Android and syncing to exchange. Contacts and calenders?!

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epatterson
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Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2009 7:35 am

Android and syncing to exchange. Contacts and calenders?!

Post by epatterson »

Many new phones are coming out with google's powerful new operating system, Android. Business users often have some specific functions they need on their phone, such as syncing email, contacts, and calenders between exchange, outlook, and their phones. Android phones sync email very well, but unfortunately, contacts and calenders can be much trickier.

First, an issue with syncing contacts. Most businesses that use exchange for email store their contact information on the server, on public folders. The email app that comes with android, unfortunately, cannot sync public folders, only local user contacts. An easy solution to this is to copy all the contacts, or at least the ones you want, from the public folder to your local mailbox contacts. This will sync up fine, but some may find having every company contact on their local mail and phone overwhelming.

When it comes to calenders, the android mail app can ONLY sync public folder, or company wide calenders. While this may be enough for some, most people want their personal calenders. The best solution to this at this point is kind of piecemeal. You need to install on your computer, an app from google called Google Calender Sync, http://www.google.com/support/calendar/ ... swer=89955 which will sync your calender to gmail, then you can sync your calender from gmail to your android phone.

Android is still very new, so with time an app may be available to overcome both of these problems and take care of syncing everything in one place with no extra steps or software. Until then there aren't too many other options it seems.
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