Outlook 2013 calendar sync to iphone not working

Hi Rob1130,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. This article has steps you can take if syncing your Outlook calendar to your iPhone via USB isn't working:

iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Troubleshooting contact and calendar syncing via USB on Windows

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1692

Alternatively, if you're using iCloud instead of USB you can use this article instead:

iCloud: Troubleshooting iCloud Calendar

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3999

Cheers,

- Ari

All of the instructions on this link outline how to fix it in Outlook 2010... is there one for 2013? or have these steps not changed with the update?

Thanks

Alisha

I've spent several hours with Apple Telephone Support on this issue and the answer is that Apple dropped support for syncing with Outlook as of Outlook 2013 and the only way to sync is to put your various forms of private information onto Apple's servers.

Syncing Outlook 2013 with the iPhone worked for me for briefly, but no longer does.

It appears that you can't sync Outlook 2013 with the Windows phone either without putting private information onto Microsoft's servers, unless you use Exchange, in which you're trusting some other server.

It is appalling that this seems to be the state of privacy now.

Does anyone know of a way to sync the iPhone (or any other type of phone) with Outlook without entrusting someone else with your private data?

It sounds like one can downgrade to Office 2010, but this is at minimum a bother and seems like only a temporary solution.

The Office 2010 workaround didn't work. The iCloud workaround sort of works, but you are left with 2 different calendars in Outlook. The default Outlook calendar gets events you agree to by email and the iCloud calendar syncs with the iPhone. When a meeting request arrives by email you can't see the iCloud calendar unless you open it manually. You can move events from the default calendar to the iCloud calendar, but it is a separate action, manual and kludgy.

It is hard to tell whose fault this is. Apple, Microsoft and Google seem to want you to use their phone plus computer infrastructure, and any mixing companies is risky. Apple would do well to copy the ability of its computers to run Windows and be the platform that people buy because it works with everyone. But if that is what they're trying to do with iPhone syncing, they're not succeeding.

If forced to choose between moving from Windows to MacOS and moving to iPhone to Windows phone, I'm likely to move to Windows phone. It would be good if Apple got USB syncing working so I didn't have to make that decision.

Amen. I have spent countless hours trying to resolve this problem. I own a small company with 10 employees all outfitted with Windows Notebooks and Iphone 5s. We are all suffering from this lack of synching between the phone and Outlook 2013. I am going to have to explore replacing the Iphone with windows based devices as our business is going to suffer greatly without the ability see calendars on the fly and have access to our current contact list.

Apple blames Windows and Windows blames Apple. I personally love my Iphone but cannot let that stand in the way of what is best for my business. I know we are small potatoes to Apple but I have to believe many folks are going to have to move away from Iphones because of this.

I have worked with Apple support trying to use ICloud as a possible solution but it failed multiple times and Apple engineering indicated "There is a know problem" this same known problem is about one year old at this point.....Apparently not important enough to resolve.

There are more problems with the iCloud approach, as I've been logging at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-outlook/how-can-i-mo ve-calendar-events-from-outlook/5078e8f8-ee10-40ef-a7f2-328cad957d2b. Although the problem was bad enough to result in a commercial add-on to deal with it, the commercial add-on seems to create more problems than it solves.

I haven't detected much interest from either Apple or Microsoft in solving this issue. I imagine there are not many people at either Apple or Microsoft who see solving this problem as a route to career advancement. The downside for the customers is that tells Microsoft Office + iPhone customers to give up Microsoft Office or give up the iPhone. It doesn't seem to be in either Apple or Microsoft's interest to play that game unless they have high confidence of winning. And of course there is Google, so both Apple and microsoft can lose a battle on this issue.

Apple - will you please help resolve this issue? We need our calendars to function again. I don't want to have to switch to a smartphone. I love my iPhone, but this could be the deal breaker!

I too cannot sync outlook with my iphone. I used to be able to but it seems at some point in the last year it does not work any longer. Even when I make an appointment in the Icloud caledar, it still does not show in the Icloud calendar in Outlook. Why does it always seem the world is going backwards?

We had a user who was trying to sync only calendars and contacts (iphone5 & outlook 2010) via USB and itunes. He was only able to sync one way (outlook to iphone). On the iphone we changed changed the default account under Settings>Mail,Calendars,Contacts>Calendars to "calendar" from pc. Same for Contacts "Contacts" from pc. It seems to be working correctly now. Previously, both contacts and calendars defaults were set to his gmail email account.

I've tried several troubleshooting and options in other posts and nothing worked, I can't use iCloud due to company restrictions.

What I did was the following:

1. Un-installed iTunes.

2. Deleted the AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer folder (***Careful: This contains all the back-ups. You can do a copy of this folder, but delete it from AppData/Roaming.)

3. Re-started Windows.

4. Downloaded and installed latest version of iTunes.

5. De-activated all plug-ins from outlook except for the iTunes plug-in.

6. Plug-in your iPhone and sync

Hopefully this works for you too.

it's very easy with a tool called EVO Collaborator for Outlook, with this Outlook add-in it's possible to sync icloud contact and calendar and task with outlook's contact, calendar and tasks.

it also allows you to do a one time outlook to icloud contact/calendar transfer. so you can selecte everything you want to upload to icloud's contact or calendar storage and upload them all from outlook. after that procedure those items stay in icloud and can be synced to your iphone or ipad.

it works

Last year I used a program called Akruto sync that helped to sync my Windows phone without using the cloud. It worked well . . . but there doesn't appear to be support for the iPhone.

I've tried approaching workarounds to the Outlook / iOS sync problem such as iCloud from the Microsoft angle with a thread http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ca3191f4-2c1e-4b52-a563-177877a 89ee8/is-outlook-icloud-syncing-hopelessly-kludgy that documents the Outlook / iCloud problems in detail.

One of the responses in the thread discusses various workarounds, but it is not clear whether they work well.

It is not clear whether Apple and Microsoft are unaware of the seriousness of this situation, or instead are tolerating the situation because fixing the problem could be seen as helping a competitor. The new Microsoft CEO, however, has declared that cross-platform compatibility is a Microsoft priority, so the situation may change. But I'd be far more impressed by a declaration that Microsoft understands that this is a problem and is committed to solving it (or an equivalent declaration from Apple).

Hi, I don't know if this will help you but I have always had Android phones and used Outlook. Today I got my very first iphone and have the same need as you - to be able to have my calendar from my Outlook on my phone, be able to add or delete an event on either PC or iphone and have it sync. When I had this problem with my android phone, the solution was to use googlesync to sync outlook with google, and then sync my phone to the google calendar. I never want or need to use the google calendar, I just use my Outlook in the usual way and my phone in the usual way. They sync remotely constantly. Today, iphone arrived, and I simply synced my iphone to my gmail account, chose the calendar and bingo! All my outlook events are in my phone. I tested adding at both ends, deleting at both ends and everything is working great!

On the contacts side I choose not to have all my outlook contacts on my phone, but you can use googlesync for that too, and then all your contacts would be in gmail account and sync to your phone. Once you've set up the gmail account you don't ever need to use it, you can just use your phone and your PC as you want.

Hope this might help you or someone else as a workaround. By the way, if you're new to googlesync, google stopped supporting it and so you can't download it from them anymore, but it's available from other people and works perfectly! Good luck!