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

[RazzMaTazz]

Through Outlook[/COLOR] on his desk-top, he will create a new email, and send it. The issue is, the email will be sent from his Hotmail address rather than his Outlook address. Why is it sending from his Hotmail address? This has started happening frequently in the last month or so. Anyone?

Questions about Outlook would be best asked on a Microsoft Outlook forum not an Android forum since this has nothing to do with Android. If you are going to ask about Outlook, you should provide the version since Outlook's features and behavior changes from version to version. But I'll take a quick stab...

I don't know what you mean by "his Outlook" address. Outlook is a program. There is no such thing as an "Outlook address". I'll assume that you mean his primary email address (e.g. John@Company-Name.com).

Older versions of Outlook always send emails "from" your default email address, which you can set. Newer versions of Outlook send emails "from" the email address of whichever Inbox you are currently viewing. Perhaps your boss is spending more time looking at his Hotmail inbox nowadays.

On both older and newer versions of Outlook, you can set your default email account in the email account settings but the method for doing so depends on version of Outlook.

On both older and newer versions of Outlook, you can override Outlook's automatic selection of a "From:" address by clicking the down-arrow next to "From:" and selecting the desired email address.

 

[MPLS55415]

My apologies. Since it's regarding the Outlook connector, I just assumed to post here. And yes, I meant his primary address through Outlook. Again, sorry. The Outlook we have is 2003.

I will try your advice. thank you.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Outlook Connector has nothing to do with Android. It connects Outlook to Hotmail's servers. It's been a long time since I used Outlook 2003 and I can't remember if it sends "from" your currently opened Inbox. You can test it.

 

[ari3535]

How long does it take to sync contacts as it has stopped at 141 and I have app 1300. I added the account last night, when I woke up it had 600 but I deleted the account and put it back on my phone as I thought there was something wrong that it only put 600 of the 1300 contacts on the phone. My calendar/tasks work fine. All of the contacts are in my outlook and in my Hotmail account online. Just not getting to my phone.. thanks

 

[RazzMaTazz]

How long it takes depends on your connection speed and the amount of data you have in each contact. I have about 1100 contacts synced. I guess the last time that I had to sync them was when I installed the last custom ROM. I'd say that it should happen over the course of a few hours with a decent 1.5Mbps-ish WiFi or 3G connection. I seem to recall that others in this thread have synced over 2000 contacts.

 

[02befree]

Razz, major kudos - this has been a lifesaver for me.

Quirks - When I add an email to a contact on my phone, it puts it into a format on my Outlook that is "Name <emailadress>" instead of just emailaddress. Maybe this is discussed in this voluminous thread - let me know approximately where and I'll just look it up.

The other thing is that about every 6 months I will be using my phone (Galaxy S 4G, now Galaxy S4) and all of the sudden I will notice that my about half of my contacts are gone, and there's just phone numbers associated with text messages etc, instead of names, and when I start looking through my contacts, about half are gone. I usually try to uncheck the Sync Contacts box under the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync account, and other various things, but I always end up deleting the account, and re-setting it up. I have 2000+ contacts so it takes awhile etc. This seems to happen when I'm on a trip outside the area.

Also, when this happened yesterday, I went to review the MS EAS account settings, I noticed that the Exchange Server was changed from m.hotmail.com, which I manually entered, to col-m.hotmail.com when I entered m.hotmail.com. I researched this and found this -
log into your email from the web -( I went to Outlook.com and did this). Once logged in, look at the address bar. There will be a six-character combination at the beginning, 3 letters, 3 numbers. The first three letters are your specific server prefix
I did this and the beginning looked like this https://col125.mail.live.com/
So mine is col-m.hotmail.com.
I have read where debug-m.hotmail.com is being used and other variations like snt-m.hotmail.com.
It seems that in my case the col- was added automatically by my phone, but others have to do it manually depending on their phone, or version of Android, etc. Hope that can help (and that this isn't a duplicate of another post on here).

PS - Looking on the web, I realize I haven't tried the Outlook.com app - is this a viable option? It's certainly not getting stellar reviews overall.
PPS - I finally just installed the Outlook.com app to test it - it added all my missing contacts, but I can't edit them if they're Outlook.com contacts only.

