caught them in the Outbox
- calendar item attachments causing item movement to stop.
- icons for calendar items showing wrong icon and maybe somewhere along the way losing “No End Date” recurrance
- no more Microsoft Index of calendar items (I shall rely on iDevice search)
- no longer have proper default Outlook calendar
I expect other issues with calendar items, but the two big issues occurring with Google Calendar are already better. It looks like i can reliably edit my calendar!!
I considered the gSyncIT tool, but figure it cannot resolve my iDevice-to-Google calendar edit issue
I got an error message for each meeting appt I dragged over to iCloud (something like “there was an error. The appointment did not copy” or something like that, even though it did copy). So I’m hoping that I did not get the duplication issue. I saw no outgoing update messages in the Sent items folder, but I’m not sure where Outlook keeps sent calendar invites/updates.
I ended up buying gSyncIt, which I’ve been very happy with. It seems to be stable and works well (it feels and looks like that from the status window and how it does things). It can do a lot more than calendar, but $20 for what it does is more than enough for me. It’s been working fine with minor tweaks for almost two weeks, and it synced six years (almost 2,800 calendar events). I now have it set to only sync the last 90 days worth (and _not_ delete events previous to that on Google Calendar–nice option, huh?).
@ Vince Lammas, or anyone using MS Exchange successfully:
I want to setup a new MS Exchange account so that I will have several POP mail accounts ‘funnel’ into the 1 Exchange account. It will be my 1st time setting up Exchange.
Can anyone recommend an online resource to guide me through this process?
I want the single MS Exchange account to be home for all calendar, contacts & tasks, & be able to sync them with iPhone wirelessly.
I also was frustrated by iCloud – Outlook integration, so hope Exchange can provide wireless synching as Vince described. Thanks in advance for any assistance.
This is the exact programs I use and the exact problem I have! Thank you for explaining to me that its not going to work no matter how much time I work on it !
I fought syncing iCloud and Outlook 2010 (32 bit) (Windows 7 64 bit) for about a week until I found that the iCloud Add-In was in in the Inactive Applications Add-ins section. As soon as I clicked the check box to allow the Add-in for iCloud and hit OK, all of my calendar items moved around and were in sync with my iPhone and everything was working great. Contacts and Calendar items sync almost instantaneously now. Get to Add-ins by going to the File Tab in Outlook, click options, click Add-Ins, click ICloud Outlook Addin, click GO… and check the box next to ICloud Outlook Addin.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned earlier, but I got it to work for me by first signing out of iCloud on the internet. Then right clicking on the calendar in outlook and choosing “copy calendar” and choosing the iCloud folder. At first it spits out an error message saying I don’t have permissions and it looks like it didn’t work. But if I right click on the original calendar again, the copied version shows up under iCloud. Then when I logged into iCloud all my new calendars were there. The outlook views look very complicated with more than one version of a calendar, but I unchecked some of them so that I could control what I am seeing. All I had wanted to do was import iCal for certain holidays and times for sunrise and set…
Hope this is helpful and doesn’t repeat something someone else already said.
This is an interesting, but complex, thread of correspondance. I have a reasonable grasp of IT issues but I was wondering if someone could give me a consolidated conclusion to the iCloud issues discussed here. For clarification I use;
Outlook 2010 on my Private PC;
Outlook 2007 on my Wok PC (which is run on MS Exchange Server);
iPhone 4; and
iPad 2.
I can see my synchronised Calendar and Contacts held on my Work Outlook 2007 (except that I cannot accept Meeting Invitations from my Apple devices (if I accept while on my Work PC these synchronise fine)). So all is fine across, appart from accepting invitations, my Work PC/iPhone/iPad devices.
The real issue is, as described in this thread, for my Private PC’s Outlook 2010;
iCloud stole both my Outlook Contacts and my Outlook Calendar data and placed this in iCloud equivilents (I think). Certainly, iCloud refers to my PC Calendar, My Work Calendar and My iCloud Calendar (this latter version seems to comprise my uptodate Work and just the Private PC’s entries up to the point I installed iCloud). It’s not at all clear which version of my Contacts it has because these could be either from my Work PC (which is probably correct) and my Private PC’s Contacts at the point i installed iCloud (certainly if I add a new Contact to my Work Outlook it updates the iCloud version but this is not the case if I update my PC’s Contacts which, I think, remains unsynchronised with iCloud).
Outlook 2010 Calendar
Therefore, even though iCloud refers to my PC’s Outlook Calendar it does not synchronise between the two (if I make a change in my Private PC’s Outlook – which I understand from the thread does not work – but neither does my Private PC’s Outlook get updated if I make the changes in my iCloud, claimed, version of my Private PC’s Outlook 2010 Calendar).
Outlook 2010 Contacts
This is a complete mystery to me; the same as on Outlook Calendar above.
Plea;
Is there no way I can;
Work on my Private PC’s Outlook
- sending email;
- making appointements which are then shown on the iCloud version; and
- usng the PC’s Contacts which is now not there but only in iCloud which is not available to me when working on my PC’s Outlook.
