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Level 1

0 points

ICloud not syncing with Outlook 2011 using Lion

My problem is bizarre and the more I seem to troubleshoot the worse it gets. Since I only just bought my MacBook Pro, Lion was already installed. I had an old MacBook and the transition was seemless until ICloud came along yesterday morning. I signed up of course, as I knew I would eventually be forced to anyway and transitioned from MeMobile. Now I have problems. No sync between my Outlook 2011 and Address Book and ICloud. I have been trying to find a solution and have tried the following:

1. Deleted all the contacts in Address Book and reimported them from Outlook. This worked fine and Address Book synced with ICloud. However, when I made changes in Outlook, they would not sync with Address Book and thus not sync with ICloud. The reverse was also true, i.e. changes and additions in ICloud or Address Book do not sync with Outlook.

2. I shut down my computer and restarted. Then I reset the sync services. The result: All my Outlook Categories and Contacts appeared in Address Book along with all the contacts in ICloud. When I click on all contacts, I get duplicates of course. The interesting thing though is the contacts in "All on My Mac" tab in Address Book do not match those in ICloud and ICloud won't sync between the two. So as a result, the problem above persists. I still do not get any syncing between Outlook and ICloud/Address Book. (This by the way was the case before I deleted everything from Address Book and imported everthing from Outlook......so I am exactly in the same place I was before I started troubleshooting........going in circles at this point in time).

By the way, everything works fine for e-mails. However similar problem with ICal which has also doubled up on all info which was in ICloud and Outlook. I had a memobile account previous so ICloud just imported all that info I assume. Also, everthing works fine between my IPhone and ICloud. This is clearly an Outlook/Address Book Syncing problem.

Any suggestions???

MacBook Pro, iOS 5, Outlook 2011 and Address Book

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 3:31 AM

113 replies

paula256

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2011 6:45 AM in response to tamanacoazur

i am having problems too. i have imac, ipad and iphone. use outlook on my imac. i cloud is not syncing mail with outlook. it seems like icloud does not recognize outlook mail and calendar. it only looks for mac mail, ical, and address book. also icloud deleted my outlook calendar and now it only exists in ical. uuggh. any suggestions?

Oct 20, 2011 6:47 AM in response to paula256

Exactly the same happened to me (re: iCloud deleting my Outlook calendar and only being able to view it in iCal). Any help would be great?

tamanacoazur Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2011 7:13 AM in response to tamanacoazur

Outlook e-mail actually syncs perfectly for me with ICloud (thank God!). If you are having problem with mails, it must be because your accounts in Outlook are not set up correctly. Basically you have to "push" all your e-mails to your "me" (ICloud) account and then set up Outlook with your "me" account. You do not have to get "Mac Mail" into the picture which is the reason why it probably works so well.

ICloud and the Outlook Calendar are a disaster. I am not a programmer but I think the interface between ICal and Outlook is the root of problem. With e-mail, Outlook and ICloud sync directly. With both ICal and IAddress, ICloud must first sync with ICal and IAddress and then ICal and IAddress syncs with Outlook causing all kinds of havoc between the two, double entrie, deleted entries and no syncing of new entries at all!!! If there were some way to have Outlook sync directly with Outlook and leave Ical out of the picture, we would be better off I think. Maybe there is a way to do this, but I have not figured it out yet.

At least Addressbook and Outlook are not causing any problems......in part I think because they are just not syncing together. Once again the problem is between Address book and Outlook and NOT address book and Icloud. Those two sync just fine new entries, changes, deletions. But they do not up date these changes in Outlook. And vice versa.....Outlook does not update any addtions, changes, deletions to Address book. As a result, I am using Outlook as my default for both calendar and address book. I have shut office sync for these two and ICloud as it causes more problems. With reconnect once I get confirmation that MIcrosoft has does something about this problem.

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Oct 20, 2011 7:28 AM in response to tamanacoazur

Why do you expect iCloud to seamlessly integrate with a Microsoft product that is already notorious for not being compatible with much? Even if Microsoft wanted that to happen - and I'm not sure why they would - they would have to issue an update for Outlook to work with iCloud for more than e-mail. I mean, come on, even Apple had to release a slew of updates for their own software to make it work with iCloud!

As to whether there are any solutions, you may have better luck posting to a forum where everyone is using Outlook for the Mac, like the Office for Mac forums. After all, your problems are Outlook issues, not iCloud issues, from the sounds of it.

tamanacoazur Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2011 10:06 AM in response to thomas_r.

Thanks for your suggestions......this has already been done and I note, no satisfactory answer has yet been provided. This is not an ICloud problem in my opinion. This is an interface problem between ICal and Address Book and Outlook. I repeat e-mail with ICloud and Outlook works seamlessly but this is because Outlook does NOT need to interface with MacMail.

Oct 20, 2011 10:30 AM in response to Csound1

I had Outlook>Apple sync problems since the day that I installed MS Office 2011 in Snow Leopard. In fact, I could not get Outlook to download my Apple Mail from Mobile Me. After some frustration I called the Mobile Me folks and they told me that Apple Mail and Outook 2011 were not compatible.

