New iPhone 5 syncs contacts to Microsoft Exchange over the air?

Question

Level 1

23 points

New iPhone 5 syncs contacts to Microsoft Exchange over the air?

Just got a new iPhone 5. It's not syncing my contacts. I've tried everything I can find here. However, there's this one little difference. In iTunes, I'm being told that my contacts are being synced with Microsoft Exchange over the air. ***? I don't have Microsoft anything on my comptuer!

This is a new iPhone 5. I've imported all my contacts from my previous phone which has never been synced with anything. (Syncing didn't exist when I bought the phone.) I've switched all of the contanct information on, and ... nothing. I've tried syncing via iTunes. I've tried sycning via iCloud.

Any new additions I make will sync via icloud (or iTunes), but none of the old contact information will sync to my comptuer. I know it has something to do with the "syncing with Micorsoft Exchange" message, but I have no idea how or why it defaulted to that setting. How do I change it? How do I get my contacts to sync from my phone to my computer?

Thanks.

iPhone 5, iOS 6.0.2

Posted on Dec 28, 2012 6:43 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

randers4

Level 9

63,519 points

Dec 28, 2012 7:16 PM in response to inlimbo

This message is referring to and Exchange email account on your phone with Contacts syncing set to On. Check Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars to see if you have an exchange email account set up on your phone. (These are typically work-related email accounts). If you do, check the settings for this account to see if you have contacts syncing set to On.

Here's an example of what a gmail exchange account that offers contacts syncing looks like: http://support.google.com/a/users/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740&rd=1.

Reply

Answer 2

inlimbo Author

Level 1

23 points

Dec 28, 2012 8:51 PM in response to randers4

randers4,

Thank you for your reply. Strangely, the offending email account was the account set up at the store (not Apple store) for an iTunes account. I have no idea why they would have turned on the exchange sync in the fisrt place.

I now know how to turn off the exchange sync. However, I'm not given the option of keeping the contacts on my iPhone if I switch it off. It will delete all of my contacts. Is there a way to avoid this? I'm sure I read something in the discussions here, can you point me back in the right direction? The same thing is going to happen wiith my emails. Unfortunately, I have dozens of emails already...

Again, thanks for your help.

Reply

Answer 3

randers4

Level 9

63,519 points

Dec 28, 2012 9:00 PM in response to inlimbo

You're welcome. For you contacts, try backing them up with the app My Contacts Backup. This will back up your contacts as an attachment to an email that you send to your self. You can later open the email on your phone and tap the attachment to re-import your contacts. For your email, if you plan to continue using the account you could keep the account for email and just turn contacts syncing to off. Then go to Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars...in the Contacts section tap Default Account and choose your iCloud account as your default. Then tap the email attachment to import your contacts back to your phone, go to Settings>iCloud and turn Contacts to On and when prompted choose Merge to upload the contacts to your iCloud account.

Reply

Answer 4

inlimbo Author

Level 1

23 points

Dec 28, 2012 11:04 PM in response to randers4

Thank you.

I'll figure out the email stuff later. I think I'll be fine without the emails... Perhaps they'll be stored on the server and I can download them again if necessary...

This community is awesome!

Reply