Any solutions to these quirks above are welcome.

 

[sandiegodave]

I currently utilize 2 Hotmail, 3 Gmail, 4 Outlook, and 1 Yahoo email account(s)...What I have found is that when I utilize Gsyncit to sync my Outlook-to-Gmail information (contacts, notes and tasks only...NOT calendar), because of the 3 Gmail accounts, the NOTES within each OUTLOOK contact are multiplied by 3. When I had only ONE Gmail account, no multiplication occurred. Are you aware of any way to keep that multiplication from occurring? Would using the method you described ameliorate that issue?

 

[wyelkins]

I hate to say it, but I have finally realized that I don't need Outlook anymore.

Google has finally got me and Outlook has become redundant and unnecessary.

I never thought that I would say that. I have used Outlook since the 1990's. I guess it depends on how you use it.The way I use it now, Google apps are all I need.

 

[stevenk3102]

You seem to know what you are talking about, i read alot of what you wrote, can you help me with my problem.

Can someone please help??? I use outlook.com or live account as my email and contacts. I cant figure out why i put a new contact in my live account and when i go to my LG G2 phone and go to contacts, go to groups that i set up and then try to add that contact to my group i set up, its not there. If i just go to contacts on phone its there, but when i hit groups and then try to add a member to the group its not there. When i put that new contact in gmail it will allow me to add to a group. Not sure why this is or does the android phone not work with my live account??? Again, when i add a new contact in live it does sync right away to my phone, but cant add in a group.

Thanks

 

[RazzMaTazz]

I don't understand what you're doing or asking. You need to be precise in your description, perhaps including step-by-step details.

 

[beano]

Hello. Could you Razzmatazz offer any advice on this one please?
After several happy years on Nokia I bought a Samsung S4 a few days ago, as a particular App I used called Viewranger does not work yet on Windows-Phones.
I was able to do an initial Sync of my PC-based Outlook-2007 Diary-Calendar with this new Android phone.
Then just a few days later I foolishly accepted an invite to 'upgrade' to Android 4.3.
Now I cannot sync, as the lovely people at Samsung have not bothered to upgrade their KIES to enable it to work with 4.3
So far, they are not saying clearly whether they will fix it, nor when.

My question is, should I try to go with this Outlook-Hotmail-Connector arrangement, or wait to see if they fix KIES?

The info you provided re Connector etc is good and detailed, but I'm still rather worried about trying to go for it, even though I spent my working life in IT !!

I have a very large PC-based Outlook file with all my email history that I cant afford to screw up. I also think it has various calendar files within it, for whatever reason, and I dont want to mess those up either.

Also I do NOT want to sync any Emails. I am only interested in Diary-Calendar.

My Internet/email provider is Virgin (ntlworld.com). I think at their end they use a version of Google-Mail; at least their Webmail looks very similar to Google (but that's another story).

With Nokia I never had these problems. It was all very simple to sync calendars (and notes). I think KIES does (or DID!) the same thing for Samsungites.
I'm really unhappy with Samsung that they could have done such a thing without warning. Usually I'm very wary about updates, but for once I foolishly went ahead with 4.3 before digging around about it. Never again.

Any advice gladly accepted.

 

[KOLIO]

There's a specific KIES for ANDROID 4.3 devices on SAMSUNG'S website: KIES 3

The download link is on the same page as the version you currently have & for MAC users.

Just GOOGLE Search SAMSUNG KIES 3 & it should be the 1st result.

 

[beano]

There's a specific KIES for ANDROID 4.3 devices on SAMSUNG'S website: KIES 3

The download link is on the same page as the version you currently have & for MAC users.

Just GOOGLE Search SAMSUNG KIES 3 & it should be the 1st result.

Thanks. I went again to Samsung UK website and saw what indeed appears to be KIES for 4.3, so downloaded it and tried again. This time there was at least a Sync tab showing; I think when I tried earlier there was NO sync tab at all, so that suggests perhaps Samsung have done an update to KIES very recently.
Anyway, I then tried to sync the Calendar. It seemed to start, did about 10%, and then crashed. The error msg said 'Unknown Error' - do you want to send an error msg to the program provider'. I said yes. I tried again a couple of times, and got the same error.
It also says the version of Kies that I have is V3.2.13114_22
Is anyone else getting the same error as this?

