Can't get Entourage to sync with Address Book or iCal for iPhone

[England]

Hi,
I've read all the posts, but I can't seem to get my Entourage 2004 to sync with iCal or my Address Book. I am doing this to get everything into my iPhone. I can see the Preference boxes in Sync Services, but when I check them, nothing happens. How does sync services work? Is there a way to start the sync? I have the icon for syncing at the top, but when I hit 'sync now' it neither syncs with .mac or my address book or iCal. I don't know what else to try. I can see that other people have gotten this to work, so I know it's possible! Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Diane Ross]

I've read all the posts, but I can't seem to get my Entourage 2004 to sync
with iCal or my Address Book. I am doing this to get everything into my
iPhone. I can see the Preference boxes in Sync Services, but when I check
them, nothing happens. How does sync services work? Is there a way to start
the sync? I have the icon for syncing at the top, but when I hit 'sync now' it
neither syncs with .mac or my address book or iCal. I don't know what else to
try. I can see that other people have gotten this to work, so I know it's
possible! Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

See the steps to reset Sync Services:

Troubleshoot Sync Services

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/syncservices.html>

There are problems with Sync Services now, so make a duplicate in the Finder
before doing this.

 

[England]

Hi Diane,
Thanks for the response!

Unfortunately, when I was looking through the posts previous to my post here, I saw this and tried it at that time. No joy.

But in case I did it wrong, let me ask for some clarification:

1) When it says close all office applications, it mentions Daemon. What is Daemon?
2) Unless I am mistaken, I have never seen an activity monitor. What or where would that be?
3) In my application support, I have nothing in sync service (And it's one word, not sync services in plural or separately if that makes a difference and is referring to something else).
4) In the caches, I have never had any iCal or Address book plists or com.apple.ical to throw out.

Lastly, what do you mean make a duplicate in the Finder. Of what?

I am still not synching between Entourage and .Mac or the Address Book.

Thanks so much!

 

[nicko]

Hi Diane,
Thanks for the response!
Unfortunately, when I was looking through the posts previous to my post here, I saw this and tried it at that time. No joy.
But in case I did it wrong, let me ask for some clarification:
1) When it says close all office applications, it mentions Daemon. What isDaemon?
2) Unless I am mistaken, I have never seen an activity monitor. What or where would that be?
3) In my application support, I have nothing in sync service (And it's oneword, not sync services in plural or separately if that makes a difference and is referring to something else).
4) In the caches, I have never had any iCal or Address book plists or com.apple.ical to throw out.
Lastly, what do you mean make a duplicate in the Finder. Of what?
I am still not synching between Entourage and .Mac or the Address Book.
Thanks so much!

I've had the same problem, often sporadically - ie one moment it all
synch fine, then i-cal bizarrely loses 90% of the data in entourage.
I've found that if you switch the syn services off in entourage (in
preferences) and then switch them back on - and confirm that you want
to merge the entourage data with the synch services data, this seems
to do the trick.

Nick O

 

[Diane Ross]

Hi Diane,
Thanks for the response!

Unfortunately, when I was looking through the posts previous to my post here,
I saw this and tried it at that time. No joy.

But in case I did it wrong, let me ask for some clarification:

I usually link to the "How to quit daemon". I'll add that to the steps.

1) When it says close all office applications, it mentions Daemon. What is
Daemon?

A daemon is a networking program that performs a housekeeping or maintenance
utility function without being called by the user. A daemon sits in the
background and is activated only when needed, for example, to correct an
error from which another program cannot recover.

Microsoft Entourage uses the Microsoft Database daemon and the Microsoft AU
daemon.

Daemon FAQs: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/glossary/daemon.html>

How to quit daemon:

2) Unless I am mistaken, I have never seen an activity monitor. What or where
would that be?

The Activity Monitor is one of the applications in the Apple/Utility folder.
You can use the monitor to gather menu useful pieces of info. For example
when an application hangs, it will show as red in the Activity Monitor. You
can select it and force quit it there when nothing else will make it quit.
You can also click on the Sample button to get a crash log of the event.
Paste this log into a text document if you need to send it someone for help.

The Activity Monitor also shows CPU used, system memory, disk activity, disk
usage and network activity. It's easy to see when something is hogging
memory and causing slowdowns.. Sort by CPU column.

3) In my application support, I have nothing in sync service (And it's one
word, not sync services in plural or separately if that makes a difference and
is referring to something else).

Sometimes it's one word and sometimes two. In the Application Support folder
it is one.

Your User's folder/Library/Application Support/SyncServices

4) In the caches, I have never had any iCal or Address book plists or
com.apple.ical to throw out.

