Microsoft Sync causes iPhone synchronization to hang

[jstoller]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC
Email Client: Exchange

Often when I attempt to synchronize my iPhone with my desktop, iTunes stalls during the contact or calendar sync. When this happens, I find that if I open Activity Monitor and force quit the Microsoft Sync process iTunes will complete the sync with my phone.

I'm assuming the problem has something to do with the fact that I have Entourage 11.4 set to sync its contacts and calendar with Apple Address Book and iCal.

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a workaround?

 

[William Smith]

Often when I attempt to synchronize my iPhone with my desktop, iTunes
stalls during the contact or calendar sync. When this happens, I find
that if I open Activity Monitor and force quit the Microsoft Sync
process iTunes will complete the sync with my phone.

I'm assuming the problem has something to do with the fact that I
have Entourage 11.4 set to sync its contacts and calendar with Apple
Address Book and iCal.

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a workaround?

How old (what model) is your Mac? How much memory does it have?

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>

 

[jstoller]

It's a 2.0 GHz Dual Processor PowerMac G5, with 2GB of RAM, running Mac OS X 10.4.11.

 

[William Smith]

It's a 2.0 GHz Dual Processor PowerMac G5, with 2GB of RAM, running
Mac OS X 10.4.11.

About how many appointments and contacts do you think you have? Are you
loaded with appointments and folks in your Entourage Address Book? Or do
you think you have just a few hundred contacts and relatively few
meetings per week?

Ideally, you'd test this under a new Mac OS X account but that's not
always practical when syncing devices. If you decide to test then you
might try copying your Microsoft User Data folder and your iTunes
library to /Users/Shared, create a new Mac OS X user account and then
move the copies into the same locations in the new account.

I'd suggest as a next course of action that you reset your Sync
Services. Stop the syncing in Entourage preferences and wait a few
minutes. Then open the iSync application found in /Applications. Select
iSync menu --> Preferences... and click the Reset Sync History... button.

Quit iSync and wait a few minutes. Then enable syncing in Entourage
again. Allow time for items to sync and then test again.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>

 

[jstoller]

I currently have 431 contacts in Address Book. iCal has about 10-20 events a week, spread over seven different calendars (some of these are subscribed calendars, like US Holidays). The Entourage calendar accounts for 5-10 of these events a week.

Two things that could potentially be complicating matters are: 1) I am using Entourage with an Exchange account; and 2) I am using Plaxo to synchronize my contacts and calendars across multiple computers. I must stress though that it is definitely the Microsoft Sync process that is causing iTunes to stall. Plaxo does not appear to be causing any problems on its own.

Creating a new account is impractical at this point. I may be able to try resetting my sync history, but I need to make sure that won't wreak havoc with my Plaxo syncing.