[troggie]

Hi All
I'm a proud new owner of my first BB which is a 8900 and i'm trying hard to learn what i can do with it and also how to sync up with my outlook 2003 which i use for email, contacts and calendar. I've searched on this great site and have read that it is better to get gmail and google calendar and move away from outlook.

I'm not sure whether to change to google yet and would like to just get my outlook calendar and contacts onto my BB. Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to do this?

Many thanks in advance
Craig

[mitchelrl]

Is this for work or for home? Outlook/Exchange is business class, Google is personal and small business class.

[TXLady]

I disagree that Outlook is just for business. I use Microsoft Outlook for all of my personal email. I have more than one email account and use Outlook to download all to my desktop.

You can sync your contacts and calendar between your desktop Outlook and the BB using Blackberry Desktop Manger. You can't do it automatically or OTA but I haven't found a real need to sych my personal address book and calendar more than once a week or so.

Your email won't actually sync between Outlook and the BB. It will sync with your email server (such as Yahoo or Google) but once you download to the desktop, you can't sync email between the desktop and the BB.

[mitchelrl]

I didn't say it was just for business, I said it was business class. Just because you use Microsoft Outlook for personal use, it doesn't mean it's the best course of action.

Gmail is free, Outlook is not (costs around $200 for the whole office 2007 pro suite)
Gmail data is redundant, POP3 setups in outlook that don't leave a copy of a message on the server are not and I've seen countless people forget to backup their outlook .OST before formatting.
Cloud/Google computing is the future for personal use and small companys with no aspirations of public ownership.

You can sync everything (contacts, calendar, messages) over the air with Blackberry Desktop Redirector and it will sync Outlook and your Blackberry.

Don't give advice if you aren't capable of doing it accurately, there's enough bad information on the internet already.

As far as the OP's question is concerned.

Install Blackberry Desktop Manager and check out the synchronization area, it will synch your outlook contacts with your phone initially.

Cheers,

Mitchel

[TXLady]

Originally Posted by mitchelrl

I didn't say it was just for business, I said it was business class. Just because you use Microsoft Outlook for personal use, it doesn't mean it's the best course of action.

Gmail is free, Outlook is not (costs around $200 for the whole office 2007 pro suite)
Gmail data is redundant, POP3 setups in outlook that don't leave a copy of a message on the server are not and I've seen countless people forget to backup their outlook .OST before formatting.
Cloud/Google computing is the future for personal use and small companys with no aspirations of public ownership.

You can sync everything (contacts, calendar, messages) over the air with Blackberry Desktop Redirector and it will sync Outlook and your Blackberry.

Don't give advice if you aren't capable of doing it accurately, there's enough bad information on the internet already.

As far as the OP's question is concerned.

Install Blackberry Desktop Manager and check out the synchronization area, it will synch your outlook contacts with your phone initially.

Cheers,

Mitchel

We have a difference of opinion. Sorry you don't like mine. I didn't like yours but did not feel a need to attack you for it.

Since many people already have Microsoft Office with Outlook, it's not an additional expense. Since the OP was asking about Outlook, it's safe to guess that he already has it. And if one is used to using Outlook, already has contacts and calendar in it, and wants to use it, then I do belive it is the best course of action.

I don't use Desktop Redirector and have read many postings on here and other forums that it does not work well. I would not use it because it requires you to leave your PC on all the time in order to work and it is not always reliable. Additionally, from reading the documentation on the RIM website, my understanding is that it requires an account using Exchange Server to function. I guess the RIM documentation could be incorrect.

About the BlackBerry Desktop Redirector

If your BlackBerry® device is associated with a Microsoft® Outlook® email account that uses Microsoft® Exchange Server version 5.5 or later and does not use a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, you can use the BlackBerry® Desktop Redirector to forward email messages and organizer data to and from your device.

Many of us use Outlook for accounts that are not associated with Exchange Server. I use mine with accounts from Yahoo, Roadrunner, my personal domain, and others.

[mitchelrl]

Sorry if it came off as an attack, it wasn't intended as such.

#1 Redirector works fine without Exchange, all it needs is an SMTP Server to connect to. Try it, so you can actually have an opinion on it. RIM's documention is always lackluster.

#2 The big caveat to Outlook is that in order to use it properly and preserve your data, you have to stay on top of your archiving and not let your .OST get out of control. Then Back them up online or to another drive in case you have a drive failure. Which is hard for an average user to do.

With hosted solutions like Google and Yahoo, you can have a catastrophic computer failure and still not lose any e-mail data.

Again, sorry if you saw it as an attack, That's not my style. Text can't always convey tone.