Lastly, what do you mean make a duplicate in the Finder. Of what?

There is no make duplicate in the steps to reset:

Troubleshoot Sync Services
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/syncservices.html#ss2>

How to make a duplicate in the Finder. Select the item and do a command-D.
You'll also find the command to duplicate in the Finder window under File
--> Duplicate.

I am still not synching between Entourage and .Mac or the Address Book.

Do you have Sync Services enabled in Entourage Preferences?

Are you using Leopard? Currently there are huge problems with Sync Services
in Leopard. We are hoping the 10.5.2 update will fix those.

 

[England]

Hi Diane,
Thanks for the info. I am using Leopard. And since I've tried this twice with no joy, it may not be possible to do until the software is upgraded.

Right now, I have done a manual one way fix. I go to Entourage and literally, highlight each contact individually with the apple key and move them into a folder on my desktop. Question: Is there a way to click on the entire contact list in Entourage and move it to a folder? For some reason, 'select all' won't copy them all over to a folder when I try. And no matter what combination of keys I hit with the apple key, the whole list won't highlight for copying. So, I have to hold down the apple key and add each contact. With 1,000 of them, it's time consuming!

From that folder, I can then click on the entire list - the apple key and shift here does work, and drag and drop that to my apple address book. That will of course sync with the iPhone.

And when I want to update, I have to erase on the contacts in the iPhone (and Address book) and repeat the whole process.

It works, but obviously, not an ideal situation.

Any other thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[Diane Ross]

Right now, I have done a manual one way fix. I go to Entourage and literally,
highlight each contact individually with the apple key and move them into a
folder on my desktop. Question: Is there a way to click on the entire contact
list in Entourage and move it to a folder? For some reason, 'select all' won't
copy them all over to a folder when I try. And no matter what combination of
keys I hit with the apple key, the whole list won't highlight for copying. So,
I have to hold down the apple key and add each contact. With 1,000 of them,
it's time consuming!

File --> Export select to export your contacts as Entourage archive (.rge)
or a tab delimited file.

Select All works for me. Try selecting all under the Edit menu. This would
eliminate any keyboard problems.

From that folder, I can then click on the entire list - the apple key and
shift here does work, and drag and drop that to my apple address book. That
will of course sync with the iPhone.

And when I want to update, I have to erase on the contacts in the iPhone (and
Address book) and repeat the whole process.

Look under the Address Book Views --> Changed in the past 7 days. Use this
view to get the newest ones. Drag these to the desktop to add to your
iPhone.

 

[England]

Hi Diane,
For whatever reason, when I 'export' to a .txt file, Address book won't import it. No idea why. It was the first thing I tried. And address book will also not recognise a .rge file for importing. But I do use that as as backup.

And when I do the 'select all' from the edit menu, you are right, it does appear to work and select all the Entourage contacts without using the keyboard one by one - at least they are all highlighted, but then when I move that whole list into the desktop folder by copying or dragging (the interim place before importing to address book), it only moves some of them. About 1/3, not the whole selected/highlighted list. I've tried it several times. And...it's not consistent with which ones it picks to move. Maybe my contact list is to big?

It's all a little frustrating!

I will look into the changed in past 7 days view, but then I think I will end up with duplicates every time I move the contacts from Entourage in again. That's always been my problem with address book.

Thanks!

 

[Diane Ross]

Hi Diane,
For whatever reason, when I 'export' to a .txt file, Address book won't import
it. No idea why. It was the first thing I tried. And address book will also
not recognise a .rge file for importing. But I do use that as as backup.

Are you talking about the Apple Address Book or Entourage's Address Book?

And when I do the 'select all' from the edit menu, you are right, it does
appear to work and select all the Entourage contacts without using the
keyboard one by one - at least they are all highlighted, but then when I move
that whole list into the desktop folder by copying or dragging (the interim
place before importing to address book), it only moves some of them. About
1/3, not the whole selected/highlighted list. I've tried it several times.
And...it's not consistent with which ones it picks to move. Maybe my contact
list is to big?

That's a Finder issue. You can only drag 199 items at a time to the desktop.
Sometimes you can get a few more but 199 seems to be the highest number the
Finder likes.

It's all a little frustrating!

Everyone is frustrated with the syncing problems right now. I'm immune. I
don't go anywhere so I don't need to sync. One of the advantages of
being disabled.

 

[England]

Hi Diane,
The Apple Address book won't import a .txt file (or a .rge file) that I've made from Entourage using the export function. Literally nothing happens.

Ok, since I have almost a thousand contacts I won't be able to use the select all function to move the contacts out of Entourage manually. It's a one by one thing.