We can now synchronize Outlook & Android without a 3rd party app or Exchange Server!

[RazzMaTazz]

Thanks Az!

You raise some good points, but I didn't think to include them in my original post because they're basic functions of Outlook/Gmail/Hotmail, and they're a matter of personal preference. More detail follows...

Dear RazzMaTazz,
In addition to moving your calendar and contacts to your new Hotmail-based folder in Outlook, you also have to move your email Inbox there - otherwise, email coming into your Outlook email client will not be replicated onto Hotmail, or from there onto your Android device. It will remain locally on your computer.

Good point. But it depends on what kind of mail accounts people are using and how they want to manage them. There are many options. People don't have to use Hotmail for email. They may just use it to sync contacts & calendar. They may not want their POP mail or Gmail in their Hotmail account.

For example, I have multiple accounts (POP, Gmail, & Hotmail) in Outlook & multiple email accounts (POP, Gmail, & Hotmail) on my phone. (I can view each inbox separately or in a merged view.) I like to keep my email accounts separate, therefore I don't want my POP mail or Gmail forwarded (or duplicated) onto my Hotmail account. I think Gmail is the best email service, so I use Gmail as my primary email account.

Second... you can copy across to your Hotmail-based account not only your Inbox, but also any sub-folders you have created in Outlook. For me, this is crucial. I have a whole range of folders in which I file by subject/category incoming and outgoing emails. All these can be dragged across to your new Hotmail-based account - and will then appear on your Android device also. Brilliant!

Yes. FYI: You can do the same thing with Gmail folders. I primarily use Gmail, so when I first switched from POP mail to Gmail (many years ago), in Outlook, I copied all of my mail folders/subfolders to Gmail. They immediately synchronized with the Gmail "cloud", my PCs, and phone.

One final point. If you want your emails to download immediately to your Android device even when you are away from your Outlook-based home computer, you need to set your Hotmail account to "send/receive from other accounts", using your home email account. This means that, even if you are not at your home computer downloading pending messages via Outlook these will download to your Hotmail account - and from there automatically to your Android device.

Yes. FYI: You can do the same kind of mail forwarding & retrieval in the web-based Gmail account settings.

Wow! Kuala Lumpur. Great city. Sitting here in Silicon Valley, I rarely think about my post being read worldwide. I had the pleasure of sightseeing Malaysia. Beautiful country. Wonderful people. Delicious food.

 

[Az Utazo]

Dear Razz,

First, call me 'Utazo'. It means 'traveller' in Hungarian (a country I have lived in and whose language I speak).

Second, thanks for your considered comments. They show that, as I suspected, I am a newbie to this sychronisation game, so most were obvious to you and other readers. The only thing I would say is that it is often worth stating the obvious and basic - because you want your postings to be of value to everyone, including newbies like me!

I do though have one question - which one of your 'hecklers' raised. If I want to back up my contacts/calendar/email, where do I now find the Outlook pst file? It used to be locally on my computer. Where is it now that my data is basically held in the cloud of my Windows Hotmail account? My worry is that, if my computer for any reason goes belly up, it might replicate its destroyed data to Hotmail and thence to my tab, leaving me with no backup.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Utazo:

Hotmail stores your data locally on your PC in an ".OST" (not ".PST" ) file. You could create backup copy of your OST file, but (as far as I know, unlike PST files) there is no way easy way to restore an OST file to Outlook.

If you want to backup Hotmail account, you can do so by exporting your Hotmail account to a PST file. You can choose to backup your entire Hotmail account, or you can just backup your contacts or calendar, etc. The instructions for doing exporting to a PST file vary depending on your version of Outlook. You can easily find instructions online. For Outlook 2010, it's under "File/Open/Import/Export to a File/Outlook Data File (.pst)".

