iCloud and Office Mac 2011 sync

Here are some posts from the syncmate website, there are hundreds of users for whom it does not work, this is just a sample, check for yourself.

And so on, go to the site and see the rest.

What we have here is a terrible product that does not work for most of the posters on the SyncMate user forums, some have been waiting 8 months for a fix, others even longer. Eltima's return and refund policy is onerous and requires that the user (you) prove that the software is at fault (which is exactly what bver77 said earlier in this post) at least he is reading his script.

Do not buy this, it is clearly a scam.

And if you take the free option Eltima reserve the right to sell/trade or otherwise disseminate your information

(That's what "you are the product" means bver77)

Here's another poor chap who used SyncMate, didn't work. But he is lucky, he only had to wait a week before asking for help again. Meanwhile he waits

bver77, your instructions are very clear and well explained. I've been working on this for a total of 20 hours. No less.

I've had all kinds of issues since starting to use SyncMate, but at this juncture, my calendars are finally in perfect shape (color-coded/no duplicates) in iCloud and iCal (as a "On My Mac" calendar) and I need them in Outlook! I don't want them to all sync into Outlook as one calendar/color - I want each calendar to come in as it is shown in iCloud (various color-coded calendars for each member of my family, etc)...

I have syncing for icloud turned off in my preferences.

Your steps above are great had I found them last night at this time when my outlook calendar was in great shape. However, in the course of the day, I've created, deleted, recolored and done about everything possible to make a total mess out of my calendars. I can't give up now. This HAS TO WORK!!!

Any suggestions for getting this done once and for all!?!

Thank you!

Dianna

bver77, Thank you so much. This may also be the best solution for printing reminders. Reminders doesn't allow you to print. The only way to print is to copy and paste to another application which is OK if you only have one or two lists. 😢 Outlook Tasks has many ways of printing. 🙂. I have push email from Outlook exchange at work, and for lists I create within the push account I can print task lists easily from work. But those don't show up on my IMAC.

Hi bver77,

I was so excited to see your instructions on how to sync Outllook for Mac with iCal. I desperately want to have my work calendar events show up on my iphone.

After other instructions, I downloaded SyncMate Plus, because I would like the reminders as well as the events to show up on my phone. After I choose Add Connection, and then choosing Cloud Calendars, I need to choose a Remote Server. iCloud is not listed as a remote server choice, only Yahoo, Fruux, Memotoo and Add Server Manually.

I tried to connect manually through a web search on the icloud server number, but no luck.

Any clue on how to get this set up? Please help. I am desperate for a solution here. I switched everything to MacMail and did not care for it at all. Switched back to Outlook for Mac and upgraded to Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.3, and now I can't sync and it is so frustrating!

Thanks.

Why persist in using mutually incompatible systems. Outlook for Mac and iCloud don't function together (Microsoft's decision by the way) How much of your life do you want to spend trying to get around that?

Mac Mail has nothing to do with your work calendar, obviously it would fail, it's a Mail client, not a Calendar.

I have exactly the same problem. I use Outlook 2011 Mac for my email (I am a consultant and have several of my own IMAP accounts plus Exchange accounts with clients on their corporate systems, and need everything in one place). I often receive calendar invites from my clients which come directly into Outlook and go to the Outlook calendar. I also greatly prefer the Outlook calendar to iCal as it is incredibly frustrating to try to read anything in the Notes field of iCal entries due to the default font and lack of formatting. I often have to fish out teleconference numbers and passwords, etc on the fly and this is MUCH easier in Outlook.

HOWEVER, I also need all my calendar entries to be on my iphone and be accurate. iCloud is the best way to do this, and the iPhone Calendar app is quite acceptable. Getting everything to sync up since Mountain Lion is near impossible as other posters have noted. If there was a third-party calendar program for the mac that could grab entries from my Outlook calendar as well as iCloud (since I also need to enter appointments from my iPhone while out of the office and have them appear on my mac) and sync everything up that would solve the problem. Anyone know of such a beastie?

Outlook 2011 is not compatible with iCloud's DAV services (Contacts and Calendars) Many fanciful methods have been suggested but none work. Until Microsoft give Outlook for Mac the same capabilities as Outlook for Windows this is unlikely to change.

Unfortunately Outlook is also incompatible with most other online services, except for Exchange (wonder why) and is nearing the end of its life. Maybe the next version of Outlook for Mac will get itself updated to take advantage of the services offered by Apple, Microsoft already know how to do it, witness the fact that the Windows version is iCloud compatible.

But that's Microsoft for you.

Take a look at Soho Organizer, as a (iCloud compatible) replacement for Outlook it may fill your needs. Apples own apps (Mail, Contacts and Calendar) are fully compatible with iCloud and also with Exchange, they will work, whether you like them is another matter, one for you to decide.

