How to sync Outlook 2010 Contact Groups to my iPad and iPhone

Did you get very far with this enquiry?

I have the same problem trying to sync distribution lists created in MS Outlook. Also the alternative of creating the same distribution lists using the basic mail program supplied with I-Pad seems impossible.

Ideas welcomed

OK I agree with you on disabling the i-tunes sync and successfully synced my contacts from Outlook to i-cloud and hence on to my i-pad contacts app. Grouping doesn't quite work like distribution lists, I now have a 'plus' sign that allows me to see groups select one and then to select from withn that group. It is a step backwards in that I cannot set default e-mail addresses for contacts or use a "Select All" option. Also you can only set up groups in i-cloud, they are read only on the i-pad

I now appear to have created two problems, Outlook has lost all of my contacts and I cannot get outlook calendar to sync with Google calendar. I tried this morning to download vcf cards but the select all option in i-cloud export files doesn't seem to work as you would imagine it to.

I'll spend a coiple of hours this afternoon trying to resolve these new problems, but if you encountered similar drop me a note.

Dave

Onward & upward

When the contact address cards were synced to iCloud it copied all entries but didn't change the view in Outlook so that it appeared that all address cards had vanished.

The address cards are still there but you need to go to Outlook contacts screen, click on the left hand navigation bar and you should see a directory tree that by default is looking at a blank contents folder, all of the i-cloud folders and group folder options are subfolders, click on i-cloud and you are using Outlook to view the i-cloud contents. You can manage the address cards from Outlook and refresh i-cloud accordingly

Sort out the Google calandar sync issue now.

Dave

Timothy,

Finally got my head around syncing all calendars across different platforms. Once iCloud is set up and outlook is displaying the correct calandars it is possible to enter an event in Outlook calendar, the event then syncs via I tunes to the I pad. The I pad is set to show both pc and I cloud calendar events, enter an event on I pad and after a short delay the I cloud calandar is updated and this flows out to other supported devices.

Distribution lists for e mail. Load the windows control panel into your MS browser and from the control panel you can create groups that can be used In a similar but not so helpful a way as distribution lists

It would be easier if Apple could get there head around providing a good standard e-mail program with associated contact list that can be organised into distribution lists , groups, categories, likes and so on.

It's a workaround and only manual. I copied my icloud contacts back into my "contacts" folder in Outlook 2010 My Contacts, and it repopulated the groups in there. I can access them for email, etc. BUT they have to be edited manually, will not sync with icloud contacts.

It is clunky, but functional, if you remember to manually add in Outlook if you modify in icloud.

I find it interesting that the customer is left with such an obvious and significant shortcoming because neither Apple or Microsoft chooses to address this issue. An obvious CUSTOMER service descrepancy.

Mac solution. No idea if works on PC:

Work Around:

On your mac:

1. Open a new email

2. Insert name of an existing group into one of the "To" fields as usual.

3. Highlight all the resulting names in the "To" entry

[Highlight first name, and while holding shift, highlight last name and all will highlight[]

4. Copy (Command C) the highlighted emails

5. Paste (Command V) nto a pages document

6. Remove the name and anything else preceeding the first < and also the first < of only the first entry whixh will look like this:

joe@gmail.com>,

7. Remove the > of the last email which will look like this:

, Jane Doe <jane@gmail.com

8. Copy the entire altered list from the pages document

9, Go to Contact Book and click + to add a new entry

10.. Name the entry (XXX Group for iPad) or whatever you wish to call it

11. Paste all the copied altered list into any one of the email entry spaces

12. Click on "Done"

13. Create new email On iPad and click on + in any one of the "To" lines and search for "XXX Group for iPad" You cannot just key in XXX Group for iPad!!!!!!!, you must use + contact search.

14. Enter the selected iPad contact group into the "To" line.

15. All the entries will now appear in the "To" line and you are good to go.

Adding or deleting email addresses from the iPad group:

Easiest: Alter the original mac group in the usual way and repeat steps 1-14 above. It seems impossible to edit within the emai line of the iPad contact entry.

Rediculously simple once figured out.

Happy emailling, but please send Bcc so that you don't spread your groups' email addresses all over the internet for spam, viruses, and other unwanted emails. Be considerate and ask your recipients to notifiy you if they wish to be deleted from the lists you compose.

@Robert_J

Thanks for the steps.

You may be interested to know that there is an easy way to edit the group once you have copied it to your device, if you have the MailShot Pro app. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailshot-pro-group-email-done/id445996226?ls=1&mt =8)

Enter "MailShot Group" into the organisation field of the contact you created, then simply create a new group in MailShot (with a different name) and add this contact to it using the blue +. You can now easily update or edit the group as though you created it in MailShot.

I hope this helps

Peter

Soluble.

Disclosure I am the developer of MailShot and may benefit from its sale.

one more tip-

For that to work, you need to have pasted the email string into the "Work" field of the contact you created.

i work distribution lists in outlook 2007 by creating one as normal then dagging it into icloud contacts. works for me