iCloud and Office Mac 2011 sync

Well this is all sorts of maddening! My wife and I, after 25 years on PCs, decided, with the 3 iPads, the couple of iPhones, the Apple TV and the iTunes library, to finally make the transition over. We both have consulting businesses.

So we take our PCs to the store. Mind you, since they are PCs, they have been daily nightmares, and we were good and ready to switch.

So we are advised to buy two 27" iMacs, and Office 2011 for the Mac. It has been nothing but a nightmare using Office. It constantly freezes, is buggy as all **** -- as though I never left the PC world.

Now I hear, that we, as mobile professionals, cannot properly sync our calendars among our devices unless I gather we ditch the both Microsoft entirely? If we want to use iCloud -- a service that I paid two additional upgrades for not three weeks after we bought the iMACs -- I have to use Mac apps only?

The Apple store should not be selling this MS crap to their customers, then have Apple fanboy RTFM jerks say, 'you're fault. You didn't know what you are doing.' What IS happening is as old as the computer industry -- why should I help my competitor by developing my code to his standards? Guess who gets caught in the middle? -- People who rely upon their computers to work, which today is most of us.

Sick of PC crap. Here's to the Cloud! And Apple, arrogant much? Geez.

Wiredtowns wrote:

If we want to use iCloud -- a service that I paid two additional upgrades for not three weeks after we bought the iMACs

iCloud is free.

You can sync Outlook calendar to iCal and Outlook contacts to Address book and they will sync to iCloud.
Then continue to use Outlook for both and the data will be sync'd automatically.

Lion upgrade wasnt, and that was troubling so soon after purchase.

As to syncing between the contacts and address book, I had to shut that off after it kept duplicating and reduplicating. 217,000 contacts! Outlook froze of course, as did address book.

I will try opening that can of worms again, but am not looking forward to it.

If it is duplicating items, make sure they are not selected to also sync via iTunes.

Select the device in iTunes, click the Info tab and deselect everything. This will stop syncing contacts, notes, calendars, etc. directly from the computer (since they are also being sync'd via iCloud).

FYI: If your Macs came with Snow Leopard 10.6 and purchased them after June 6th, Lion is free.

Well I've unleashed syncing again between Outlook and iCal/Address Book on both machines, have two iPads and an iPhone on iCloud now along with the iMacs.

If there are no runaway duplications freezing machines and all devices sync, it will be a good day indeed.

FIngers crossed.

BTW how is Lion free? Is there a coupon? No one said anything about redeeming that when we bought them Sept 28th. I only chose to upgrade to Lion through iTunes when I saw iCloud was live. We really needed a cure to all the problems we were having porting over our data -- a task btw that the Apple Store would not touch because one of our computers crashed and we had to use an external hard drive -- during our first couple of weeks of ownership.

Please tell me then how do we get reimbursed for something we have no coupon for, were not told about, and was asked to pay for via iTunes.

Lion is not free, iCloud is free, 2 different things.

Lion was released on 20 July. On 28 Sept, (depending on where you purchased your Mac), it should have had it preinstalled.

See this -> http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/

Check that page and call Apple (800-APL-CARE (800-275-2273) to see about a reimbursement.

The plot thickens. So how does one synchronize so that Outlook, iCal, the Address Book, and iCloud all sync, or can I assume that Apple sold me a useless piece of Microsoft crap (Mac for Office, two copies for two machines), and is blaming Microsoft for not adhering to standards?

So how does one synchronize so that Outlook, iCal, the Address Book, and iCloud all sync

You can't, until Microsoft supports CalDAV and CardDAV in Outlook.

can I assume that Apple sold me a useless piece of Microsoft crap

If you said you needed something to edit PC Word, Excel & PowerPoint documents, then that is what they will have sold you - and in which case, it's not useless.

blaming Microsoft for not adhering to standards?

That is the reason for why Outlook for Mac doesn't sync with iCloud (or any other CalDAV calendar system).

I was sold two copies of Office 2011 for the Mac at an Apple store as part of a $5000 purchase (two iMacs). Outlook was the main reason. It's the mail client after all.

Face it. Apple, in cheerfully selling a Microsoft POS, did me a huge disservice. This was the Apple's Business Group as well. They should have known better.

I want Apple to reimburse me for what is worse than useless as software. It's your position that people should know what you know, caveat emptor and all that. Well Apple should have known. Outlook for the Mac has been crash prone, duplicating calendars, contacts. It's like I never left the PC world. Its quality as a software product is well known to anyone who sells it. I was hoping that iCloud would clean this up. Oh well.

Maybe Gmail and Google Docs is really the way to go.

I was sold two copies of Office 2011 for the Mac at an Apple store as part of a $5000 purchase (two iMacs).

They wouldn't've sold you them unless you said you wanted them, or needed functionality they provide. And surely, if Apple started adding stuff to your bill you weren't sure if you needed, you would question it?

Outlook was the main reason. It's the mail client after all.

What do you mean by "It's the mail client"? Mac OS X includes perfectly capable email and calendar applications, which are fully compatible with iCloud, without any additional purchase, so I can't see any reason why Apple sold you Office, unless you specifically said you wanted Outlook, Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Maybe Gmail and Google Docs is really the way to go.

Or, here's a thought, if you want to use iCloud, just use the applications that are adverised as working with it, and came with your Macs?

We asked to be migrated from PCs, which we had been using all our lives, to Macs. I said we want 'a clean break.' This was the package they, as part of the business sales group, offered us. We did not ask for Office 2011 for the Mac. Wouldn't have known to. I was in their hands.

All we asked was that the outlook data files and Office documents be migrated from the PCs to the Macs. Does this necessarily require purchasing Office, or could this doc/data migration be done without it?

I realize that Mac has its own mail client. I meant that its importance outweighs anything else in that suite by a good margin.

We came as small business owners, and had been up until that point very happy Apple customers. iPhones, iPads, iPods, Nanos, Apple TV. This experience was very sloppy. In the end, I even had to do the data importation myself. The geniuses at the store were having trouble. PST files are awful things to deal with.

We were also told we would get Lion for free, were never told that we had to register for that, I ended up buying Lion OS X for both machines because with all the duplication/sync issues I was having on both machines -- weeks of it -- I thought iCloud would solve them. So now I am tracking down invoice numbers so that Apple can reimburse me.

In the end, I agree with you -- the best solution is not to involve Outlook at all and just use Apple products. So again, if purchasing Office for the Mac was necessary to migrate the docs and data and use them on the new machine, I can live with that, and never ever touch another Microsoft product again if I can help it. I do have some Excels, Words, and Powerpoints archived on the Mac, but it's Google Docs for me now.

I think the best way to look at it is that every platform wants to own you entirely, whether its Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. Customers are often caught in that crossfire.