sync calendar/contacts with iCloud versus iTunes

I use iTunes on a Windows 10 PC to sync my Outlook 365 Calendar and Contacts with my iPhone 8 calendar and contacts. Today I received the following message in iTunes: "Support for syncing contacts and calendars has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version of iTunes."


I think it is still syncing. My questions are as follows:

  1. Best option if I cannot use iTunes - Is it iCloud?
  2. If it is iCloud - will it duplicate all entries the first time I use iCloud to sync or does it recognize the two (iPhone calendar/contacts & PC based Outlook calendar/contacts) are already synced and just add/remove/change any differences? I have not used iCloud in past.


One last note: I sync both an iPhone and iPad Air with my Windows 10 PC.

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Apr 24, 2021 1:02 PM

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352 replies

Jun 29, 2021 10:32 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Not surprised and don't appreciate the snark. Just think the status quo of accepting disregard of the impact on users is wrong. When I worked for software companies, as a project/product manager, I always questioned the impact on the user of proposed changes. In my experience, developers are often more concerned about "cool" things they can do or making changes for the sake of making changes, instead of thinking about what would serve the users. Should we really give up on wanting tech companies to take us into consideration? Because they don't, should we just accept it? For me, the answer is NO. This is an big issue for many users and not everyone is going to realize that they have to give feedback somewhere else. I do think they should look at these forums for feedback. Wouldn't be that hard to set up parameters to measure high volume topics. We can agree to disagree.

Jul 1, 2021 11:34 AM in response to Lucia555

In order to make sure Apple has the opportunity to hear me, I went to the iTunes Help menu > Provide iTunes Feedback and submitted the following. Perhaps if enough people communicate directly to them it will reach someone with the ability to reconsider.


iTunes warns me that syncing of contacts and calendars has been "deprecated" (who talks like that?!).


The ability to sync contacts and calendars with Outlook is very important to me.


If I cannot sync my contacts and calendars this will significantly "deprecate" the usefulness of my iPhone for me and will make competing platforms more viable.



Jul 5, 2021 5:06 PM in response to Lucia555

I tried this recently with the help of Apple Support. I was not happy with idea of having to put my info in the Cloud, FYI, but figured there was no other alternative. The main gotcha: It deleted my contacts in Outlook and, when the file uploaded to iCloud, it deleted 100+ of my contacts. Which I discovered immediately after as I happened to search for 2 of the deleted contacts. Luckily, I had a backup of my Outlook PST file and was able to recover my contacts. I then deleted the files in iCloud and deleted the iCloud contacts and iCloud calendar it added to Outlook. The calendar seems to hidden somewhere because I am getting duplicate notices of meetings.


I also posted that they need to reconsider this move at the Apple feedback link and included the link to this discussion. Also told the two Apple Support people that Apple needed to look at the discussion in this forum.


Jul 12, 2021 8:58 AM in response to Lucia555

Lucia555 wrote:

Thank you for your work on this. Technically, yours as well as others who have replied with similar issues when attempting to switching over to iCloud sync (duplicates records, deleted records, etc.) have answered my initial question. I am hesitant to mark this solved because there has been so much dialogue.

Marking it as "solved" will not cause the thread to disappear. Nor will it close it to future comments. It may cause people who are looking for a definitive solution to look at it and/or it may discourage people who have thoughts on a solution from posting. It's entirely up to you, however.

sync calendar/contacts with iCloud versus iTunes

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