Sync Services eliminated from Mavericks - can no longer sync contacts

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Level 1

30 points

Sync Services eliminated from Mavericks - can no longer sync contacts

I clearly made a big error updating to Mavericks. I only discovered after the installation that Mavericks no longer supports Sync Services, which was critical to my ability to sync my personal contacts and calendars to all of my devices. In the absence of restoring my computer back to Mountain Lion, I am wondering whether there is anything I can do, but I fear the incompatibilities are too great to surmount.

My work email, contacts, and calendar are on a 2003 Microsoft Exchange server, and I have no power to change that. That apparently means that the only Mac email client I can use to sync my work contacts and calendar is Microsoft Entourage 2008. (The email is less of a problem, as I believe I could access it through IMAP.) I had also been using Entourage for many years for my personal email, contacts, and calendar, so it has been nice having everything centralized in one program. To sync my personal contacts and calendar, I was using Sync Services to sync everything first with Apple's Address Book and iCal/Calendar, and then those were synced with my online Google account to serve the rest of my devices.

I had everything set up, as described above, to conveniently sync everything in all directions. Then came Mavericks and the unexpected loss of Sync Services. Now, Entourage 2008 is completely isolated from the outside world with regard to contacts and calendar events, and I believe the same would be true of the newer Outlook 2011. (I never even bothered to upgrade to Outlook 2011, because it apparently is not compatible with 2003 Exchange Server, so it would not have functioned with my work contacts and calendar.) Apple Mail is also apparently not compatible with 2003 Exchange Server. I tried DAVMail to serve as an intermediary to no avail.

Then, I thought, well, perhaps I could continue to use Entourage 2008 for work email, contacts, and calendar, and switch to Apple Mail, Address Book, and Calendar for my personal email, contacts, and calendar. That is not particularly convenient, but perhaps it would not be too bad. However, I cannot figure out how to transfer my hundreds of calendar events from Entourage 2008 to Apple Calendar. There is an "Import from Entourage" function in the Calendar program, but nothing ever gets imported. It will launch Entourage, if Entourage is not already running, and it will crash Entourage sometimes, but nothing ever gets imported.

I can also export my calendar events from Entourage in RGE format (some sort of archive format), and I could probably also get them into Outlook 2011 and then export them in OLM format. However, Calendar cannot handle either of those either. I am also not particularly impressed with the functionality of Calendar relative to Entourage/Outlook's calendar system.

So, now I am wondering whether my best option is to restore my computer to Mountain Lion and hope that my work will eventually change to a 2007 or newer version of Exchange Server. It seems that there are a lot more syncing options on the Windows side of things, as well, so I am thinking my next computer is going to be Windows, and I am due for a new one soon.

iMac (20-inch Mid 2007), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 27, 2013 1:49 AM

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Answer 1

Miska_FL

Level 2

390 points

Oct 27, 2013 1:53 AM in response to splinke

Sorry to hear about your troubles there with Mavericks... To restore it back did you perform a time machine backup of your system prior to the upgrade?

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Answer 2

splinke Author

Level 1

30 points

Oct 27, 2013 1:56 AM in response to Miska_FL

Yes, I did a Time Machine backup, so that is still an option. I would just prefer not to have to go through all of that, if there is a viable option. There are a ridiculous number of incompatibilites and a ridiculous level of complexity to something that seems so straight-forward.

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Answer 3

Miska_FL

Level 2

390 points

Oct 27, 2013 2:04 AM in response to splinke

If you boot into Internet Recovery (hold command + option + r when you hear the startup sound) > restore from time machine and use your latest backup that will restore your system to the same exact state it was prior to upgrade.

As far as viable option not unless exchange server upgrade is performed or you use Outlook Webapp instead.

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Answer 4

LalorBKK

Level 1

0 points

Oct 28, 2013 11:38 PM in response to Miska_FL

I have the same problem - on a smaller scale -

I performed a time machine backup of your system prior to the upgrade -

How do I now restore my ical & contacts from the time machine?

As soon as I switched everything to icloud, I lost all of my ical info from my laptop & across iphone/ ipad - everything has tripled and mashed up

Very frustrating

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Answer 5

Oct 29, 2013 5:45 PM in response to LalorBKK

Had the same above problem when I upgraded to Maverick, but I found a work around. Try opening Entourage and dragging each mail folder you have to your desktop. It will create a .mbox file which you can import to Maverick Mail. If you have subfolders, you will have to drag each folder seperately and later bring together in Mail.

I also was able able to get my Entourage calendar into Maverick Calendar by opening both and just dragging and dropping each event from one program calendar to the other. This was tedious, but I only went back a year and made sure the repeat items were set up so. Hope this helps somebody. I'm happy with Maverick and always wanted to ditch Entourage for smooth syncing reasons with my iPhone.

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Answer 6

jacobmei

Level 1

0 points

Oct 30, 2013 3:50 AM in response to splinke

I have the same problem too, My company use 2003 Microsoft Exchange server, and only Entourage 2008 can support it , sadly.

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Answer 7

K606

Level 1

4 points

Oct 30, 2013 5:25 AM in response to splinke

There are really only two things you can do. Restore OS 10.8 or switch to Windows 7 when you upgrade your computer. Many corporate IT departments now "tolerate" iPhones and iPad but unverified insecure cloud storage (read iCloud) of ANY company data is anathema to them. I do not see this changing soon. OS 10.9 offers a few tweaks to the OS that you can live without but crippling the sync services is something many cannot accept. Restoring to OS 10.8 is a lot of work and because of the age of your iMac you will have to go further back than 10.8 then upgrade to 10.8 in steps unless you made a back up prior to upgrading. Either way, set aside a few hours on the weekend. Windows 7 is a reasonable OS and you should still be able to find one as Microsoft has had the good business sense to keep supporting it fully. Providing you can live with Windows it is quicker in the short term and cheaper in the medium term than sticking with Apple.