Hence only able to make appointements in the iCloud Calendar to ensure these are shown on my Apple Devices but are not also shown in my Private PC’s Calendar and hence my Private PC’s not showing me the current sitiation.
Unable to see my Contacts on my Private PC’s Contact since these are only now shown in iCloud and on each of my Apple Devices.
This situation is intollerable as iCloud only does half a job and hence it might as well not do the job at all.
Not having access
Well, one addition to the saga. I had left Outlook Contacts with iCloud since it seemed to be working fine.
Last week the Contacts lost their settings to display by Company/Name. It seems that iCloud didn’t retain this information that’s embedded in each contact. My gut feeling is that whatever tag Outlook uses for this setting was ignored/trashed by iCloud.
So, now I need to yank iCloud from this install and set up gSyncIt to handle Contacts (it’s done a great job with Calendars).
Joy.
Ref: @Luc message 91 mentions http://www.somebytes.net/1-1-Home.html
That website has problems, so perhaps the software does too. Doesn’t mention synchronising Outlook folders on the same computer, which is really what is needed so we can copy between Outlook personal default folder and iCloud folder.
Has anyone else tried that solution yet?
Hello,
I also went the Outlook->Google Calendar Sync -> Gmail -> Exchange -> Ipad vv. route.
Works fine for calendar entries. But how about conctacts? Am I missing something.
Thanks
Dirk
APPLE FAILURE – do not use iCloud with Outlook 2010.
Now Steve is jobless; the other Apples misbehave!
Loosing your calendar data is an offence caused by a not working product iCloud. Do not trust Apple anymore. Even Microsoft would not launch such a failing product.
Luc, Thanks for you info back on 10-Nov-2011. I am hoping it will solve most (all of my Outlook/iCloud issues).
However, using OLFolderSync, when I set the the required **SAME** sharename for the 2′nd folder (iCloud calendar), I receive the error message: “Your sharename is already in use!”. As a result, I can’t synchronize the Outlook default and iCloud calendar folders on the same PC. Please advise me of how I must set up OLFolderSync to sync between two Outlook calendars on the **SAME** PC?
Outlook and iCloud seem to be slowly recognising each other!!!
Boyd – see my email above (22). I’m looking at the same solution. Have you asked “Somebytes” if we can use OLFolderSync to synchronise the iCloud emails, contacts, and calendar with the default Outlook folder on one PC? In my Outlook I have two folders, one is the default, the other is called iCloud. I’m not sure if yours looks the same, and don’t want to install software if it might b.. up Outlook.
I have copied my question to Somebyte & will post the result.
Ted, I already asked SomeBytes and here is their reply:
“Please use OLMIxedFolders instead, which you can find on the page as well.” I haven’t tried it yet.
Great – let me know how you get on please! I’ll let you know if they give me any further info.
Ted, I installed OLMIxedFolders and found that creation and deletion of reminders in the Oulook calendar folder were being synchronized correctly to the iCloud folder. However, edits & moves of reminders in the Oulook calendar folder were **NOT** being synchronized to the iCloud folder. Also, **ALL** creations, deletions, edits, & moves in the iCloud calendar were being synchronized to the Oulook calendar folder. Go figure??? Anyway, I sent another email to SomeBytes asking for a solution. maybe it is a setup problem on my part. I will keep you posted with any updates.
Ted, SomeBytes came back to me with:
“Have you tried to wait a bit longer, because it could be that after your configuration has changed, OLMixedFolders was doing other things first.
Your configuration should be OK, if you want to sync your iCloud folder with the default Outlook Kalender and back.”
Waiting longer did not solve my problem. Would you please download & install SomeBytes OLMixedFolders and let me know if it works for you for all 2 way synchronization scenarios. An independant user’s attempt to use OLMixedFolders could provide useful information for us all. Thanx.
I’m hoping this excellent thread is still active. Wish I’d read it before making the mistake of simply trying to sync my Outlook 2007 calendar with my iphone using icloud. What an idebacle.
Several people asked if it was possible to restore MS Outlook to its previous state where it uses pst files and eliminate this terrorist service which hijacks MS Outlook called icloud. How can I get back my life back?
Ted (& other interested parties),
Somebytes has replied to me again with:
“I think that I know the answer. I believe that there is a bug in the Apple iCloud AddIn to Outlook which causes the Outlook iCloud calendar to not update correctly. Please look into your iCloud calendar on the web, the edit and move changes should be occurring there (even if they don’t occur in the Outlook iCloud calendar folder). If you want to see the updates in Outlook you have to close Outlook and open it again. However, under normal circumstances that is not needed, because you don’t use that calendar any more. It’s only a cache before the real iCloud.”
I tested & confirmed these results myself.
I now believe that SomeBytes OLMIxedFolders works and fixes most of the problems mentioned in comments above.
I think I will also send feedback to Apple about the bug in their Outlook iCloud plug-in.
I’m hoping this excellent thread is still active.
I use Window7 Professional, MS Office 2007, and an iphone. All I wanted to do was sync Outlook Calendar w/ the iphone. It turned into the inightmare described by many above. If anyone has successfully uninstalled icloud and restored Outlook to it’s normal and proper state I’d be most grateful to hear how you did it!
