Posted on 05/19/2011 7:02:03 AM PDT by Blueflag
I am trying to set up my college son so that his NON-EXCHANGE-based Outlook will sync his Outlook calendar AND TASKS/TO-DOs with a to-be-acquired smartphone.
Preferably over the air, but will accept a daily dock and USB-sync.
The hard part has been locating a program that will work when you are NOT using EXCHANGE, and also one that WILL sync TASKS and TO-DOs. I've been out on the forums and not found a best fit yet, so I thought I'd ask the smartest people in the world - FReepers.
Also, a lot of folks seem to report issues with calendar events not sync-ing well when created on the PC.
It is time to upgrade his old CDMA phone and we plan to get him an android or iOS smartphone.
Ideas? Experiences?
Thanks in advance
The hard part has been locating a program that will work when you are NOT using EXCHANGE, and also one that WILL sync TASKS and TO-DOs. I've been out on the forums and not found a best fit yet, so I thought I'd ask the smartest people in the world - FReepers.
Also, a lot of folks seem to report issues with calendar events not sync-ing well when created on the PC.
It is time to upgrade his old CDMA phone and we plan to get him an android or iOS smartphone.
Ideas? Experiences?
Thanks in advance
Gmail.
Sync the computer to Gmail, calendars and all - and set up the phone to sync to gmail as well.
ping
Gmail is how I did it.
As much as I hate relying on the Google evil empire, Keith is exactly right — this works like a charm. It also works great for setting up multiple calendars, for instance I have a “personal” calendar, a “whole family” calendar, and individual calendars for each child’s activities (the eldest, who has an iPod Touch, also syncs to his own calendar and the “family” one).
Don’t know about Androids, but it is pretty simple with an iPhone. IF your son has a macbook, it is very easy to do this through iCal.
In fact, for a few bucks (I think its $99 a year) you can put the calendar up on Mobileme and it will synch with your desktop and phone. When you make a change on one, it will automatically synch with the other.
There are very cheap apps available to synch to do lists for the iphone.
When you go to a mac system you will have to start thinking in a non-MS world. It takes some time, and I had to work through years of inbred resistance, but it worked out OK.
I work for myself, and as a photographer I have to be able to schedule stuff on the run. In busy times, I will have four or five clients checking my online schedule for available time. If I did not have the automatic synching capability I would have people trying to double book all of the time.
If you have more specifics, drop me an Freepmail. I will be happy to give you some mac specific things I’ve found that work. If you are dealing in a PC world I know there were a bunch of programs that would synch between blackberry’s and MS Outlook. Android is another world for me, so I dont know.
For the Mac folks, - MobileMe is the way to go indeed. A snap to set-up, and after that, it just works.
And there are a lot more things than the calendar with mobile me. File sharing, off site storage and email. Really a decent, cheap network solution for one person shops like myself.
I went to the google apps site and forums and I inferred that I MUST be on exchange to do it. NOt opposed to spending a bit of $$ with google for their app, but I do NOT want to set up an Exc$ange server.
Are you using a total GOOGLE APPS/gmail solution? Or are you integrating gmail with outlook?
The core of what I am seeking is that the desktop add remains as Outlook, because it really is good with task and calendar integration.
I don’t want to move to a gmail core because it is not an functional or fast WRT tasks/To-Dos/Calendar.
NET: with the presumption that the desktop MUST stay as Outlook, can gmail on the smartphone ‘integrate’ with that desktop and display/sync/update via gmail to Outlook?
Set-up Outlook to use IMAP to connect to the gmail servers - things will sync back and forth between gmail servers and the computer... then, set up the smartphone the same way - add or change something on the computer - it goes to the gmail server... then he phone syncs to gmail, and gets adds/changes. In this set up - you do not need to sync the phone & computer directly. Google’s support pages will tell you how to set this up.
Got it.
I set him up on IMAP to get his Auburn Tigeramil into Outlook. He also has a gmail account. Auburn has deployed a ‘cloud’ version of Outlook, but the TASK/To-Do functionality in the cloud version is pretty crippled.
What you wrote *SHOULD* work.
As usual, there is a simple solution to be found by talking to folks who have gone before you.
Thanks for the tip.
As a “by the way” ... my presumption is that this gmail-level integration will do fine for calendar entries, but will NOT enable display/ add-change of Outlook-entered TASKS. We’ll hope that it does, but I don’t recall gmail calendar supporting Outlook tasks.
BUT Since this is so simple (and free) we may decide to be happy with just calendar real-time sync and rely on the Outlook client for daily updates/maintenance of tasks and to-dos.
Also ...
Got him an HTC Inspire today. 4G from AT&T. Smokin’ fast and a great deal.
“Many of us new Androids use Microsoft Outlook regularly for email without Exchange. Now that you have an Android phone (which requires you to have a Gmail account) you have a separate calendar in Gmail which your Android phone can easily sync with. This tutorial walks you through how to enable you to synchronize your Outlook calendar with Google calendar which will sync with your Android phone. This makes things very convenient and uniform when you can enter information in either and they all stay synchronized… and all for Free!”
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