iCloud changes your Outlook calendar and contacts.

OMG. I dont understand why its so difficult to find a solution for this. thank you rpgarrett... ive spent several hours figuring out what I did wrong with adding the gmail account.

The first day I got the IPAD 3 i had no problem setting up my gmail account, then it stopped receiving emails the next day. i deleted the account with an attempt to re-ADD the account but it kep failing to add...

So im really annoyed that I have to add my gmail account as an "email exchange" rather than just selecting "Gmail" on the Mail, Contacts, Calendars - add acount - gmail.

Thanks again for the solution!

Hi stefaniefromca. The only reason I set up Gmail using Microsoft Exchange was because that was the way Google recommended in order to use Google sync so that not only my Gmail but my Google Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks would appear on my iPad. This has allowed me to keep 3 different devices (Windows 7 PC running Outlook, Android Phone, and iPad) all in sync. If I just tried to set it up using the standard "Gmail" account I suspect it would just have provided me with Gmail and not the Calendar and Contacts.

iCloud is not done well at all. It messed up my contacts list also. The stupid program makes it so that Outlook no longer works with the contacts you have on your hard drive. You end up losing them all and can only use what iCloud has taken.

Its made me angry, and is a huge pain to use.

It's such a pain that I do not use it. iCloud has potential, but I don't think Apple is going to set it up the way I want it to work, and a lot of other folks in this thread and others, feel the same way. But Apple doesn't care, they have a vision of how iCloud will work and you have to drink their koolaid to use it their way. And as far is Apple is concerned, it's our loss not theirs. It is, after all, a free service so we have to take it their way, or the hiway. After 60 years on this earth, I'll take my hiway.

I'm waiting for the day when there is a gnashing of teeth when iCloud suffers an outage, the data is lost, and all the folks using iCloud loose ALL their stuff. It will happen, sooner or later.

iCloud may be fine for kids or casual users interested only in iTunes or email, but it is not a good solution for the business user. Disappointing.

How can "Apple's iCloud" decide to delete my VERY, VERY IMPORTANT entries in my Outlook Calendar while up or downloading ????

Absolute NO GO !!!

I think it is more than iCloud - which a loathe and despise. My troubles commenced with ios 5 - lost the details of most of my contacts (emptied) and gained about 6000 name of people I didn't know. And my deleted contacts of several years reappeared. I have basically ignored Plaxo - which was contaminated. Some of my 6000 apparently came from them.

As for the calendars, my iPhone sort of syncs - one way. My ipad is just silly.

I wish I could find a definitive guide to setting and syncing calendar with each other and with Outlook.

Just absolutely hacked off with Apple.

Everytime I board a flight, I hope there is no Apple software in any of the avionics.

Problem solved for me! My journey started a year ago, when for the first time I tried to sync outlook 2007 with MobileMe with a terrible result. Basically, all of my contacts and appointments duplicated themselves over and over again, until I literally had thousands of duplicate entries. From that point I called, I read, I visited and I researched with no real solution, until 1 week ago. After creating a cloud account and syncing my iMac and iPad successfully with it, I just had to complete the last step. I learned about the genius's available at the Mayfair mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and phoned them. I will 1st say that I was seriously impressed with their knowledge and secondly that they would listen and interact with me for almost an hour. They assured me that I could solve my problem and that they could help. I arrived at what I would estimate to be a 1400 sq ft store with at least 20 sales people and a dozen genius's where I spent 6 hours. We first setup my new iPhone 4s, then connected the pc I had brought from work to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. We opened outlook and under the skilled guidance of the genius we proceeded to clean all my files. It seems the attempt to sync with MobileMe had created several sub files, with lots of partial, garbled contacts and many null files. Eventually I ended up with about 600 clean contacts in one folder, and about 300 calendar appointments, again, in just one calendar. This turned out to be the magic needed. No multiple files, no messy contacts, and voila, a successful transfer of all outlook 2010 data to my new 4s, and a few minutes later, when we turned on the cloud (we were very careful to not turn on the cloud before the hardware sync) I had identical data on the cloud, the iMac, the iPad and the iPhone. Now I do have one drawback. I am now an all apple guy, no more syncing between apple and outlook, but that's ok by me. I open the cloud in chrome, and make my changes there during the day. I have also decided to use apple for my personal life, and outlook for work. May not be the perfect solution, but in a week I have already gotten used to 2 calendars. Occasionally I enter data into both calendars, if it effects both my business and personal life, no big deal for me. It just feels great to have all my clean data with me everywhere I go. All thanks to the genius's Sue and Ken at the Mayfair mall. I hope this help some of you.

