yet another outlook to outlook.com question

[Lorna]

I have seen a few questions addressing this but have no successful resolution for me. I will give you as much info as I can. Here is the question: how do I sync my outlook calendar/tasks to outlook.com so that I can view on surface rt? Or is there a more appropriate approach?

1. I have MS office 2010
2. My outlook on PC is an POP/SMTP
3. my outlook.com uses a Gmail account
4. I have installed the MS outlook connector and the emails sync fine tho changes to one do not change the other which is not great. Example, I delete an email from my surface but it is still there on desktop.

Ultimately I would like to access all email accounts and calendars in one place. I'm really amazed how difficult this is so far. And a bit frustrated as this is one of the main reasons for the purchase of a surface. My expectation was great compatibility and in hopes this is just my ignorance.

Thanks so much for all your help!

 

[hotphil]

Problem is the Outlook on your PC. POP/SMTP connection has no smarts - it doesn't know/care if you read the mail/delete it on another device.

I would do the following:
- Make sure you've a good backup of your email data (including exporting Calendars, Contacts etc to a PST file - just in case anything goes wrong here!).
- Find the Control Panel on your PC.
- In Control Panel, find the Mail icon, launch it.
- Go to Show Profiles and Add a new Profile. Call it something like "Outlook.com". Follow the wizard to setup your account.
- When the wizard finishes, you should still have the Profile screen displayed. Make sure the option to Prompt for a Profile is selected.
- Fire up Outlook. It should ask you if you want to use your Outlook Profile or your Outlook.com Profile. Select Outlook.com. It may take a few minutes to connect to the server and pull data down.
- What you should now have is Outlook on your PC configured to display exactly what's stored in Outlook.com. If you are happy with that, you can go back to the Mail option in Control Panel and set the "Always use this Profile" option to the "Outlook.com" one. Your "old" data stays on your PC and you can access it by changing that setting back to require a prompt.

Note though, if you have Archive folders or other PST files in your Outlook, they won't be shown when using your Outlook.com Profile. But you can just attach them to this new Profile by going to File>Open Outlook Data File (might be named slightly different, I can't remember the 2010 menus too well).

Now your Outlook is connected to Outlook.com via Exchange ActiveSync and not SMTP/POP, when you delete something in your Outlook or on the Outlook.com website or on your Surface or on another device they should all sync nicely (within a few minutes). But, I'm not clear on how you have your Outlook.com set up, you mention GMail? If Outlook.com is importing/subscribing to Mails or Calendars in GMail you might have some issues (depending on the config), but the steps above to create a new Profile and get Outlook talking in a better way to Outlook.com won't affect that.

 

[Lorna]

Thank you for such a prompt response! . I will give this a try as time allows and in great hopes it does the trick. Even more hopeful that my calendars sync.
Thanks again!

 

[daniielrp]

I would ditch Outlook 2010 and upgrade to Outlook 2013 as this supports Exchange ActiveSync which means hotmail/outlook/live mail accounts all work beautifully and update folders/deletes/moves/replies whatever across all devices

 

[hotphil]

That's a good point. I've not got Outlook 2010 so can't recall all the connectivity options it supports.
In which case Lorna could may have to set her PC Outlook to connect using IMAP. The section on IMAP at Outlook.com Mail Server Settings should help. IMAP is still smarter than POP/SMTP.

 

[daniielrp]

That's a good point. I've not got Outlook 2010 so can't recall all the connectivity options it supports.
In which case Lorna could may have to set her PC Outlook to connect using IMAP. The section on IMAP at Outlook.com Mail Server Settings should help. IMAP is still smarter than POP/SMTP.

IMAP would be good, but I don't think Outlook.com accounts support calendar sync over that protocol, nor do they support CalDav :/

 

[Lorna]

Thank you for your responses. I see that upgrading seems the best option tho not necessarily an economical one.

 

[daniielrp]

Depends on where you get it really - Office 365 (£7.99pm) is actually a good deal.