Unfortunately I dont know exactly what version level of Kies I had the other day, when I first tried; otherwise I could be sure that they have put up a new version, ie that they are trying to fix it; but at least I can hope.

Perhaps someone else who has an S4 could try it and see if they have any success, or just the same error as me.

regards

 

[KOLIO]

KIES 3 wouldn't even see my device (T-MO USA NOTE 3) for me until this update to the version you have now.
I've found such software from SAMSUNG to be buggy & can require removal/re-install several times before it works right.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Beano: I can't make a judgment call on whether you should wait for Kies or use the Hotmail method of my original post. If you read my original post, you'll see that you don't have to use Hotmail for email on your phone. You can just use it for contacts and/or calendar if you like. If you're worried about your contacts or calendar or anything getting corrupted, then just make a back up of your PST file before you try using the Hotmail solution. In fact, you really don't even need to do that because you'd just be COPYING your current contacts folder into Hotmail so your existing contacts, calendar, and email folders will remain intact.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

I started having trouble synchronizing contacts and calendar so I deleted and reinstalled the Hotmail account on my Android phone with Microsoft's new "s.Outlook.com" server settings. Now everything is perfectly synchronizing in both directions. I updated the original post to reflect the new server settings.

 

[Jdane]

Other information / limitation :
I have 1800 contacts in my Outlook Hotmail contacts. Only 1000 of them appear on Hotmail's online contacts.

REALLY appreciate this one. Had never seen it elsewhere, and was about to switch over to the Hotmail method. Not pretty!

 

[RazzMaTazz]

REALLY appreciate this one. Had never seen it elsewhere, and was about to switch over to the Hotmail method. Not pretty!

That comment by mll (from May 2011) is outdated & wrong.

As I note in my original post, in June 2012, Hotmail increased the initial upload of contacts to 3000, and (once Hotmail is confident that you're not a professional spammer) you can upload and synchronize at least 6000 contacts.

I have well over 1000 contacts synchronized/stored on my phone & PC using the Hotmail method.

In my original post, this is covered in the section entitled:
"To migrate from Gmail-based contacts to Hotmail-based calendar & contact from Outlook:"

 

[bsc249]

Hello RazzMaTazz,
I apologize if this is not the correct place for this post but I wasn't sure where to post this question. Please let me know if I need to delete and re-post.

I am no longer with the company whose exchange server I was using to sync between my office pc, home laptop and phone. I have outlook 2010 on my home laptop (win 8.1) and a LG G2 running android 4.4.2.

Since I no longer have access to an exchange server (so I think), what would you suggest as the simplest way for a non-IT guy (with an above average grasp of this stuff) to go about syncing his contacts and calendar between a laptop and cell phone?

I see four options and your opinion would be appreciated:
Syncing through a linked hotmail/live account (I would need to create one)
Syncing through 3rd party software (ie: companionlink)
Purchasing Office 365 - Annual plan: $99 for 5 user licenses + cloud storage (1TB each)
Stop using Outlook and go with 3rd party app/software.

Thank you!

 

[neil154]

I am in the process of evaluating third party apps for syncing Outlook 2007 with my S3. So far CompanionLink appears to be the best app. In the above post you suggested buying Office 265 - How does the purchase affect syncing with your Android phone.

 

[bsc249]

I am in the process of evaluating third party apps for syncing Outlook 2007 with my S3. So far CompanionLink appears to be the best app. In the above post you suggested buying Office 265 - How does the purchase affect syncing with your Android phone.

If I purchase office 365 Home (I would go with the family: $99 annually plan for 5) I can then use 'Office Mobile' for my android AND my wife's iphone to sync our respective info thru their cloud.

hmmmm, now that I think about it, I would get all office products for pc's, macs (my wife's school uses mac) and phones (android & iOS) with far fewer hassles for my wife and I for $100 bucks a year...

I would luv to hear why this may not be the good idea it looks like - TY!

