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Monday, July 2, 2007
Buyer beware. Apple’s claim of support for Entourage and Outlook are a bit off from the truth. If you read the iPhone manual, nowhere in the manual does is specifically state that you need to enable Entourage’s sync services. This allows changes in Entourage to make it to iCal and Address Book. Thus, iTunes can now sync your iPhone with data from each of the Apple apps. Further, you take risk of things going bad, very bad, like an empty iCal calendar emptying your Entourage calendar upon first sync and having nothing at all to sync. If you’re a Mac user, back it all up before performing the sync service. If you’re using an Exchange server like me, well, pray you don’t get it wiped like I got today.
Moving onto Outlook. I first reported how Outlook’s calendar data was not syncing with iTunes 3.7 to my iPhone. Things went from annoying to horrid. After a couple of tries of syncing, Outlook all of a sudden no longer worked. It either hung until I killed the process or worse, crashed. Un-installing and re-installing both Outlook and iTunes 3.7 never fixed the problem. It was only after I removed two keys in Outlooks Add-in hive related to iTunes, with the software vendor of ALT COM, did Outlook finally work again. I dare not open iTunes again!
So here I am now with no calendar data on my iPhone and no data on my Entourage/Outlook thanks to Apple. This is the kind of stuff I’d expect from Microsoft, but Apple? Well, guess no one’s perfect, huh?
Hopefully I’ll be able to recover my lost data and get my iPhone to sync on my Mac and hopefully never have to use Outlook and my PC again. Ugh.
July 4th, 2007 at 3:21
Sounds like what happened with my Entourage setup. However, in my case iCal or the iPhone wasn’t at all involved. Somewhere between Exchange, Outlook and Entourage, my calendar got wiped and I only had my calendar left untouched on my Sony Ericsson P900 which allowed me to write down all my appointments before I synched it to my PC which then wiped the phone calendar as well.
Because recovering any data from Exchange requires our backup guys to rebuild the entire @#$#$&&^ Exchange server to another box temporarily rather than recovering just one user’s mailbox (who ever called Exchange an enterprise system for crying out loud?!!!) it proved too much trouble to recover my data so I re-entered the appointments by hand.
From my experience I would suspect certain Microsoft products before pointing the finger at Apple. (not that it couldn’t be Apple’s fault of course though).
-Mart
July 4th, 2007 at 8:29
Hey Mart, yes, you’re right, this could be Microsoft’s fault, too. It just seems all too suspicious that it happened when the iPhone was added to the mix. Previous syncing between iCal and Entourage did not demonstrate the same results.
As to recovering your data (BTW, I did the same thing on my XV6700 to gather any lost dates…too funnny,) you could have taken your PC off-line and then opened your Outlook. Exported your calendar (if it not been wiped out from Exchange yet) and then connected on-line again. After Exchange dusted Outlook locally, then you could have re-imported that exported Calendar file. That’s what I did and I thank God for it!
If you had already lost all the data on Outlook already, then start backing up your OST file. This is the local copy of your Exchange mailbox. This way, you could have shut down Outlook, swapped the files (current with backup) and gone off-line and done the same thing as above. After the export is done, close Outlook and swap back the OST files and then re-import. Fixed.
Note, OST files can only be backed up when Outlook is closed or unless you have a back-up program, such as Acronis TrueImage, that uses the Windows Shadow File service that copies in use files.
July 6th, 2007 at 16:06
I cannot seem to get my Entourage calendar data reliably into iCal. I have engaged Sync Services, I have tried import, I even tried a third-party script. Does anyone have any advise? I love iPhone but it is significantly less helpful without an accurate calendar.
July 7th, 2007 at 11:13
Mike, I finally got iCal to see my Entourage data. The only thing I did was create a calendar in iCal called “Entourage” (no quotes) after deleting the one that was already in there. I then disabled Sync in Entourage, rebooted, and then re-enabled Sync for iCal only (not for Address Book) and it started syncing. I also had iCal open. It took a while but it all finally appeared.
Apple really needs to make direct support for Entourage as this is a major issue. Took me one week after getting the iPhone to get the calendar events on.
I must say, the iPhone calendar is very nice and I LOVE this list view.
July 11th, 2007 at 7:39
To import Entourage data into your iPhone:
Have Entourage open.
In iCal: “Import Entourage data”
In iTunes: Make sure the Entourage box is checked in the sync calendar window.
My system:
10.4.10
Microsoft Office 2004
iPhone 1.0
iTunes 7.3
Works fine for me
July 31st, 2007 at 23:14
e2Entourage from e2Sync works for me much better and it supports categories. http://www.e2sync.com
October 31st, 2007 at 14:39
Events created on the iPhone get synced into iCal in a “phone book” calendar, so don’t end up getting back to Entourage. (Only the “Entourage” calendar events are synced.”
Anyone figure out a way around that?
October 31st, 2007 at 14:50
Go to Entourage and in its preferences, go to the Sync Service section. Check mark iCal and then open iCal after saving your changes. You should see a calendar called Entourage in iCal. If it’s there, cool. Now go to iTunes with the iPhone attached and click the INFO tab and have it sync to the Entourage calendar in iCal. Done. Now when you create a new event in the phone, it will sync to iCal which will then sync to Entourage. I usually see a ten minute lag for this entire process, but it does work.