I have started testing OLMixedFolders on my PC-iPad-iPAQ set-up. I have sketched out a report of how I have done so far. Boyd, your comments at this stage would be very interesting, so I’ll ask Sven to send you a copy.
Outlook emails were already synchronising before I added OLMixedFolders – it just seemed to take a very long time before they did so.
I have synchronised three folder groups in Outlook on the PC. The iCloud seems to be working OK.
I have not yet tested its effect on the Windows Mobile (iPAQ) machine.
Calendar is probably OK – perhaps some issues will occur related to Categories. I don’t use them consistently, which previously caused problems with iPAQ synchronisation. I’ll wait and see.
How are you getting on?
Ted,
Sven from SomeBytes sent me an updated version of OLMixedFolders which was supposed to correct the problem with the Outlook iCloud calendar not displaying Appointment edit updates correctly. However, the problem still seems the same. But, it doesn’t really matter -I just disable viewing of the Outlook iCloud calendar since it does actually update the iCloud calendar correctly on the web & other devices. One minor problem – I seem to get 2 Outlook Reminder windows – I just close one. Also, occasionally, Outlook freezes – I just restart. All-in-all, Outlook & iCloud have been working well for me using OLMixedFolders in the last 2 weeks.
Also, another major drawback with iCloud calendar events on my iPhone is that ‘disabling’ a particular Calendar on the iPhone only disables **VIEWING** the calendar – it does **NOT** disable the calendar notifications going off. This is really annoying as I wanted my personal appointments separate from my work appointments (with my work appointments nearly always disabled on the iPhone). Consequently, I have had to disconnect my iPhone calendar from iCloud – a major feature unuseable. There is much comment on this problem on other forums – I hope Apple will address it in their next release of iOS.
Notifications:
Did you try disabling synchronisation of Notifications for the relevant folders in OLMixedFolders? There’s a tick box which I unticked as I don’t use them anyway and didn’t want to add a further complication. It’s there in both Calendars and Tasks.
Ted,
What I really want is the **OPTION** of viewing my work calendar when I want to by simply enabling it on my iPhone. I then want to disable my work calendar on my iPhone (particularly notifications) when I don’t want to be bugged by work stuff. Unfortunately, my iPhone’s iOS5.0.1 currently won’t allow notifications to be selectively switched off for individual calendars ( a significant oversight by Apple). Hopefully, Apple will fix it in the next iOS release – but the information on Wikipedia about the current iOS beta makes now mention of it (so I am not holding my breathe to see it fixed soon).
Your suggestion of disabling synchronisation of Notifications for my work calendar in OLMixedFolders would mean that I would never have the option of seeing my work calendar on my iPhone anyway, but … thanks anyway.
when you add a contact or calendar event in outlook how do you control WHICH CALENDER gets updated? I only want one calendar between my home PC, IPHONE, IPAD, and work exchange folder if i can. Is that even possible??? HELP>
Can’t quite see the answer to my query in the excellent stream above but I use Outlook 2003 on a PC at work, we don’t allow this to be sent to remote cloud or google accounts. I have HTC desire Android 2.2 phone using Business Calendar and sync it to the PC with USB using My Phone Explorer. I have Macs at home running OS Snow Leopard and OS Lion, the latter now also linked to iCloud. I sync the phone to the Macs iCal with USB using SyncMate. All in all a pretty clunky set up but it just – and I mean just – about works. I also have a copy of Outlook 2011 for Macs and am considering installing this if it makes things any easier.
I’d really like my work Outlook to use different calendars for business and home life, and be able to sync these between all devices. Eventually I’m also going to switch to an iPhone and probably have both Macs running Lion so that all devices, except the work PC can sync automatically via iCloud.
Any thoughts or hints on the best ways to sync between all devices as currently operating, as currently operating but using Outlook 2011 on the Macs, and / or as planned with a future iPhone would be v v helpful. And how do I sync separate calendars from my PC to my phone then to my macs ?
Thanks.
How do I send a calendar invitation from Outlook 2010 to a friend who uses icloud calendar?
I hate iCloud with Outlook. I cannot search my contacts and Outlook constantly crashes. It’s horrifying. What were they thinking?
Been going through some of the same and scratching my head now staring at a Mac that ended up on my desk, thinking, “…maybe if I use a Mac it will be easier…”. Instead, I think, I am going to try to be a genius and learn from someone else’s experience for once. Thank you.
Thanks folks for the monumental headsup!
Was about to attempt ‘Cloud9′ (or ‘Cloud3′ in this case) with MS, Google and iCloud, (with possibly BB too!) but will re-evaluate now and proceed with extreme trepidation.
I suppose the more they let us do, the more we wanna do!
May the Force…..and all that jazz.
Cheers, Steve
My problem is that I am unable after three days and several looks at blogs etc that when I down load the control panel it would set up to let me check Contacts and Cal. Everything I need is in the cloud happily synicing to I phone and I pad. But not to PC becasue control panel will not let me turn on Cal or contacts. It will turn on bookmarks.
Really stuck.
thanks for any help.