 

[gek2]

Frist, thank you RazzMaTazz for all your good work here AND your patience. I am astonished at the amount of dialogue surrounding the issue of syncing Outlook with an Android phone. I "upgraded" from a Pantech Duo Windows phone to a Mortorola Atrix 2, only to find that functional elegance has been replaced by techno glitz, and have tried over 15 different "solutions" before stumbling onto your blog. Once I am confortable with the syncing operations, I will initiate another thread asking for help on what crapware I can safely eliminate from my phone. Thanks again!!

 

[stevend]

Hi, Just tried the method described in this topic but stumbled upon 2 problems:
- a contact created on the phone does not seem to sync to hotmail
- in the calendar app on the phone I only see the main hotmail calendar, but not the calendars I follow in hotmail. How can I make these extra calendars visible.

This last point was possible when using the Hotmail app, but then when I created an event in the calendar, it did not sync back to Hotmail.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

- a contact created on the phone does not seem to sync to hotmail I.

It should. It does for me and others. Please make sure:
1) When editing the new event on your phone, under the "Calendar" field you select your Hotmail account, not your Gmail account.
2) On your phone, your sync settings include your calendar. (Settings/Accounts & sync/Manage Accounts...")

There was one other person on this thread that complained that they couldn't sync new events from their phone to Hotmail. I can't remember if that person got the issue resolved. There could be some phone-specific, software-specific, OS-specific issue, but I kinda doubt it. It could be related to the issue below...

- in the calendar app on the phone I only see the main hotmail calendar, but not the calendars I follow in hotmail. How can I make these extra calendars visible.

I'm not sure what you mean by "calendars I follow in hotmail".

1) If you mean that you want to sync the main default calendar (called "Calendar") from multiple Hotmail accounts, that should work and they should be synced to your phone's calendar app.

2) If you mean that you can't sync multiple calendars within a particular Hotmail account (like "Calendar", "Birthday Calendar", "US Holidays", & "Steve's Calendar"), then to my knowledge, that can't be done on the phone. In my original post under "Caveats" I wrote:

Although Outlook and Hotmail support multiple calendars, only the default calendar will be syncrhonized with Android. If you want to maintain multiple calendars on Outlook, then you must create multiple Hotmail accounts and add them to Outlook and the Email app on your Android devices.
​

 

[stevend]

It should. It does for me and others. Please make sure:
1) When editing the new event on your phone, under the "Calendar" field you select your Hotmail account, not your Gmail account.
2) On your phone, your sync settings include your calendar. (Settings/Accounts & sync/Manage Accounts...")

There was one other person on this thread that complained that they couldn't sync new events from their phone to Hotmail. I can't remember if that person got the issue resolved. There could be some phone-specific, software-specific, OS-specific issue, but I kinda doubt it. It could be related to the issue below...

The problem is with contacts, not calender event. Contacts do not sync back from the phone to hotmail.

I'm not sure what you mean by "calendars I follow in hotmail".

1) If you mean that you want to sync the main default calendar (called "Calendar") from multiple Hotmail accounts, that should work and they should be synced to your phone's calendar app.

2) If you mean that you can't sync multiple calendars within a particular Hotmail account (like "Calendar", "Birthday Calendar", "US Holidays", & "Steve's Calendar"), then to my knowledge, that can't be done on the phone. In my original post under "Caveats" I wrote:

Although Outlook and Hotmail support multiple calendars, only the default calendar will be syncrhonized with Android. If you want to maintain multiple calendars on Outlook, then you must create multiple Hotmail accounts and add them to Outlook and the Email app on your Android devices.
​

It is item 2 I mean. I follow several calenders in my Hotmail account, one of them is my office calender. So at the moment I don't see that one. A workaround is to also add the hotmail app so that I see all calendars, and then in the hotmail app disable the main calendar. I'll try that today. Should work.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

The problem is with contacts, not calender event. Contacts do not sync back from the phone to hotmail.

