Can't Trust Entourage and Sync Services

[Scott Melendez]

Well, it¹s gotten to the point where I can no longer trust Entourage Sync
Service¹s with my contacts. They periodically get deleted from Apple Address
Book, which means they don¹t sync to my iPhone; I have a different number of
contacts sometimes (usually only off by one); and the list goes on. So I
work exclusively in Apple¹s Address Book and turned syncing off.

Entourage Notes was even worse. I discovered I had 16,000 duplicates...so
many when opening a Notes window in Entourage would cause it to crash. So I
had to turn that off too.

So far Calendar syncing is ok, although I had over 100 events deleted today.
I really hope I don¹t have to work in iCal so I can use my iPhone, but if
that¹s what it takes, then its hasta la vista, Entourage.

This is really sad. It was working so well in 2004, and I¹ve had nothing but
problems in 2008. The only remedy would be to have an Entourage conduit for
iPhone, or just fix the darn thing altogether.

Scott

MacBook Pro 17² 2.6 GHz, 4 Gb RAM, 250 Gb HD
OS 10.5.4, Office 2008 12.1

 

[Diane Ross]

You need to send your feedback to Microsoft. We are your peers and there is
nothing we can do buy empathize.

Send feedback to Microsoft.

When working in Office, you can use the ³Send Feedback² option under the
Help menu in all of the Office applications or visit

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx>

 

[david toub]

I just sent my feedback in as well:

Syncing between Entourage 2008 and iCal and Address Book is very
unpredictable. Sometimes it works quickly and accurately. Other times,
the sync never happens, even if I uncheck and recheck Sync Services in
the Entourage preferences. I'm likely now going to have to ditch
Entourage and go to iCal and Address Book along with Mail.app, even
though I've been an Entourage user since its inception many years ago.
It's made life very difficult for me in terms of using my iPhone, and
I can't have it where it takes hours, if at all, for things to mesh
between iCal and Entourage or Address Book and Entourage. Please fix
this. I know others have had similar issues.

 

[Diane Ross]

Please fix
this. I know others have had similar issues.

All the MVPs are advocates for better Sync Services. We also will have to
wait on Apple to get it's act together. Just look at the reports on missing
emails and contacts after MobileMe.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

All the MVPs are advocates for better Sync Services. We also will have to
wait on Apple to get it's act together. Just look at the reports on missing
emails and contacts after MobileMe.

One more thing: make sure Office and MacOS X are both perfectly up to
date. That clears out a lot of issues.

For event duplicates, I enter all my events in Entourage and always
assign them a category.
I have a view for all events in Entourage. Duplicates are easy to
identify: categories don't sync through SyncServices. The duplicates are
the ones without a category.



Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

...and to me, that just makes the fact that Microsoft decided to axe
built-in conduits even more idiotic.

The conduit was only helping Palm users. I suspect MS wanted a new
synching architecture that would cover all possibilities (Plam,
Blackberry, Windows Mobile, .Mac, iPhone, Bluetooth Phones, etc).
SyncServices was the only decent possibility.
Now.... If only it could work as expected....


Corentin