I was successful in getting Outlook and iCloud connected, and have closed and re-opened both Outlook 2010 and iCloud several times. This is what finally worked - and i apologise if I am stating the obvious in any of this:
1. I repaired a corrupted file. The necessary program was in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\SCANPST.EXE".
2. I made a backup pst of the outlook calendar.
2. I went to Calendar --> View --> Reset View, and then changed my Current View to "List". I remove the recurring events from Outlook calendar.
(The help/idea came from this - https://support.office.com/en-(ca/article/Delete-or-archive-older-calendar-items -e57d6c8c-2e65-455a-b99b-623d091358dc)
3. I set up iCloud for my calendar and contacts - if finally worked error free. (help source was -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1a-KHQG0n4).
4 Reopened Outlook. The iCloud calendars were there.
5. I figured when my recurring events come up on calendar i would need to reset the recurrence, but also figured it would'nt hurt to try this: I imported the outlook calendar pst file i had backed up. the import did not go smoothly, but all the entries, including recurring ones are in my ICloud Outlook calendar - finally, the events on my iPhone were in Calendar or one of the others - in Outlook, in the iCloud calendars, i repeated Calendar --> View --> Reset View, and then changed my Current View to "List", selected the entries in the other calendars, CTRL C to copy, then went to the Outlook calendar and did CTRL P. This combined all the entries into the one calendar i wanted.
The calendars and entries are now on my Apple devices and my Outlook 2010.
If i had had the answer to my question initially and did what i initially wanted, i would have understood that the entries on the phone were in Calendar, not Outlook, and i could possibly have just copied the outlook calendar entries into the Calendar folder in my gmail personal PST and then synched. However, it is now on iCloud and accessible anywhere. Clear as mud?
Anyway, after my 2 days of working on this, i would suggest running SCANPST and see if there is an error in the file.
I still using Windows 8.1 though.