[SOLVED] Semi-OT: iPhone/Outlook

[Baylink]

One of the users whose Outlook I'm switching over from my Exchange 5.5 server to the Connector has synced his old Blackberry contacts and calendar into Outlook, but we can't get them back out into his iPhone.

We're getting the dreaded crash in outlookclientsync.exe error.

Now, no pressure, but he told me I don't get tickets to the ballgame for me and my date on Wednesday night unless I figure this out. :-)

Any of you folks already dealt with this -- preferably successfully? All I get from Google is people who *haven't* solved it. We tried turning off the calendar and only syncing the contacts, but that didn't help. XP SP3, iTunes 8.0. iPhone 2.2

[thorng]

I have a work around for you. This is most likely due to some odd calendar items crashing the sync software. The trick is how to find the items quickly.
1. Create a backup Calendar in Outlook not synced with iPhone
2. Switch your Calendar View to "By Category" View. The will allow you to see all Calendar objects and drag and drop them without changing the appointment time by mistake.
3. Select and move all objects to backup calendar
4. Sync. Since it is syncing empty calendar, the software should not crash. otherwise it is an application / installation error and not have anything to do with calendar items.
5. Make sure the Meeting is sorted in some order you can have a way to id meetings later (sorted by start date for example).
6. Move the meeting back to Default Calendar one section at a time. by one page or one month at a time.
7. after each move. Sync
8. Repeat 6 and 7 until the application crash
9. work backward and look at the section for what cause the crash. usually you can id the unusal calendars. If you are not able to ide one, you can move one items at a time, sync, for that section until you hit the one.
10. Once you id one of the events causing the crash, you can usually id any of the similar events and leave them in the backup calendar.

[Baylink]

I've seen people suggest that, yes, but that should fix the problem *even if we'd deselected the calendar as an item to sync*? That seems... counter-intuitive.

Still, I'll give it a shot Monday, and see if I get lucky. Thanks.

[thorng]

At least when you are at step 4, you will know if is a Calendar Issue or an Applicaiton Issue. If this turn out to be Application issue, Have you try taking the connector out of the pictures? Just sync iPhone and Outlook with local PST file?

[Baylink]

This user's not actually *on* the connector, yet, his Outlook is still hooked to Exchange 5.5; he jumped the gun on me.

So I don't have a local PST file with his contacts in it.

And since the whole reason I'm dumping Exchange is because *I don't understand it*... :-)

(That is, incidentally, one of the reasons I'm having trouble with the Zimbra code that vaccums out the old mailbox into the Zimbra server -- all the documentation seems to assume you *know what you're doing* on the Exchange side... which seems a bit short-sighted to me.)

[Baylink]

> 1. Create a backup Calendar in Outlook not synced with iPhone

And have some more "this is hard to do if you don't understand Microsoft's idea of email"... :-)

I don't see any obvious way to prevent syncing from within Outlook 2003; not in iTunes 8.0.

Could I get you to expand on this for me a little bit, please?

[Baylink]

Well, I figured out that "Create New Folder" apparently means "Create New Calendar"... but even after I created another one, iTunes won't let me select which calendars to Sync.

My user has a case open on this, I think I'm just gonna call them.

[thorng]

1.a Create a New Folder name "backup" with Folder contains: "Calendar Items"
1.b Swith the Outlook Navagation to Foler list view

Outlook support multiple calendar folders. Most sync software only sync with one calendar folder. so any calendar folder not the default calendar won't be synced with iPhone. I am not familiar with iTunes/iPhone interface but most sync software will let your configure which calendar folder to sync with. If it is not configurable then it always sync with the default calendar folder.

[Baylink]

Nope. As it turns out, the problem is: iPhone's *require* unicode mode on either the PST or the Exchange server -- which Exchange 5.5 doesn't know how to do.

I got him his contacts by bouncing them to CSV, then to Windows Address Book, and then into iTunes.

I have some folo's on iPhone's/ZCO, but I'll start a new thread.