 

[neil154]

I have to admit that I am not an expert on Office Mobile and have never used it. I did some research on it and it appears to me that it does not have any capability to sync address book or calendar events with your Android phone.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Since I no longer have access to an exchange server (so I think), what would you suggest as the simplest way for a non-IT guy (with an above average grasp of this stuff) to go about syncing his contacts and calendar between a laptop and cell phone?

I see four options and your opinion would be appreciated:
Syncing through a linked hotmail/live account (I would need to create one)
Syncing through 3rd party software (ie: companionlink)
Purchasing Office 365 - Annual plan: $99 for 5 user licenses + cloud storage (1TB each)
Stop using Outlook and go with 3rd party app/software.

It's really a personal decision that depends on what you want, need, are willing to spend in terms of money and effort. Syncdroid.net lists all of the 3rd party options for Outlook-Android synchronization in a nice grid-view, so you might want to check it out.

I've been using the Hotmail method for years. It works well. It's free. And I'm a cheap SOB. I detailed the steps to set it up. It's not very hard, but it's a bit of a hassle. It's not irreversible, so there's no harm in trying it. If you're coming from a work-based Microsoft Exchange Server, then I'd argue that it's just as easy to use the Hotmail method because you'll essentially be replacing your Exchange server (and that Exchange account on Outlook) with a Hotmail server (and Hotmail account on Outlook).

Outlook is an awesome piece of software. (Best thing Microsoft ever did.) Nobody else has anything that even comes close, so there's no way that I'm giving up Outlook.

Office365 seems like a great solution, but it seems that you have to pay Microsoft an annual fee for each account that you want to synchronize. (I could be wrong.) And I guess you'd have to add that account to Outlook, so it wouldn't be much different than adding a Hotmail account. Not sure.

Gsyncit is a $20 Outlook add-in that syncs Outlook calendar & contacts to Gmail (which then syncs with your phone). It's pretty easy to set up and leaves Outlook looking unaltered-- though your Outlook may be altered because you'll have to give up your old Exchange account. I set up Gsyncit on on my senior-citizen parents' PC because it causes much pain to teach them to do even the slightest thing differently (like clicking on Hotmail Calendar & Contacts icons on the left side of Outlook, as opposed to clicking on the same old "Outlook Data File" calendar & Contacts icons on the left side of Outlook like it always had been before they "needed" to sync their Android phones).

Outlook4Gmail also seems like a nice solution for $20 but I haven't tried it. (You can sync contacts with the free version but you have to pay $20 to sync calendars.)

CompanionLink seems like a nice solution, but at $50, it's pricey.

Outlook-Google Calendar Sync (free but donations accepted) when used with the free, open-source, GoContacts Sync Mod would provide a free total solution. I haven't used Outlook Google Calendar Sync but I have used GoContacts Sync Mod and it works well.

MyPhoneExplorer, is free and many people like it. I've tried it and it's OK. It requires a PC app and a small Android syncing app. Two drawbacks for some folks: It only syncs with the PC over WiFi (when on same WLAN) or USB-- so it won't sync over 3G/4G. I don't think it can sync with multiple PCs. (That's a show-stopper for me.) If you install it, be careful to uncheck whatever boxes and not let it install crapware like search tool-bars.

 

[neil154]

I have a few comments on the above. RazzMaTazz has been doing this for a very long time and I am sure that he knows what he is saying but he has not tried every solution so maybe I can provide some additional information.

If you have long note fields in either Contacts or Calendar some of the apps will truncate the note. I am now using the trial version of CompanionLink and it seems to work flawlessly. There are many options on how to sync and the option I am using syncs my Outlook with Gmail and does not require any app on the phone. Also, Companionlink allows upto 3 computers to use 1 license (so since my wife and I each have a PC and phone I still only need to buy 1 license. Also, Companionlink offers a $10 discount if you just call them up and ask about it. (I am not a salesman for CompanionLink).

I also tried AkrutoSync and it also is pretty good and it costs @4,95 but they offered to sell me 2 licenses for $40 when I mentioned CompanionLink deal.

Hope this helps a little

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Good info Neil154. I removed my comment above about CompanionLink requiring apps.