iCal sync does not work in Entourage 2008

[Steve Glenn]

My Address book on the Mac will not transfer the "Groups"....so I tried to customize my categories in Entourage and love but will not map over to iCal mac? Also everything that I'm using to connect my iphone with this program changes all color settings to RED?

Can you help?

Have you used Sync Services before (in Entourage 2004)? Entourage has
a rather idiosyncratic approach to calendar synching; if Sync Services
is turned on, a new calendar is created in iCal, called "Entourage". Events
created in Entourage show up in that calendar, and if you create events
in iCal, they need to be in that calendar as well or else they won't show
up in Entourage. If you want to get items from iCal into Entourage, you
now know what to do: right-click them and put them into the "Entourage"
calendar. Many users would prefer if they could set up Entourage to synch
categories to iCal calendars; if that sounds like what you would like
to have as well, click on Send Feedback on Entourage inside Entourage's
help menu to let Microsoft know.





-- Michel Bintener Microsoft MVP Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)





***Always reply to the newsgroup.***





(e-mail address removed) wrote: > I can't sync my iCal calendar at all
in 2008. I have sync turned in > preferences. It does not show me any
options to choose which calendar to > sync. Same on my Macbook. The address
book does sync even though that > doesn't show up to. > I have tried creating
a new identity and I get the same thing. > At the moment this is unusable.

 

[Abhay p]

My Address book on the Mac will not transfer the "Groups"....so I tried to customize my categories in Entourage and love but will not map over to iCal mac? Also everything that I'm using to connect my iphone with this program changes all color settings to RED?

Can you help?

      Have you used Sync Services before (in Entourage 2004)? Entourage has
      a rather idiosyncratic approach to calendar synching; if SyncServices
      is turned on, a new calendar is created in iCal, called "Entourage". Events
      created in Entourage show up in that calendar, and if you create events
      in iCal, they need to be in that calendar as well or else they won't show
      up in Entourage. If you want to get items from iCal into Entourage, you
      now know what to do: right-click them and put them into the "Entourage"
      calendar. Many users would prefer if they could set up Entourage to synch
      categories to iCal calendars; if that sounds like what you would like
      to have as well, click on Send Feedback on Entourage inside Entourage's
      help menu to let Microsoft know.

There's an easier option for that last bit: do an iCal export from
your earlier calendar and import the resulting file into the
"Entourage" calendar on iCal. No need to shift events and tasks one by
one.

Warm regards,
Abhay

 

[charles H. Green]

This is all an absurd mess. PocketMac has just come out with PocketMac for Entourage 2008. I ran it, and for the first time ever since I went to Mac and bought Entourage, it worked like advertised.
Hallelujah!
Until the second time I used it. Boom. Crash. Right smack back into the mess. Runs forever. Won't download to blackberry. Incompatible with iCal. Can't sync to an iPhone. MobileMe continues to be a mess. Address book filled with duplicates.
I've spent hours and hours at the Mac Genius desk, hours on the line with supposed help people.
This is such a complete obvious foul-up; Apple says "we don't support third-party developers like Microsoft." Really? Who sold it to me? Who made money on it? Who advertised Microsoft Office as being great for the Mac? That's right, Apple.
Microsoft? Complete and total silence.
I am disgusted by the whole ugly mess.

 

[Diane Ross]

Have you considered it's PocketMac that's at fault?

Everything syncs to a database called the "truth." If this is messed up then
a vicious cycle starts. See these articles for help:

See this article on cleaning up Sync Services and links to scripts that will
help eliminate duplicates.

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2008/06/sync_services_still_causing_problems
_for_some_users_after_sp.html>

In case the above link does not work:

<http://tinyurl.com/6ztjfl>

Everything you wanted to know about syncing. The Truth, The Whole Truth, and
Nothing But The Truth.

³Why does syncing play Gossip with my contacts?³

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/07/why_does_the_syncing_play_goss.html>

<http://tinyurl.com/34qkrv>

 

[LOV2KRZ]

I got frustrated with the poor sync issue in February and just went to manual syncing using my HTC 8525 and Active Sync in the Windows environment and emailing vcards and icards to myself and putting them in Entourage.

My phone is giving up the ghost and I'm going to upgrade to the HTC Tilt, the iPhone doesn't do voice dialing so it won't work for me. I've gotten Entourage and iCal/Address Book to Sync and am getting ready to use Missing Sync to handle the Windows Mobil device mapping.

