The Entourage Help Blog

After ten days of heartache and experimentation, I can now Sync almost perfectly between Entourage 2008 under 10.5 and my Palm Treo 650.

The only exception is any changes to contacts made on the Treo make it back to Address Book but not to Entourage.
In all other cases, any new or altered event syncs perfectly between the platforms, and any new or altered contact made in Entourage syncs to the Palm.

Here’s what you have to do, and don’t leave anything out. You need to get “Missing Sync” from Mark/Space.
You need to start with a clean Entourage database. So, spend as long as it takes to remove all the duplicate events, etc. and then back up the database so you don’t have to go through the mess again!

Next step is to remove all the Palm Desktop OS files, trash them, and reboot. You will be syncing using Mark/Space conduits entirely, therefore Palm is irrelevant, and in fact, as it works in the background, slows down the CPU. Do not trash any Palm Document files. (you might be able to, but I didn’t want to risk losing backups, etc)

Set up Missing Sync so that only the Mark/Space Contacts and Events conduits are checked “on”. Don’t check any other contacts, calendar, Date Book etc. conduits. Also check any conduits that are specific to you. You can also check the Call Log and SMS conduits if you like. This way you will have a copy of your Treo call log on your Mac.

Open iSycn ONCE only, and ensure that you do NOT have the “Enable Palm Syncing” option checked. You will not be using iSync to sync to your Palm – you will be using the Missing Sync. (iSync will be doing the work of syncing between Entourage and iCal and Address Book only)

Open Entourage preferences, and uncheck in Sync Services all three boxes.

Reboot.
Open Entourage/Prefernces/Sync Services again, check the boxes this time, then check the option to over write iCal and Address Book with Entourage data.

Within a minute or maybe less, all your data from Entourage is now accurately in iCal and Address Book.

Do NOT delete or uncheck any of the probably four calendars in iCal at the moment. The only one that is relevant is “Entourage”, and when you enter a new event on your Palm, you must categorize it as “Entourage”. If you don’t get into that habit, it will be synced to the “unfiled” calendar in iCal and never make it back to Entourage. (I suspect that is also the issue with contacts going back to Entourage, they don’t make it passed Address Book).

You are ready for your first sync to the Palm.
In the Missing Sync, just choose the Mark/Space Contacts conduit. Highlight the Contacts conduit, then choose the settings, and select “Overwrite handheld with desktop data”.
Start the sync from your Treo – best to use a cable. You could use Bluetooth, but it’s slower.

After the sync, (keep your fingers, eyes and legs crossed during the process) everything should be perfect.
Then try the Mark/Space Events conduit. Same thing, Overwrite Handheld with desktop data.
It should be fine.

Now do a complete sync. Only check the Mark/Space conduits that you need, and any special conduits relevant to your situation, such as “AA Flights”, Zagat Guide, etc. etc.

Experiment.
Enter new contacts or events in Entourage and Address Book and iCal. You will see that they all sync back and worth very quickly.

Sync to the Palm. They will all be there.
Enter a new event or alter an event in Palm. New event, ensure it is categorized as “Entourage”.
Sync – it will be in Entourage. Once again, the only issue is a new or altered contact does not make it back to Entourage.

Hopefully either Apple or Microsoft will address this issue within the next couple of weeks.

Hope this works for you!

I just upgraded to Mac OS 10.5.2. I sync between Entourage 2008 and iCal, so I can use Mark/Space Missing Sync for BlackBerry. It appears that the broken recurring tasks now work.

At first, I ran into lots of trouble, not really understanding how Entourage, iCal, Address Book, and the BlackBerry can work together. After upgrading to Office 2008 in January, my BlackBerry wouldn't work with PocketMac (in many ways a preferred application, since you can add BB apps with it, and you didn't have to use Sync Services with Entourage and iCal/Address Book). Their tech support confirmed an update would be required, but no date was given.

So I upgraded to Missing Sync. You can't add apps, and you have to use Sync Services, but it is more stable and predictable than what I experienced with PocketMac.

If you follow my route, completely removing PocketMac as recommended. Then enable sync services via Entourage. Give it a couple of hours to ensure everything syncs. Check iCal and Address Book to ensure no duplicates have been created.