Thanks - am fully and painfully aware of the lack of current Microsoft support in its Mac products for DAV. MS may fix that tomorrow or never, of course. For business reasons I need to use Outlook, had given Mail a fair try but it was completely insufficient for what I need to do. What I would like to find is a stand-alone calendar program that can sync or otherwise get the calendar information from Outlook and do the same for iCloud/DAV. That way I can continue to use my iPhone to add and view calendar entries while out of the office, and have something on my Mac that is fully synced with iPhone and Outlook. No need for iCal in that scenario.

For other business reasons I may in the future utilize a hosted Exchange solution but that is not my situation today. Good ones are not cheap.

If SOHO Organizer can do this for my calendar I would be interested in checking it out, but I still need to use Outlook for email (and hence its calendar, since that is how invites come in to my system and I need to do 3rd-party organized telecons all the time). Soho Organizer looks like an expensive solution though - do you have direct experience with it doing what I have asked about, eg taking over the calendar function with full Outlook and iCloud source inputs?

I have experience of Soho, it does what it says it does very well. (It does not support MS Exchange however) There is a 30 day free trial, why not try it?

http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohoorganizer.html

There is also BusyCal, full support for iCloud and Exchange (version 2007 or later)

http://www.busymac.com/busycal/

Csound1 wrote:

Why persist in using mutually incompatible systems.

Why persist on basically calling people stupid and providing no value at all? It's obvious the product can work - but it's not easy to get working. Apparently you were in the camp that didn't have the wehrewithall to make it work. There's no shame in that. But to continually berate people adds NOTHING positive to the discussion.

And for the record, I have set up three people to work with SyncMate based on the earlier work doen in this thread. Yup, I had some trials getting it up and running - but at the end of the day it DID work. I have no problem with you sharing other products that have worked for you, but ENOUGH of the bashing of something that YOU couldn't get to work. Just because YOU and maybe a few others couldn't get it to work doesn't mean it's valuless for everyone.

Sheesh - nothing more annoying than Internet busybodies that aside from not adding value, have to resort to character assasination (accusing people of being paid shills - really?) because somene dare hold a different opinion than they do... pathetic!

Eric Eskam wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

Why persist in using mutually incompatible systems.

Why persist on basically calling people stupid and providing no value at all? It's obvious the product can work - but it's not easy to get working.

The products WILL NOT do what you want, it's not that it is not easy, it is that it is not possible.

It's your time to waste and I am not going to change your mind on that so, good luck with it.

FYI, I did not call you or anyone else Stupid, and I don't appreciate you putting your words in my mouth, clear.

Here's the deal - this DOES NOT WORK IF YOU ARE USING AN EXCHANGE CALENDAR going from Exchange -> iCal. I strongly suspect that this is what Csound1 was running into. Exchange will show up on iCal, but not on iCloud. They are totally incompatible and will NOT sync online.

A lot of people have been wondering for a long time when this will get fixed, but I don't think Microsoft particularly wants to fix this issue.

I would estimate that Microsoft pretty much owns corporate email. They would prefer to force corporations to deploy Windows phones rather than iPhones. Or, they just don't give a crap about this puny number of Apple users. Apple, on the other hand does support Exchange in iOS, so there is a solution.

So isn't the answer simply ot use the Apple products, like Mail & Calendar or your iPhone to add an MS Exchange account than it is to try to use Outlook and jack it up to read an iCloud account?

I disagree with your analysis.

Before iCloud, Outlook for Mac synched perfectly with Calendar and Address Book. (OK, sometimes you got thousands of duplicate calendar entries, but aside from that, it worked). Then using USB, you could sync your phone and everything was fine.

Once Apple implemented iCloud, it stopped working. Frankly, I don't see why. It seems to me that if Apple wanted, Sync Services could still link Outlook to Calendar and Address Book and those Apple apps could sync to iCloud.

So I don't necessarily blame Microsoft for this. And when this did "work", I definitely blame Apple for the thousands of duplicate entries, which happened to many users when synching. There was absolutely no reason for that because each entry contains a database ID. The system should easily be able to identify the dups.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated over the fact that in spite of the addition of new features, Apple keeps taking steps backwards when they implement new OS versons or new versions of apps. The other thing I find is that Apple's instructions and screen messages, which they really used to refine to make their systems easy to use and understand have become just as incomprehensible as the idiotic messages that Windows provides. And I'm a techie who generally understands this stuff - imagine how neophytes feel.

In addition, the whole iCloud/Apple ID signup process was a freaking nightmare, resulting in IDs that didn't work anymore, etc. And the fact that you can't combine IDs to consolidate accounts is also ridiculous.

There are still reasons to use Outlook over Apple's apps, especially if you're a business person, but even if you're not, the Outlook integration is better between email, calendar and contacts. As far as I'm concerned, this worked before iCloud and there's absolutely no reason why it still shouldn't be working.

To add insult to injury, after upgrading to 10.9 Mavericks, Excel now crawls. For me personally, I'm not interested in a Mac that only runs Apple branded applications. I've used Apple computers since 1980, but they're coming very close to losing me as a customer. But they might not care, because Mac sales are now such a small part of Apple's revenues, they may only want to be a Pad/Phone company.