I had photos in my Entourage Contacts but they did not sync over to Address Book. Is there anything I can do to get the photos to sync over? If I manually put photos in Address Book and sync with a new, zero data phone, will the photos move from Address Book to the Phone?

Entourage and the phone support company name as a primary name field and when I sync'd address book most got converted to First, Middle, Last. I read another post somewhere that address book doesn't handle that to well and they suggested fixing all of those in address book so I did. If all of the data is now clean in address book and ical and matches the Entourage data set what should I expect when I do my first sync with the new phone (HTC Tilt)?

Thanks.

 

[Steven Green]

I placed this on the forum under an incorrect subject line and am having
difficulty posting a new question so I'm using the reply function from
within Entourage.

I had photos in my Entourage Contacts but they did not sync over to Address
Book. Is there anything I can do to get the photos to sync over?

If I manually put photos in Address Book and sync with a new, zero data
phone, will the photos move from Address Book to the Phone?

 

[Diane Ross]

I placed this on the forum under an incorrect subject line and am having
difficulty posting a new question so I'm using the reply function from
within Entourage.

Many people do not realize this is not a web forum, but a web interface to
this newsgroup. The Mactopia web interface is just one way to access. If you
can do an email, then you can use the Entourage newsreader. It's extremely
easy because the Microsoft server is already there. Entourage is not the
best newsreader around, but if all you need is access to the Microsoft
newsgroups, then you will find it much easier to ask a question and find
answers.

Another benefit is messages are downloaded and searchable by Entourage's
Spotlight search. By clicking on the "more" button you can get older
messages to search for help.

How to subscribe to the Microsoft Entourage newsgroup

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/support_options/subnews.html>

These are the active newsgroups:

microsoft.public.mac.office
microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage
microsoft.public.mac.office.word
microsoft.public.mac.office.excel
microsoft.public.mac.office.powerpoint

I had photos in my Entourage Contacts but they did not sync over to Address
Book. Is there anything I can do to get the photos to sync over?

I can't find any data on that. I like photos, but this feature has generated
almost no questions so either it's trouble free or not used.

If I manually put photos in Address Book and sync with a new, zero data
phone, will the photos move from Address Book to the Phone?

Maybe an iPhone user can chime in here. The next time be sure to add key
words to the subject. "Address Book Photos and iPhone" would get the
attention of iPhone users.

Sorry, I can't provide more help.

 

[Steven Green]

I am already a member of the news group but haven't been back in a while so
I forgot that all I needed to do was open the news group and create a new
message.

I am not using an iPhone. I will be using a Windows Mobil 6 device HTC
Tilt. The iPhone doesn't support a few things I need especially voice
dialing and I'm unwilling to pay AT&T $5/month for a function the phone
should support.

Thanks

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

I had photos in my Entourage Contacts but they did not sync over to Address
Book. Is there anything I can do to get the photos to sync over?

If I manually put photos in Address Book and sync with a new, zero data
phone, will the photos move from Address Book to the Phone?

The formats of the Apple Address Book photos and Entourage's Address
Book photos are incompatible. You can not get them to sync.

I have a list of items in this blog post that do and do not sync:

"Why does syncing play Gossip with my contacts?"
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/07/why_does_the_syncing_play_goss.html>

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Steven Green]

Thank you for the information. I understand the issue much more completely
now.

I added photos to address book and they sync'd over to the phone. Your
article provided great insight into the sync issues I have encountered
trying to sync my contacts and calendar events from Entourage to the Phone
via iCal & Address Book via Sync Services.

 

[Micdim]

The Best Program for a combined Client Management System is by far Marketcircle's Daylight for Macintosh. It blows away anything else.

 

[zebu58]

You said it will sync fine with Entourage 2008 - could you tell us how?




Thanks

Yes, it will sync fine. I have an iPhone, synced it first with Outlook,
then Apple Mail, and now Entourage.






On 1/16/08 1:01 PM, in article (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw, "Brent"
<Brent> wrote:





Will Entourage 2008 sync with iPhone? I have synced my iPhone with Outlook,
but would like to work on the Mac side. Thanks!