It should. It does for me and others. Please make sure:
1) When creating a new contact on your phone, you created it under your Hotmail account as a "Corporate Contact", not under your Gmail account as a "Gmail Contact" or in your phone's memory-only as a "Phone-only Contact". For any contact that you have which isn't synchronizing, you should select it, hit "Edit" and then see what type of "Contact" it is. It needs to be a "Corporate Contact" in order to synchronize with Hotmail.
2) On your phone, set your sync settings for your Hotmail account to include your contacts.(Settings/Accounts & sync/Manage Accounts...")
3) Similar to the multiple calendar issue, you can only sync contacts to the main Contacts folder in Hotmail. Additional folders or subfolders won't sync.
4) In order to troubleshoot, one thing that you may want to see is if the contacts sync from the phone to the Hotmail server by checking Hotmail through a web browser.

It is item 2 I mean. I follow several calenders in my Hotmail account, one of them is my office calender. So at the moment I don't see that one. A workaround is to also add the hotmail app so that I see all calendars, and then in the hotmail app disable the main calendar. I'll try that today. Should work.

I can't speak to that. Good luck. Let us know if it works.

 

[LordToxygene]

Hi there!

This is fantastic and has worked for me flawlessly.. only one problem...

My phone died suddenly and the link to the Microsoft page that discusses how to setup the account on Android Phone only points to a link to download that stupid Hotmail Application.

Does anyone know or have the detailed instructions on how to setup the Corporate Account for an MSN Live account?

It worked before but now I don't know how to set it up again?

Please help.

Thank you.

 

[stevend]

Hi there!

This is fantastic and has worked for me flawlessly.. only one problem...

My phone died suddenly and the link to the Microsoft page that discusses how to setup the account on Android Phone only points to a link to download that stupid Hotmail Application.

Does anyone know or have the detailed instructions on how to setup the Corporate Account for an MSN Live account?

It worked before but now I don't know how to set it up again?

Please help.

Thank you.

See first page of this topic

 

[stevend]

It should. It does for me and others. Please make sure:
1) When creating a new contact on your phone, you created it under your Hotmail account as a "Corporate Contact", not under your Gmail account as a "Gmail Contact" or in your phone's memory-only as a "Phone-only Contact". For any contact that you have which isn't synchronizing, you should select it, hit "Edit" and then see what type of "Contact" it is. It needs to be a "Corporate Contact" in order to synchronize with Hotmail.
2) On your phone, set your sync settings for your Hotmail account to include your contacts.(Settings/Accounts & sync/Manage Accounts...")
3) Similar to the multiple calendar issue, you can only sync contacts to the main Contacts folder in Hotmail. Additional folders or subfolders won't sync.
4) In order to troubleshoot, one thing that you may want to see is if the contacts sync from the phone to the Hotmail server by checking Hotmail through a web browser.

This seems to work only under certain conditions. When I create a contact with only phone numbers this works, but when I add an e-mail adres it no longer syncs.

I can't speak to that. Good luck. Let us know if it works.

I know have all my Hotmail calenders on my phone. I configured the Hotmail exchange account, to get the main Hotmail calender. I can create events in this calender from the phone and it's syncs to the cloud.
For all the other calenders I follow in Hotmail I installed the Hotmail app, and made the main Hotmail calendar invisible there.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Does anyone know or have the detailed instructions on how to setup the Corporate Account for an MSN Live account?

Step #4 of the original post.

 

[Az Utazo]

Dear Razzmatazz,

I have a new problem: on two occasions the synchronisation settings with my Microsoft Exchange account (ie with my Hotmail/Outlook) suddenly disappeared from my Galaxy Tab. One minute they were there and syncing of email, contacts and calendar were working perfectly, the next minute the whole account had disappeared. My other synced accounts (Google Gmail for email only, Skype and WhatsApp) remained intact; only the main sync account disappeared.

I have twice restored it, and of course all the data eventually syncs back to my Tab. But it is a damn nuisance because I then have to recustomise it, especially my contacts (eg adding back photos, joining accounts and so on).

Can you offer any explanation as to why this happens - and how to stop it?

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Utazo: I don't know. I set up my account over a year ago, and it's never deleted itself. Nobody else has reported that problem here.