So Snowracer, what I'm understanding you to say is that you no longer use Outlook, just the iPhone and your browser?

I still use outlook Joanne, just at work. I no longer hard sync it to the phone or to the cloud. Work is work, personal is personal. If an appt or contact effects both, I enter it into both.

Is there a way to get my .me email off the cloud once it's there? I'd rather just check emial the old way than have to deal with this mess between Outlook and my iPhone.

Thanks "richardfromblackburn north"! Your Outlook solution worked great for me to recover my calendar items after iCloud screwed them up:

richardfromblackburn north wrote:

If you look at the folders, (click on the folders button on the bottom left), you will see a series of folders under iCloud. In each case, you can find a way to highlight all of the contents (calendar will need you to show the contents as a list, use Ctrl-A to highlight all the contents), then drag them back to the old folder. They will transfer.

Thanks Richard, this solved my problem.

Today is 25June 2012, 255 days later, and I just committed this same sin, using iCloud for Outlook sync, with the result that 5000+ calendar entries moved from Outlook client to iCloud. Forgive me, Apple, for only buying an iPad and not converting all my devices over to your OS. My new iPad is really lovely, but costs me dearly i.t.o. time (e.g. iPhoto, another issue for another thread).

So, now, two+ hours later, with a few hundred meeting request confirmations resent and a few thousand meeting reminders re-received due to the copying of entries into my live calendar, I think I am back in operation again. Fortunately I do not bill by the hour.

There is obviously no willingness from Apple to make this work properly. Next time, before I commit any Apple-PC communication setup, I'll scour the forums to find out what I may do and what not.

THanks rpgarrett. Wondering why you chose to do only 1 way sync from your PC to your devices? Do you think there are problems with Companionlink if you do 2-way Sync?

This is a very helpful thread. I currently have Windows 7 and outlook 2010 on my laptop. I got a Windows 7 phone thinking it would be an easy sync with USB cable. DUH. Windows 7 phones sync thru the cloud only, and it is apparently a nightmare (per many forums I have read). Windows 7 phones CAN NOT be synced to Outlook on a PC with a USB cable. How stupid is that.

So, I'm thinking of getting an iPad. Since the only Apple product I own is an old iPod, I do not currently have ICloud on my laptop, just iTunes. If I buy an iPad, do I have to do something with iCloud? Do I just never 'turn it on', or do I have to proactively disable it? Or 'turn off synchronization'?

Then, if I'm reading this thread correctly, I can use the USB cable to connect the iPad to my laptop using iTunes, and sync calendar and contacts from my laptop to my iPad. Question - if I add new contacts and appts on Outlook on my iPad, can I sync those additions to my laptop by way of USB cable? It's fine with me if I do a physical sync thru the USB cable every night.

I do use 3 calendars on Outlook - 2 businesses and 1 personal. Can I sync only 1 calendar to the iPad?

Does what browser I use make any difference to all of this? Internet Explorer vs. Firefox?

I've also considered biting the bullet and buying an exchange server service like GoDaddy for $10/month - does that take care of the sync problem? If so - how - it must be thru the 'cloud' somehow?

Thanks everyone!

Not sure how to use this forum, so I'll give this a shot. I have Windows 7 on a few machines. I have Outlook 2010 on those machines. I just bought an Iphone 4S as a replacement for my Blackberry. Now I can't sync my outlook. I am trying Icloud, but when I install, the selections for calender, contacts and To Do list all are greyed out. I can't find any substantive discussion on the internet that relates to this problem. As I write, I'm uninstalling my Blackberry software in the hopes that will solve the problem. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?