 

[Luigi]

Absolutely not working! Double entired each time A real mess!
MY DAY is also not showing the all day activity a real shame fro the money I paid

 

[john Wallinger]

Absolutely not working! Double entired each time A real mess! MY DAY is
also not showing the all day activity a real shame fro the money I paid




Entourage 2008 and iCal worked fine until 10.5.5 then all went horribly wrong. I can not tell if this is a Mac thing or an Entourage thing. Can anyone shed any light.

 

[Diane Ross]

Entourage 2008 and iCal worked fine until 10.5.5 then all went horribly wrong.
I can not tell if this is a Mac thing or an Entourage thing. Can anyone shed
any light.

Any comment would be a guess. I'm sure if it was an easy fix, we would have
seen improvements.

 

[Kerryd]

I can't sync my iCal calendar at all in 2008. I have sync turned in preferences. It does not show me any options to choose which calendar to sync. Same on my Macbook. The address book does sync even though that doesn't show up to.

I have tried creating a new identity and I get the same thing.
At the moment this is unusable.

Not only is sync services a known problem to Microsoft's Mac tech
support people but there is another problem. Entourage gave me a popup
after a sync that the database wasn't functioning properly. I ran
rebuild and Entourage wouldn't even open. The Verify in the
Entourage's database utility reported the database was fine.

I called Microsoft and they are fully aware of the sync services
problem plus this rebuild problem. The lady I spoke to had a few calls
on this very issue that day. She told me they cannot figure out what
the problem is with sync services nor rebuild. She said the issue has
proven very complex.

Her suggestion to me for now: switch to the Apple apps and as soon as
there is a fix she is going to send me an e-mail. She said, as have a
couple other tech reps at Microsoft, this is too painful. It is best
to stop using Entourage for now until the problem is resolved.

I don't know what to do. I really need the power of Entourage but 08
has just consumed so much of my time in repairs that I have never
experienced before with any previous Microsoft product, be it PC or
Mac based.

What I've had to do, is revert, via Time Machine to a database from
earlier. However, some of the stuff I entered on my handheld had to be
re-entered by hand. Some of it made it over to sync services and when
I re-enabled combine the stuff that made it was brought into
Entourage. But this is truly painful.

After numerous discussions with various people at Microsoft (at
different levels other than the MacBU itself) I'm pretty convinced a
fix is a fair way off. There is something wrong in the structure of
the database as it was originally designed that is causing a problem
when they went to implement it with sync services. I'm told the best
are working on it but they just can't figure it out.

So I guess I should switch as the potential data I might have lost
today while out in the field would have been a bit of a disaster. Most
certainly embarrassing if I had to go and gather that info again.

 

[PatrickF]

Reluctantly I've given up on Entourage for now as well. The sync problems were consuming way too much time. I really need the ability to group email, contacts, events, etc into projects and love how it should look within Entourage.
Pity.

 

[g.man]

I am using OS 10.5.4 and Office 2008 12.1.4. I have an iphone G3. I use MobileMe (not as efficient as pitched by apple). My sync operations are acceptable. I use Entourage calendar, preferring the look, feel, and joined to my e-mail. I set up Entourage in Sync Services to sync with iCal. I set MobileMe to sync from computer to cloud. I enter an event in Entourage. I choose sync from my menu bar, and the event goes up to MobileMe and then to my phone. If I do an event on my phone or edit an event, I choose to sync from the icon in my menu bar on the computer, and I get any changes made on my phone. They come up on my Entourage calendar. It's great so far. If the pushing feature on MobileMe was what Apple pitched, then all would be peaches and cream, but I'm okay with it presently.

 

[Armando]

Entourage could have a 'default' iCal calendar with which to sync. At least that would be a start as I suspect most people use Entourage only to use Macintosh at work but use iCal to run one or more calendars including their personal ones and to sync with iPhones....

aps.

The situation is not that easy, actually. Entourage does not support multiple
calendars (except Exchange calendars), but it uses categories; iCal, on
the other hand, handles multiple calendars, but does not use categories.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but ultimately,
there is a paradigm shift that needs to be made when transitioning from
one app to the other. I'm sure that if we protest loudly enough, Microsoft
may consider doing what I've suggested, i.e. syncing Entourage categories
with iCal calendars.





-- Michel Bintener Microsoft MVP Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)





***Always reply to the newsgroup.***





wrote: > Why the hell cant they do the simple thing and parse iCal categories?

 

[Harry]

Still no Palm sync for Entourage 2008!
What a disappointing situation.