Do you use Titanium Backup or some other kind of backup software (perhaps maybe even something built-into Android 4.0)? Is it possible that such software is "restoring" your earlier account information and thereby deleting your Hotmail account?

Let me know if you figure it out.

 

[crowntown]

Update: Looks like a MAJOR server side protocol-caused problem that lots of people are experiencing. Click here to read more about it and the operating systems and devices affected. Looks like I (and anyone else experiencing this problem) am going to have to find another syncing solution until this is addressed, if ever.

I was an early adopter of this wonderful solution to sync Outlook with my phone, and have been pretty happy with ease of it. This morning, however -- 1 year + 1 week after I started syncing this way -- I woke up to find that my calendar and contacts had been wiped out from the phone. They are still present in Outlook and online in my Hotmail account, and continue to sync between those two locations.

I spent much of the day and evening trying to solve the problem, and did everything short of restoring my phone to its factory settings (I have an Atrix 4G):

I stopped mail, calendar and contact apps/services.
I cleared the databases out.
I restarted and cold-booted the phone (battery out, then in).
I deleted and re-created the Corporate Sync account.
I checked that all my account settings were correct.
I repeated all the above steps.

Nothing has worked. The corporate sync account I created is appearing under Accounts, with all the details correctly entered, but when I go to select a calendar to display, it's not even listed. In the Contacts app, it says "You don't have any contacts to display. To add contacts, press Menu and touch Accounts to add or configure an account with contacts you can sync to the phone..." That just brings me back to the Accounts page where everything is correct. It's as if Android is ignoring that account entirely, even though it's appearing under Accounts.

I have no clue as to what is going on. Anyone have any ideas? I thought maybe it was a Hotmail server issue, but as I said, Outlook is syncing fine via the Connector.

Not having my calendar at my fingertips is one thing, but to have NO contacts suddenly on the phone is a disaster.

 

[quidnon]

Same isse here w/ Droid Razr - - was working fine w/ outlook connector. Stopped June 16. error says incorrect e-mail account.
now what??

 

[crowntown]

Quidnon, this is what I did to restore sanity to my phone and life:

1. Delete the Hotmail corporate sync account on my Android phone. (No worries, it won't affect data in Outlook or in your Hotmail account.)

2. Go to Google Play Store (Market) and search for Hotmail.

3. Select the free Microsoft + SEVEN app that comes up and install it.

4. Fill in your details and follow the prompts to complete the set up.

5. Your calendar and contacts will reappear.

I've read that making changes to the Contacts on the phone will not update the online web interface of Hotmail (and therefore not Outlook either), but that Calendar changes will update bi-directionally, and changes to Contacts made in Outlook or on the web interface of Hotmail will update on the phone.

It's a stopgap solution, but it's working. I have my contacts back, and all my "Recent" calls repopulated with names, so I'm no longer staring at a bunch of random phone numbers, not knowing whom most of them belong to.

For those who haven't read the posts over on Microsoft, their EAS (basically, Hotmail sync platform) team rolled out a Hotmail server change without doing any cross-platform compatibility testing. When they first rolled it out, it didn't even work with the latest version of Microsoft's own Windows Mobile OS release, but that's since been fixed. I found some of the comments from Microsoft about this unfortunate event peculiar: extremely casual, as if the problem were isolated and not that critical, when in fact it affects all the OS's and phones (below). Note also that it hits users at different times, depending on when, and maybe where, you created your Hotmail account(s), or on what server is being updated on any given day.

