Syncing iPhone to Work and Home Computers

Question

Level 1

5 points

Syncing iPhone to Work and Home Computers

Before I get flamed, I know the topic of syncing an iPhone to multiple computers is covered, but none seem to address my question.

I keep all of my calendars and contact groups on my home computer (work, home, friends & family, etc) and want my home computer to keep all of it. I only want to sync my work calendar and work contacts list to my system at work without interfering with the other contact lists and calendars. I also don't want my personal contacts and calendars showing up on my work system, and don't need my iTunes library on my work system.

When I try to "Merge Info" I get all calendars on my work system. When I tried to remove them from my work system, it deleted them from my iPhone as well (I did a restore from my home system to recover). Any advice on how to limit what is synced to my work computer without losing the info elsewhere.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Feb 27, 2008 10:40 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 27, 2008 1:25 PM in response to spincast

I don't think that's doable.

I'm no expert, but as I understand it you can sync with one calendar, one contact list, one music library, etc. These can all reside on different computers. In other words, you can sync with the calendar from one computer, the contact list from a second computer, and the music library from the third computer. But you can't sync with two different contact lists on two computers.

But then, I could be wrong. I often am. 😉

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Answer 2

Damon M.

Level 4

3,705 points

Feb 27, 2008 2:19 PM in response to spincast

what your experiencing, with the merge info, sounds correct.
The iphone can sync calendars and contacts from multiple computers, but when itunes syncs the iphone, it performs a 2 way sync.
So any contacts or calendars on the iphone get moved to the computer, and any contacts or calendars on the computer are moved to the iphone.

So, in essence, if you continue syncing between 2 computers, you end up with exact copies on both computers.

if you would like to leave feedback about the iphone, this link might help.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Hope this helps.

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Answer 3

Feb 27, 2008 4:59 PM in response to spincast

Right now I have an ugly work around. I just got my iPhone last weekend and so I sync my Nokia E62 with my PeeCee and then use iSync to get all the changes onto my MBP. Then I plug in my iPhone and voila, I have it sync'd. In my opinion, it would be nice to sync my outlook calendar and contacts to my address book and iCal on the .Mac account and have that be my main database for my iPhone and other Macs sync to....

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Answer 4

spincast Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 27, 2008 5:29 PM in response to spincast

The best solution I've been able to come up with is to publish my work calendar on my company webdav server (since iCal supports https now) and subscribe to it from my home system. It means I can only add items to my work calendar while at my work computer, but that's where I usually do it anyway. The other downside is it only updates to my phone after I sync with my home computer at the end of the day.

Unless there is a way to make a subscription calendar writable...

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