Once you install Missing Sync, set up each type of sync (contacts, calendar, etc.) to overwrite the BB on the first sync, then synchronize thereafter. This avoids duplicate items, and precludes having to determine which record is "correct" when it does a comparison.

The biggest pain is the current version of Missing Sync for BlackBerry (1.0.3) doesn't handle carriage returns in contact notes. If you have just a few contacts, review the notes and remove the line breaks. If that's just not reasonable, wait for the next sync, and Missing Sync will identify which records have differences. Jot down the contact names and go through and clean them up.

But again, I used to have the recurring tasks break soon after entry into Entourage, but since upgrading to Mac 10.5.2, this has yet to happen.

I got it working in Missing Sync.. BUT it takes about an hour to sync... and about 30 minutes WITH THE CABLE!

It seems to rewrite every time it sychs..

I have been having a terrible time synchronizing Entourage 2008 on my desktop machine at work with my dot.mac account and two other computers (a laptop and my home desktop machine) plus an iPhone.

I'm running 10.5.2 on my work desktop; 10.5.2 on the laptop and 10.4.11 on the home desktop. The iPhone is running 1.1.4 (4A102)

I have synching for address book and calendars set for "on" in the preferences of Entourage on the work desktop machine (only). The synching prefs in Entourage on the other machines is turned off. All 3 computers and the iphone are set up to synch thru the dot.mac account.

Here's what is working:
- If I enter a new calendar event on the office desktop machine in either Entourage or iCal, it will fairly quickly show up in the other. When I synch the office desktop with dot.mac, the new appointment is added to the Truth; and then when either of the other two computers is synched to dot.mac, the appointment that originated on the desktop will show up on the other computer's ical.

- pretty much the same behavior is true when I create a new calendar event on one of the other two computers. If I created the event in the "Entourage" calendar within iCal, then it will synch back thru dot.mac and populate on the other computers. That save is true if I crate a new event on the iPhone and synch it back to my home computer; then synch that computer back thru dot.mac and on to the others.

Here's what doesn't work (at least not consistently): If, on either my home computer or laptop, I make an edit to an existing event that has been populated onto all of the computers -- and by change, that could either be editing the content or deleting the event altogether, by the time it is synched back to the work desktop, that change gets updated on iCal on my work computer fine at first. Then, it seems to take forever for that change to synch over to Entourage. And, the next thing I know, the edit (either changed content or deletion) has been overwritten on iCal on my desktop machine. It's as though it never happened. And if that situation is not quickly noticed, the next time the work desktop synchs with dot.mac, the "lazarus" event is resurrected back on the machine where the original edit took place. That makes the system unreliable, and almost forces you to make all changes in Exchange on the office desktop and then let those changes flow down to other computers --- not very handy or practical.

I should also add that if I were to initiate the change on the iCal side of the work desktop, then that seems to work pretty well. The problems occur when the changes come in from either my laptop, my home machine, or my iphone.

Last observation is that with Entourage 2004, I noticed that if you simply highlighted a the "Entourage" calendar within Entourage (the application), that you could select a menu item under "calendar" for "synchronize now". That was handy if you needed to force a synch between ical and entourage. Now in Entourage 2008, that "synchronize now" selection is always grayed out when you woul d want t be using it. Why is that? Is there someway to get access to that tool? It could prove handy in trying to work around this problem.

Thanks in advance for any ideas. This surely ought to be fixed (and documented better).

Paul

I know it's been identified in the past but.... has anyone found a way to synch sent and received e-mail between two macs (I use a macbook pro for travel and have an iMac at the office)? I use an IMAP account with a Microsoft Exchange backend. I was able to synch when I used Mac Mail but now with Entourage, only the Incoming mail synch's and not the Sent mail.

Any ideas?

thanks,

Steve

Thank you to all for the detailed posts. i was ready to pour gasoline on my BB AND macbook pro i was so frustrated with not being able to synch. i haven't had a chance to try these out but will be shortly.

david

As a follow up to my last post:

I've had continuing issues with Missing Sync not pulling dates from Treo 700 into Entourage. I've reset the Treo, and resent iSync History. But what seems to be working consistently without need for resetting phone is to ensure that new events entered into the phone use time zones.

Weird, eh? It's a setting in the preferences in calendar mode. So far, events with time zones (and of course assigned as Entourage events) have synced successfully.