Iphone Exchange Calendar Synch Issues

I had some of the same issues (calendar not synching, but also mail not pushing) after I upgraded to 3.0.1 on the 3GS. Deleting my exchange account on the iphone and recreating it just now seems to resolve the issues. I have created a calendar event in outlook, and it showed up on the iphone. I created an event on the iphone and it showed up in outlook. I have sent emails from both and they both showed up on iphone quickly (so push was working). I know this is hard for large user groups, but might be what is needed.

Message was edited by: Stan3000

I just wanted to post on here and report that I am having the same problems with our large deployment base in our Enterprise. I believe it has to do with users with very very large Exchange Calendars, and users that make a lot of changes to their calendars. Updates\changes\updates over and over again cause problems and some entries do not show up. I am running Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and having the same exact problems that people are posting here.

I spoke with Apple Enterprise support and was told (after a an hour and a half of trouble shooting), that they do have known issues and problems with the Exchange calendar syncing on the iPhone, specifically towards the 3.0 firmware.

Hopefully Apple fixes these problems with the calendar syncing, there is obviously a problem.

I just missed an important meeting because it wasnt listed on my iPhone. Is there anyway to know if the bug is being worked on by Apple?

iPhone 3gs, Exchange 2007, Entourage 2008 (all fully patched)

campbellB wrote:
All of our i-phone and windows mobile users are reporting the same issues to varying degrees.

Same here. We have more iPhones than Windows Mobile devices, but I have reports from both... basically all of my ActiveSync device users that Calendar entries are not syncing. Doesn't seem to strictly affect iPhones. Will be working with my hosted Exchange support and will post anything that seems to work here as we go.

The first thing they asked me to try is check the Time Zone handling settings on OWA, Outlook, and the device. Of course, this may affect us more because we are on the border of the Eastern and Central time zones and towers from both sides tend to cause problems with auto timezone settings. Whether this is a necessary troubleshooting step remains to be seen...

I'm having the exact same problem. I'd like to see at least an update on this from apple. Is is possible to force a reconciliation between exchange and the iPhone? or do we just have to wait for a software update?

I read in either this forum or another to turn off push and set to fetch every 15 mintues. This workaround has worked for everyone in my organization. Exchange 2003, Outlook 2003, iPhone 3.0.1, either 3G or 3Gs.

Has anyone been able to test a situation where this doesn't work?

To be clear, this is my issue:

A meeting invitation is sent to you. It appears initially as a tentative appointment (dashed box around it in Calendar) on your iphone if you don't accept it on your phone. The meeting is then accepted by you or your assistant on a computer (i.e. in Outlook). At that point the tentative appointment disappears from your iPhone, and the accepted event fails to show up in your calendar (on the phone; it appears on Outlook/Entourage just fine). Changing the event on your computer in any way will make it show up on your phone (changing time, accepting it again, etc.) otherwise it will not appear on your phone.

This workaround does nothing for the other major issue, wherein if you accept an invite on the phone, and multiple people were invited, it sends a response on behalf of the first person or group alphabetically by user name, and although the accepting person's calendar on iPhone/Outlook/Entourage/Exchange is correct, the meeting organizer does not see that person as having accepted. Since the person holding the phone still has their schedule correct, I consider this issue annoying but not major, and simply tell everyone to accept appointments after they get back to their desk.

Time zone handling might explain an appointment that is off by an hour, but missing?

I'm still worried about the Active Sync issues we're having on our server. Those are never good. I've been focused on more design issues than IT at the moment and haven't been able to follow up with our IT service vendor.

I'll post more as soon as I can talk to them.

Good luck.

We have exactly the same symptoms as Keppie.
For some users accepted meetings in outlook result in the item on the iPhone disappearing. They are there tentatively until they are accepted and then they disappear.
I have tried disabling push, archiving old entries, deleting the calendar and re-enabling, changing timezones and with and without Daylight savings settings.
Nothing seems to work?

firelm -- disabling push and setting to fetch every 15 didn't work? We've had people switched to that for nearly a week with no complaints... what's your environment look like?

Hi Keppie
Initially I thought it didn't help but now I have done some more testing I am not so sure.

There was one scenario where by accepting a meeting on the desktop while the iphone calendar was open meant that the invite disappeared. But this did not happen consistently. I saw that happen twice only.
We are an exchange'03 shop fully patched, and only a small base of iPhone user at present as we trial it.
iPhone 3.0.1

Thanks for the response

Add me to the list of people that are having the same problems. I called Apple Support a month or so ago, and got the run-around.

Yes, it had something to do with receiving the appt, accepting it on the workstation, having it disappear on the iphone.

Exchange 2003, Outlook 2007, Entourage 2008, iPhone 3.0.1

Hi Guys,

I've just upgraded to iPhone 3.1, and all my issues with appointments have been fixed.
I've had issues with appointments not appearing on the iPhone if the appointment wasn't accepted on the phone, however after upgrading and testing, it seems all good now.

I highly recommend upgrading to 3.1 and seeing how it goes for you.

Regards
Dave

I agree. I upgraded yesterday and have been testing 3.1 it seems to fix the calendar issues we've been having. I'm testing some delegation with events tomorrow and then calling it complete if that all works.

Unfortunately I've read tethering is broken with the update on ATT. I can't wait for tethering from ATT but I am glad to see active sync issues being addressed.

Don't upgrade to 3.1. Many problems.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151766&start=0&tstart=0

I've been battling this issues for a few days now. I've restored profiles, Wiped the iPhone and finally upgraded to 3.1 (with lots of hassle) and finally I fixed my issue. I don't think it was the upgrade either!

I noticed each time I accessed my calendar on the iPhone. The phone would delete all entries and then add them all back again. About 40% of meetings were missing and I couldn't find a pattern with the missing events. In the end I think the problem is that one of the calendar events had an error. Each time the iPhone read this event it cause the iPhone to recycle all the calendar events.

OK for my solution I set the Calendar to sync events only 2 weeks back: Settings -> Mail, Contacts... -> second last option on the bottom of the page. After that everything worked great. If that doesn't work try looking into events that reoccur or events that were added by a delegate. Also look for events that have special characters in the subject! Outlook 2003 and 2007 has filters that can help in grouping events together.

Well I hope this helps someone. Best of luck.