Contacts & Calanders troubles and woes.....

To start, I have not been around a while due to starting my own business and becoming a certified forensic computer examiner...however, I have an issue that is driving me insane and a I could really use some help here.

I have my MBP, and iPhone, and soon and iPad. My issue is with my contacts and calendars.

I have contacts and calendars in Google, mobileme, sim card, mail, Outlook (2011).

When I try to sync them, its just plain ugly. I am desperate for a solution or and idea as to how to clean them up. Preferably one set of contacts. The goal is to be able to sync to my iPhone and not have triplicates, quadruplicates and so on.

I'd also like to find a calendar that I can use that will work with all the accounts. Everything is a mess. I need to use a calendar that is intuitive and something I can share out if needed. Outlook would be the best, but the syncing issue makes it not viable.

Any thoughts solutions suggestions are greatly appreciated.

To be honest, I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. I synced with my Mac's AddressBook, MobileMe, iPhone, and iPad, everything was good. When I added Google syncing into the picture, it all went downhill.

I'd say if you can get away with removing Google from your auto-syncing and give it a try, that may very well solve your issues.

I to this day haven't been able to figure out how to get Google to behave when trying to sync contacts.

Google Calendar maybe a Problem

schweb said:

To be honest, I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. I synced with my Mac's AddressBook, MobileMe, iPhone, and iPad, everything was good. When I added Google syncing into the picture, it all went downhill.

I'd say if you can get away with removing Google from your auto-syncing and give it a try, that may very well solve your issues.

I to this day haven't been able to figure out how to get Google to behave when trying to sync contacts.

Click to expand...

"Ditto"
I have 4 devices (iMac, MacBook Pro, Touch 4 and iPhone 3GS and all sync seamlessly with Calendars and Contacts.
I do not use Google Calendar.

If you need to use Google Calendar then check out BusyCal http://www.busymac.com/. I have not used it but it advertises that you can use Google.

DavidH

It would be nice if Office for Mac would work.

mtbinva said:

It would be nice if Office for Mac would work.

Click to expand...

In what way? I use it all the time without any problems.

I'm glad it's not just me. I was previously a Windows PC users, using Outlook for email and calendars. Then I bought an iMac and found many basic features in Outlook sadly missing from iCal and Mail.

For instance, in Outlook I had distribution lists set up, but when I synched my Contacts across (using my iPod) these disappeared. I know you can set up Groups in the Address Book, but first you need to set all the users up as contacts and then add to a group. In Outlook you can just add a new member to a list without them being in your list of Contacts.

Then I had Calendar issues. I wanted to synch my HTC PDA to the iMac for Calendars and Contacts but it seems this is not possible, even with MobileMe - which I purchased and found useless unless you have an iPhone.

I now switch between my PC and iMac, depending on what I am trying to do and it is very tedious - plus I no longer have access to my Calendar unless I am sitting at my desk. Apart from being a better hardware platform, I really can't see what all you Mac Lovers are on about. Though it pains me to say it, MS software is far more user friendly and intuitive than Mac.

schweb said:

In what way? I use it all the time without any problems.

Click to expand...

Excel on Mac is nowhere near as good as on Windows.

Unless you have an exchange server, the calendar function will not sync with any device. This is only for Outlook for Mac. This was verified with a call to there customer service to fix the sync issue.

So, I have the trial version of BusyCal and it seems to work just fine. I do however have an issue with the cost. Anyone know of a coupon code I could use for a little bit of savings? Had I known that issue would not be resolves with Outlook for Mac calendar I would NEVER had bought it.

Well, as an update, BusyCal works nice. I would really like to find a work around that would allow me to use the calendar with my other devices.

Any thoughts or imaginative idea would be great.