How do you sync Outlook tasks with iOS 5 Reminders? (PC)

Definitely recommend everyone check out CodeTwo's software I posted about. I've been using it for several months and it's worked great. It's makes use of iCloud and allows you to sync your Outlook Tasks with the Reminders iOS apps. It's fairly instantaneous. It also syncs your calendar and contacts if you want it.

With the sunsetting of 2Do's desktop sync, I decided to revisit Apple's option: syncing via iCloud. Clearly where this is all going is that we're going to be forced to save our data in someone's cloud at some point...

Unfortunately I can confirm what others have reported lately: the newest version of iCloud (for Windows at least) no longer allows you to choose to sync only Calendar/Tasks -- apparently you MUST put your contact book in the cloud as well to sync Tasks to Reminders. It's now an "all on" or "all off" proposition. Bummer.

And FWIW (though I haven't tried with the latest version), my experience was that syncing via iCloud resulted in a new "iCloud" Calendar and Task list being created in Outlook. Not only is this unnecessary redundancy annoying (to begin with, the new calendar is created by iCloud without any notice or confirmation from you that you want to do so), but because your Tasks are in a custom list, they do not show up in the Outlook sidebar like Tasks created in your primary Task list (i.e., the default list for your data file).

You can go back to Blackberry, but that's only good for as long as they are still a viable business (they have some serious balance sheet problems) and only for as long as Blackberry chooses to offer desktop sync (all of their competitors seem intent on dropping this as a feature).

photoneffect wrote:

...check out CodeTwo's software... It's makes use of iCloud and allows you to sync your Outlook Tasks with the Reminders iOS apps... It also syncs your calendar and contacts if you want it.

Confused: isn't syncing Calendar/Contacts/Tasks via iCloud exactly what iCloud does? What does this extra software accomplish?

@ClickWheelNotCharging

The software I referenced does one simple thing. It "syncs" the data from your main Outlook files with your iCloud files within Outlook. This basically solves the problem you pointed out in your post in bold "because your Tasks are in a custom list, they do not show up in the Outlook sidebar". What you're saying is exactly right and makes the integration betwen iCloud and Outlook terrible. The CodeTwo software solves that issue. I used to use Google for contacts and all that, but when I found this software I went all-in with iCloud (contacts, tasks, calendar) and it's worked great. There's way to integrate with Google too if you wanna keep some of that functionality.

Based on your post, I checked CodeTwo out. After some fussing it seems to work. My only complaint now is that it only syncs to Reminders (true?) which is not as robust as ToDo or other to do managers. For example, from the Reminders App I can''t assign a task a category (tag in ToDo parlance) or give it a priority. Nor can I search or apply filters in Reminders. I'll still be looking for a more elegant solution, however, as a very basic way to ensure I have Tasks on the iPhone or to be able to add tasks on the go this seems to work. At least it may allow me not to have to go back to Blackberry 🙂

Thanks for the tip but if anybody else finds a more elegant solution, I'd like to hear about it.

Yes, that's correct. It syncs Outlook Tasks to your iCloud. As far as I know the Reminders app is the only app that displays the iCloud "reminders". I'm pretty sure the Reminders app has Priority, but you have to go into the task itself -- there's no column for priority or ability to filter on that. Reminders is pretty basic, but it gets the job done. And also, with the geo-fencing (and Siri if you have it) feature it's even more useful for me than Appigo ToDo was.

I've been syncing Outlook tasks with iPhone Reminders using Code Two now for a couple of days and I like it more and more. Except for one niggling problem, I think this will do the job. 99% of the time things sync both ways via the cloud within a few seconds. But every day one or two changes (such as changing the due date) to Reminders made on the iPhone don't sync back to Outlook. I might make 20 changes in Reminders and most work fine but 1 or 2 don't make it. After doing some fussing like changing some data on both sides I can force it to change and sync but that defeats the purpose. It doesn't seem to happen the other way i.e. changes made in Outlook always sync to iPhone.

Have you experienced anything like this?

In everyday normal usage (not stress testing) I've noticed it not syncing maybe twice. Once it was because Outlook was in a funky state and I just hit the Sync button in the toolbar and it was fine. A reboot or relaunch of the app would have probably worked as well. The other time was because the Reminders app just wouldn't update to iCloud. I verified this was the problem (and simply not Outlook not working) by going to icloud.com and seeing that the changes I made in the Reminders app weren't present. I rebooted my iPhone and it was all fine again. I'm still the first rev of iOS5 (because Apple Maps is beyond worthless) so it may be that this version of Reminders has some glitches. 99% of the time it all works just fine.

I'm using iOS6 and I'm finding the problem can be on both sides. Reminders not getting synced to iCloud and iCloud not syncing to Outlook. But not predictable or systematic. Error message appeared several times today on iClouds with a notification that syncing with Reminders was causing an error and did I want to report the problem to Apple. 99% of the time still not good enough, but I'd say I'm getting a failure 2 or 3 times per day from normal useage. Right now Reminders and iCloud are in sync.but Outlook isn't. I'll reinstallCodeTwo again and see if that helps, but it's just buggy enough to be concerning. Maybe it wil get fixed before the end of December or the next ToDo update.

I haven't seen anyone mention Remember The Milk. They claim to have direct sync (no 3rd party apps) between RTM on iPHone and Outlook. I tried a brief test on a little file I had on an old laptop and it seems to work OK and also allows tags (categories) but I'm nervous about letting at my real file. (Their "trial version" is strange in that it only allows one sync every 24 hours, so hard to do much extensive testing. RTM doesn't seem as robust as ToDo but if it works, it seems as good as or better than Reminders. Has anybody tried this?

@ gabcan

according to RTM's website, you can manually sync between the two. $25.00 per year is awfully pricy just to be able to sync, but if it works.... I've never tried it, originally looked at RTM but went with Appigo's ToDo just because ToDo could sync between iDevice and Outlook (RTM couldn't back then).

I have complained to Appigo about their ceasing Appigo Sync and in the reply was given the impression that IF enough people complain, Appigo MIGHT reinstate it. So far, v 6.0.2 of ToDo will be the last v to allow the use of Appigo Sync; if the iDevice is updated past that version, then you lose the ability to use Appigo sync.

I am sure there are many options out there. Since you asked, I will tell you what works well for me. I use Pocket Informant Pro on my iPad 2 and iPhone 5. PI can sync many different ways, from popular cloud-based services (including their own) to hardwired to a PC. I have it sync Todos and Notes with Toodledo and Calendars and Contacts with Google Calendar. I then use a program on the PC called gSyncit to sync Outlook data to these two web services. Once set up (it is highly customizable), all of the syncing is seamless so I can update data on any platform and it is properly reflected on the others.

Check out http://webis.net/wp/pocket-informant-pro/ for more information. I have been using it for years.

I have given up and bought a Sony Ericson Experia Android. It works fine for my needs. After all the fluffing about with clouds and complex introduction of 3rd party software I decided to call it a day. Sorry Apple, I prefer to choose how my phone is set up, not to be told by you! Apple-you have blown away another customer with your silly vendettas against anything Microsoft!

Is there no way to to have a direct conversation with Apple.

I just sync my iPhone (and iPads) directly with iTunes. The Outlook sync works for the calendar and contacts but not the notes or tasks. I'm OK with that. I'd like the others to work but it's not so important that I'm going to involve the cloud or do all the fiddling around associated with it. You'd think that Apple could have just finished the job and synced all of the items but they didn't ... and apparently they won't. It is what it is. Aside from that the devices work fine.