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Answer 8

splinke Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 1, 2013 11:37 PM in response to Miska_FL

I restored to 10.8.5 using Time Machine. However, Time Machine immediately seemed to get confused and tried backing up my entire entire hard drive, even though I had just restored it and nothing had changed. This process went on for like six hours, and I was afraid to interrupt it. In the end, it failed, because the backup drive was too full. But it kept trying unsuccessfully to backup the whole thing, and I could not figure out a way to make it stop! Eventually, I had to reformat the backup drive and start over with a new backup, which took another eight hours.

I am going to buy a new computer in the next few months, because my current Mac is over five years old, but I will likely switch to Windows after 20 years of using a Mac at home. It saddens me a bit, and I know that my sync problem with Entourage/Outlook is probably mostly the fault of Microsoft. However, I must have compatibility with my system at work, and the simple fact is that is not possible on the Mac without jumping through hoops.

In addition, Apple presented Mavericks as a free upgrade in the App Store and promoted all of its alleged new features, but they did not list the things that had been removed (including the Sync Services functionality on which I depended). Given the widespread usage of Office for Mac, I would think it might have been good for them to reveal that broken functionality more prominently. Then, of course, there was the fiasco of trying to restore things back with Time Machine.

Sigh....

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Answer 9

splinke Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 1, 2013 11:40 PM in response to Dan Reiland

Dan Reiland, thanks for the feedback. My problem was with syncing my address book and calendar. I could access my mail using IMAP or DAVMail.

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Answer 10

splinke Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 1, 2013 11:45 PM in response to K606

K606, thanks for your feedback. Based on my recent problems with Mavericks and Time Machine, as well as ongoing compatibility frustrations, I will most likely be seeking out a Windows 7 replacement computer in the next few months. I think Microsoft has caught up with Apple in the OS arena, or perhaps Apple has regressed to Microsoft. In any case, I will enjoy the easier compatibility and lower price, although I will likely continue to have hiccups...just of a different flavor.

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Answer 11

splinke Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 1, 2013 11:56 PM in response to splinke

I should also mention that, for the past year, I have had a terrible time with Safari and Firefox getting bogged down. For example, I'll have, let's say, ten web pages open, and the computer goes to sleep. When it wakes up, a bunch of the pages become unresponsive. Eventually, the whole program and computer becomes non-responsive...with a spinning pinwheel and intensive hard drive access for hours at a time with the Activity Monitor indicating that the browser is taking up like 2 GB of virtual memory.

I have read about a lot of people running into this problem..."memory leaks" or something. However, nothing I have tried has fixed the issue. Perhaps reinstalling the entire OS would help, but that would be a major pain in the rear. I routinely have to Force Quit and/or restart the computer. I do not have this problem with Firefox or Internet Explorer on my work PC. I have been able to skirt the issue on my Mac with Google Chrome, which does not seem to be affected by it.

Anyway, this is another major reason why it is time to switch to Windows.

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Answer 12

jacobmei

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2013 9:16 PM in response to Dan Reiland

Thanks Dan Railand reply, It's work for me. now I can manualy sync Calendar ...

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Answer 13

Nov 4, 2013 9:30 PM in response to splinke

Sure. You can manually drag changed contacts and calendar events from Outlook to the desktop. Then import them into Contacts and Calendar. Then sync Contacts and Calendar via iCloud to your iPhone. Then repeat all of the above on a daily basis. Who among us has time to do all of the above? I thought that the whole point of personal computers and mobile devices was to make life easier rather than harder.

I can also do without food for a few weeks, do without sleep for a week or so, do without water for several days and hold my breath for a few minutes. I can balance myself on my head for a bit. None of the above are pleasant or practical.

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Answer 14

PGtech

Level 1

18 points

Nov 6, 2013 12:36 PM in response to splinke

Your problems with Outlook are less Apple's problems then they are your IT department's. Still running Exchange 2003? Patches ended in 2005, mainstream support ended in 2009 and extended support is ending in about six months. And installing an older version of Windows doesn't seem to make sense either.

Once your IT dept upgrades to Exchange 2010 or greater, I suggest you try the web-based access, you may find it an improvement over the Outlook client.

It is disappointing the Apple removed Sync Services, but it isn't the end of the world.

To deal with your browser slowness, I suggest running the free utility Onyx from http://www.titanium.free.fr/index.php. Running the suite of basic utilities under "Automation." This will likely perk things up.

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Answer 15

Nov 15, 2013 4:35 AM in response to splinke

Removing SyncServices is a big disgrace, a mistake, to force customers using your cloud services. This is completely disrespecting your customers privacy.

I'm wondering if my move from Windows to OS X was such a good one. I must admit that a lot of things are better organized in OSX than in Windows. But if Apple continues to disrespect it's customers this way I might sell all my Apple stuff go back to PC hardware. I know this gives headaches too so now and than but at least I know where I can expect this to hapen.

Now I have to arrange for my own CalDav and CardDav server locally. One of the reasons to switch to OS X was because I dodn't want to loose much time beeing my own system administrator, I wanted to get rid of system maintenance. It is exactly this what I am forced to do now.

Thanks Apple.

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