I could not get contacts or calendar to sync with Outlook in Snow Leopard and did not try in Lion. The sync of calendars and contacts worked between my Apple (Address Book and iCal) when I used MS Office 2008 and Entourage. It went away with MS Office 2011. The other incompatiliby was wtih Adobe Acrobat. After upgrade to MS Office 2011, I could no longer send an Adobe pdf file via email from the application. In restrospect, I would have been far better off just buying the version of MS Office 2011 without Outlook and continued to use Entourage. That said, I don't know if there are Entourage/Lion issues.

There is an even longer list of frustration about Outlook 2011 on the Microsoft community list.

I am holding off a bit on jumping in to iCloud until it settles down. My initial effort to join iCloud was to syn my iPad calendar with iCloud and merge the two. I instantly got double calendar entries. After I chose not to merge, this was fixed.

I don't think this is a Lion issue.

Jay

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Oct 20, 2011 11:53 AM in response to Jay Kappmeier

Jay Kappmeier wrote:

I had Outlook>Apple sync problems since the day that I installed MS Office 2011 in Snow Leopard. In fact, I could not get Outlook to download my Apple Mail from Mobile Me. After some frustration I called the Mobile Me folks and they told me that Apple Mail and Outook 2011 were not compatible.

I could not get contacts or calendar to sync with Outlook in Snow Leopard and did not try in Lion. The sync of calendars and contacts worked between my Apple (Address Book and iCal) when I used MS Office 2008 and Entourage. It went away with MS Office 2011. The other incompatiliby was wtih Adobe Acrobat. After upgrade to MS Office 2011, I could no longer send an Adobe pdf file via email from the application. In restrospect, I would have been far better off just buying the version of MS Office 2011 without Outlook and continued to use Entourage. That said, I don't know if there are Entourage/Lion issues.

There is an even longer list of frustration about Outlook 2011 on the Microsoft community list.

I am holding off a bit on jumping in to iCloud until it settles down. My initial effort to join iCloud was to syn my iPad calendar with iCloud and merge the two. I instantly got double calendar entries. After I chose not to merge, this was fixed.

I don't think this is a Lion issue.

Jay

Been there, done that,

if you still have a copy of Entourage 2008 then install it and use it instead of Outlook, it works fine in Lion and is significantly better than Outlook, even if not as pretty.

Oct 20, 2011 11:58 AM in response to tamanacoazur

Yep, I am noticing the same thing. From my end, it is an Outlook<-->Address Book issue. iSync seems to work fine otherwise.

The question is, is this a Microsoft or Apple issue. Certainly hope it is an Apple fix, because Microsoft seems to take a long time to patch Outlook.

TonyK2

Level 1

4 points

Oct 20, 2011 4:05 PM in response to tamanacoazur

In the account settings I unchecked: "Always use secure password."

Oct 21, 2011 2:01 AM in response to tamanacoazur

I have the same problem in addition to the Calendar sync. as well. 😟

Oct 22, 2011 6:13 PM in response to thomohawk85

all I wanted (for now) was to be able to sync contacts between address book and outlook. it was working FINE and I was giving it a few days before making the jump. what a disaster. even something so basic as birthdays in iCal aren't showing up in the cloud...

Microsoft has a team of people dedicated to Apple/Mac (Excel and Word were products for the Mac initially) and despite what anyone may think, the two companies did work together constantly. For something as basic as this to slip past both MS and Apple (especially after such fanfare) is really disappointing and frustrating.

Oct 22, 2011 6:38 PM in response to thomohawk85

It sure appears that Apple intends to support Outlook in Windows, but not Outlook 2011, with iCloud.

For now, you can always keep your email, contacts, and calendars synchronized between your Macs and iOS devices by getting an Exchange account.

You can get an Exchange account on a server running Kerio Connect (through hosting companies like GetSync'd) or by subscribing to Microsoft's Office 365 for $6 per month.

Oct 23, 2011 9:35 AM in response to Csound1

I am wary of going back to Entourage because of the message database. I think it had to be "upgraded" for Outlook 2011 and I am not sure I can go backwards.

Oct 23, 2011 9:46 AM in response to Mitchell Smith

I have a related sync story about MS Office and the Address book. Th short version is:

One day all my wife's contacts disappeared from her iPhone

A check of her iMac showed an empty address book.

I went back about nine days into Time Machine to recover the contact info then called Apple

Something apparently emptied her address book and then shen it synced to Mobile Me it pulled out everything there as well then zeroed out the contact sin her iPhone when she synced in iTunes.

Apple asked if I had Outlook on her iMac and yes I did.

The punch line here is the Apple tech claimed that, going back to MS Office 2008 and with MS Office 2011, when Microsoft issues updates (E.G. 12.3.xx or 14.1.xx) the updates could pull all the data from Address book and move it to Entourage or Outlook. I checked my log files and yes I applied an MS Office 2011 update around the time her contacts disappeard. The contacts on my iMac and iDevices were fine.

I agree that these large companies should work more closely together for the benefit of their customers. Together they account for almost all of the American calendar, contact, and mail sync traffic. Google is biting in to this some and could be more prominent if people like us become more frustrated.

Jay

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Oct 23, 2011 10:24 AM in response to Jay Kappmeier

If you already upgraded and failed to keep a backup copy prior to the upgrade you're right, it will be difficult to go back.

ICloud not syncing with Outlook 2011 using Lion