NON-WORKING Operating Systems:
Apple OS 5.1.1
Android: 2.2, 2.3.4, 2.3.5, 2.3.6, 4.0.3
Meego PR1.2
WebOS: 1.4.5, 1.4.5.1, 2.1.1, 2.2.4, 3.0.5
Windows Mobile: 6.1, 6.5, 6.5 Pro
Windows Phone: 7

NON-WORKING Devices (partial but confirmed list):
Apple iPhone 4S
Asus: Transformer, Transformer Prime
Defy+
Eten Gloflish X800
HP: Pre 3, TouchPad, VEER
HTC: Arrive, HD2, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Rezound
Motorola: Atrix, Atrix 4G, Droid, Droid 2, Droid Bionic, Droid 2 Global, Droid Razr, Droid Razr Maxx, Droid X, Photon 4G
Nokia: N9
Palm: Pixi, Pixi Plus, Pre 2
RIM: Black Berry 8520
Samsung: Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S2, Tablet S 32gb
Verizon Motorola Global 2
ZTE N762

WORKING/REPAIRED Operating Systems:
Windows Mobile: 5.0, 6.0, 6.1
Note

 

[quidnon]

Thanks Crowntown!!
I will give it a try to see if it works for me. I did "bite the bullet" and loaded Google Calendar Sync - at least I cna sync calendar items with Outlook.
Will let you know how it goes!
Best

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Thanks Crowntown. I haven't had a problem (yet) with my contacts disappearing from my phone (an LG Optimus S running Gingerbread). But I just created a contact on my phone and it didn't sync up to Hotmail (and of course to Outlook), whereas it used to sync up to Hotmail, no problem.

 

[crowntown]

You're welcome, you guys.

The Microsoft + SEVEN Hotmail app is working, though the "time-to-sync" isn't nearly as fast as it was with the original Corporate Sync solution Razz described at the top of this thread. With that, updates took place within seconds of doing a Send/Receive in Outlook. Now it takes up to a half hour for things to sync up. A small but unnerving change.

I will keep checking every couple of days to see if Microsoft has addressed the compatibility problem. Some are saying that it's the developers of the now incompatible phone OS's that should provide the fix.

Meanwhile, this works, at least on my Motorola Atrix 3G running Gingerbread 2.3.6.

***
Quidnon, I understand the Google Calendar move was for the sake of convenience. But many of us would sooner use a second device or go back to book-based calendars/contacts than voluntarily give up any more of our personal information to Google. They already have enough information for one company.

 

[MPLS55415]

Hi Razz,

Everything is up and running. Working quite smoothly. Thank you again.

One quick minor question. When trying to make an edit in my bosses existing contacts (hotmail contacts w/in outlook), once he has made his changes and clicks "save and close", he will get a pop up that says something like "can't save because another user has entered information. do you want to save in default folder?" he then clicks yes, but the changes aren't saved. THEN he will try to do it again right away, no pop up will appear after he clicks "save and close" the changes ARE saved. What gives? Is there some way to fix this so no pop ups come up and all changes are saved instantly?

 

[RazzMaTazz]

When trying to make an edit in my bosses existing contacts (hotmail contacts w/in outlook), once he has made his changes and clicks "save and close", he will get a pop up that says something like "can't save because another user has entered information. do you want to save in default folder?" he then clicks yes, but the changes aren't saved. THEN he will try to do it again right away, no pop up will appear after he clicks "save and close" the changes ARE saved. What gives? Is there some way to fix this so no pop ups come up and all changes are saved instantly?

Sorry. I have never seen anything like that, so I have no idea how to help. It sounds like an Outlook issue, not an Android issue. I'd suggest copying the EXACT wording of the warning messages and then doing a web search. If that doesn't yield an answer, I'd suggest going to a Microsoft Office forum (like THIS one) and asking the question.

 

[quidnon]

Hi Crowntown!
Any updates on the staus of the original protocol - - do you think we will ever get it back?
Thanks

 

[crowntown]

Hi Crowntown!
Any updates on the staus of the original protocol - - do you think we will ever get it back?
Thanks

GOOD NEWS!

No official update, but my Corporate Sync setup started working again yesterday! I also checked the the last page of this thread and it seems others are experiencing connectivity again too. Apparently, Microsoft has made some code adjustments so that we can connect again. Quidnon, have you tried setting up your account again?

 

[quidnon]

Hi Crowntown!
Thanks for the note-been away from this thead - - will check status and get back with you - thanks for the follow up!
Best