iPhone Sync - How to tell iTunes which Outlook Data File to use? (Personal or Exchange)

I had the same issue, and I found THE FIX!

On your PC, go to Control Panel > Mail 32-Bit > Data Files: then set the pst file as the default!

Don't bother creating a second profile...you can do the above fix and then your Personal folder will be synced with your phone. The iPhone can automatically sync the Exchange folders you want without using iTunes (On your phone: Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > What you've named your Exchange e-mail account )

I know how aggrivating this issue is, but I swear it's working for me.

I have an .ost file for my Exchange and a .pst for Personal. I checked the settings of each account (CP > Mail > Data Files > Settings (while highlighting the file). My .pst file just has a General tab: 2 options - Change Password and Compact Now. The .ost file has 4 tabs: General, Advanced, Security, and Connection.

My settings are:

General: When starting: Automatically detect connection state

Advanced: Cashed Exchange Mode Settings: Use Cached Exchange Mode (checked) > Download shared folders (checked)(Download Public Folder Favorites remains unchecked)

Mailbox Mode: Outlook is running in Unicode mode against Microsoft Exchange

Security > Encryption: Encrypt data between Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange

Security > Logon network security: Negotiate Authentication

Connection: LAN

Outlook Anywhere: Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP

Are we identical so far?

Bookham,

iTunes will always use your default email account which is set in Outlook.

The confusion above comes from trying to change the default data file not the account.

Please do not try to change default data file for your email accounts as it will cause more issues.

So the solution for you is to forget the Data file tab in account settings and go to Accounts tab.
Please change the default account from Exchange to your POP.

You do not have to make your pst default as it attached to your POP account so both are default now and i Tunes will read from them not the Exchange.

Hope it makes sense but please do post if you have further problems with it.

I'd like to know if that works for you, Bookham...my default e-mail account is set in Account Settings to my Exchange e-mail account; however, by changing the default in Data Files to my pst file, iTunes is syncing my personal contacts and calendar, not Exchange.

Again, my default e-mail account is my Exchange e-mail, but iTunes is NOT syncing with the Exchange Account. It syncs with the .pst file I told it to.

Bookham,

I can tell you how to make pst file default - but this will be very wrong think to do. You files from the Exchange will be downloaded to the pst and wiped from the Exchange. This is a reason for the Exchange ost file witch is just cache unlike pst which is email storage.

So here you go.

the reason why Exchange 2007 does not like your pst and will not use it for delivery as default is that it was created in older version of Outlook and has diffrenet encoding text ANSI with limit of 2GB.

You will need to convert it to the newer pst unicode format.

You can follow the seteps here:

http://www.datanumen.com/aor/convert-ansi-to-unicode.htm

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a good practice. Once your ost file becomes default. Exchange will deliver all future and past email items to it. This means they will be gone from the exchange and if youuse another computer or device which you use to connect to the Exchange server you will render them empty. It is like converting Exchange account into POP.

So there you go.

Coming back to the orginal question / issue you will be better of by creating second profile in your Outlook and move your Exchange account there.

Let me know if there is anything else I can help with.

Hi, I have the same issue. My default outlook file is located on D:/... for ease of backing up all my data. So now I want to point iTunes to this location. I am assuming it goes to the default C:/ location. I am running Windows 7 professional 64bit.

Please can you give me input about how to create a smooth sync between outlook and itunes?

Thanks.

Same problem then Mr. Standworth.

Solution in sight without the "donation ware" thingy?

I'm wasting my time with such annoying, stupid things. Who will pay us for this!?

Ok people, I manage to do this fix.

I am using the latest version of Itunes, 11.0.3, and Outlook 2010.

Iphone 4s using iOS 6.1.3

I have been using 2 POP accounts and 1 IMAP Account.

Recently, I have migrated my IMAP account to Office 365.

To avoid having to re-do all the customization, I decided to simply 'add' an exchange-office 365 profile into my current DEFAULT OUTLOOK PROFILE where all my POP and IMAP accounts are found.

All is well, until I realized, my default Outlook data file is now switched to the Exchange 2013/2010 OST file side where Office 365 account resides. Now I don't have any calendar or Contacts in that OST file. Therefore when Itunes launched and perform a sync, all my contacts and calendar items were..zapped.

I did some search and found this post, and I knew some of you encountered problems.

Solution:

1. Untick the sync in Itunes for Outlook. All my contacts and calendar on the phones will be deleted. Better that way since i don't want to end up with duplicates.Just proceed to REMOVE.
2. Note that you need to manually record any new items you've just created on the phone ever since you realized that your contacts and calendars were missing on the phone.
3. Do a sync and check the phone to see that all info are 'GONE'.
4. Closed both outlook 2010 and itunes.
5. Go to Control Panel > Mailbox (32-bit) > Click Show Profile
6. I only had 1 profile, so choose the default profile (usually named OUTLOOK)
7. Click Properties
8. Click Data Files
9. Make sure that the old PST file is ticked. Note that it should currently be the Exchange Office 365 OST file. When I choose my old PST file, it gave me a warning which i noted, and proceed.
10. Note that emails for office 365 will still be delivered to the Office 365 OST file because in Accounts List, the default mail delivery folder (Properties > Accounts > Email Accounts > select the Office 365 acc > you'll see that the New messages will be delivered to the OST file.
11. Proceed to apply, then close everything.
12. IMPT: OPEN OUTLOOK FIRST, this will set the Outlook Data File configuration right with the PST file being the default instead of the Office 365 OST.
13. After Outlook is opened, verify that Calendar and Contacts are there and well.
14. Proceed to open Itunes right after that. It doesn't matter whether Outlook is opened or closed.
15. Go to the Iphone - Info tab, then tick the sync with Outlook for both Calendar and Contacts...

Now you can breathe and relax. 🙂

This advice was SO HELPFUL!!! I had a very similar problem. I added a new, second, Outlook account, then later deleted that account. When you do this Outlook seems to arbitrarily change the default account data file. So iTunes starts syncing to the new default Outlook data file. Unfortunatey, this often appears like Sync is not working at all. So you end up going down a blind alley trying to figure out why Sync is not working. In this case, Sync was working, just with the wrong Outlook account/data file.

After spending 3 hours with 3 different Apple support folks, I searched and found this advice and your solution worked perfectly!

Thanks so much!

Mark

I had the same issue, and I found THE FIX!

On your PC, go to Control Panel > Mail 32-Bit > Data Files: then set the pst file as the default!

Don't bother creating a second profile...you can do the above fix and then your Personal folder will be synced with your phone. The iPhone can automatically sync the Exchange folders you want without using iTunes (On your phone: Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > What you've named your Exchange e-mail account )

jokejong:

Thank you so much for this post. I didn't have the problem with an Exchange OST file but I did have 2 different email accounts, with separate PSTs, in Outlook. Everything was working fine until I switched from using my laptop as my primary computer and moved everything back to my desktop. I didn't have iTuens on the desktop PC. After I installed it and connected my iPhone for the first time the wrong Outlook calendar and contacts began syncing. Your post told me how to fix it very quickly. I may have gotten there on my own eventually (I did desktop support before I retired 2 years ago) but your solution surely saved me lots of time! 🙂 THANKS!