iPhone Exchange contact synching problem

Sac Arrow

Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Snorting his way across the USA
Okay so my email is set up on an Exchange server, and I use Outlook on a desktop, and an iPhone and an iPad.

Email and calendars synch flawlessly. Contacts, not so well. If I set the contact up on Outlook, it shows up no problem on the iPhone and iPad. If I create the contact on the iPhone, it doesn't alway show up on the other two even after several months. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Ive been looking for some special attribute in the iPhone/iPad client that make it visible outside the device but I can't find it.

Anyone know how to force contacts created on an iPhone or iPad to show up on the Exchange server? I'm talking personal contacts, not shareable public ones.
 
Yep, when you get home type the new contact into Outlook to fill the others.
 
Henning said:
Yep, when you get home type the new contact into Outlook to fill the others.
Click to expand...

That's the "bash the other side of the car to make it look even" approach. I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental somewhere in the process.
 
Our Exchange setup allows access to the Global Address Book via the OWA server as long as the iPhone has network, and it does appear to use it... queries are sometimes slow.

Never bothered to try to stuff my personal contacts into Exchange... that'd be putting my contacts into the Company server... I just push 'em to iCloud.
 
Sac Arrow said:
That's the "bash the other side of the car to make it look even" approach. I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental somewhere in the process.
Click to expand...

You forgot you have an Apple product. Their failure to do what I want without having to find a kludge has been my complaint with them for close to 30 years now.

In 20 years the only thing left of Steve Jobs legacy will be curses for autocorrect...:rofl:
 
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Henning said:
You forgot you have an Apple product. Their failure to do what I want without having to find a kludge has been my complaint with them of close to 30 years now.
Click to expand...

Then stop using their products. Really. You're SUCH a whiner. LOL.
 
Henning said:
I really am stupid in that way, I should quit hoping for competence.
Click to expand...

It's the built-in nature of computers. When you ask a bunch of humans to write 2 or 3 million lines of code and anticipate everything any other human could ever want the machine to do, it ain't ever going to be right.

I've only been called for on-call work twice now since I've been back home. That's a quiet weekend.

One, a machine ran itself out of disk space far more rapidly than predicted and co-worker didn't set up monitoring. The other just decided to stop talking to a database probably in conjunction with **** poor troubleshooting or monitoring by the firewall/network folks. The point being, that's "Enterprise class" hardware and software.

A phone device that costs $300 to make ain't ever going to stand a chance of ever meeting everyone's perceived "needs". ;)
 
Sigh.

I have gripes about both Microsoft and Apple products. But both perform extremely well considering. Microsoft makes a better email/ calendar/contact sharing server than anyone else, and Apple makes better telephone and notepad hardware and software than I have used so far.

I'm basically very happy with my Apple products. I don't care for the app lockdown aspect of Apple nor the industry stranglehold of Microsoft but I'm simply looking for an answer to a simple question.

PS. I don't have the time or the energy for Linux, although I am sorely tempted to replace our servers and desktops with it. Problem is, people know Office and Windows. And iPhone. It's more expensive to retrain them than just to suck up to Mr. Gates and pay his licensing fee.

Don't get me started on Autodesk. I want them to die.

End rant. It was my turn. Thank you.
 
Linux is awful on the desktop unless it's completely locked down as an "appliance" by a Linux pro and the staff trained on exactly how to use it. A dumb terminal of sorts, just better graphics than in the mainframe days.

On servers it does a lot for very little money if you have the time/patience to learn how to make it do what you want.

I have no beef with any of them. As the song says, they all suck.

Best software I've used was always embedded real-time stuff written in C running on Microware OS-9 or vxWorks and designed and written for a specific mission or purpose, often -- in fact, almost always -- on custom hardware, which usually meant it was running on a DSP or FPGA. That stuff is tight because it has to be. The coders are right down at the hardware with very little abstraction layers full of bugs between them and the real-world.

And you don't pay folks who can write that kind of low-level stuff the money they typically pull down, unless you know you can recoup it in spades.

The more "generic" a market asks a computer to be, the more it sucks. This is why avionics both generally work and are hideously expensive. Although I must admit that the number of software updates for the G1000 system is distressing and shows a significant level of code development cycle sloppiness on Garmin's part. Especially for the prices they get.

They were started by engineers unhappy with their work elsewhere who thought they could sell into a new market. It'll happen to them too eventually. The business system tech operates under is virtually assured to create situations where the best and brightest leave to form new ventures.

Then the latest bunch of smart individuals start a company, start listening to their mediocre "business experts" and investors, and drive off two or three of the people that made them richer and the cycle begins again. New company, new competition.

The best new ideas will always pay for the settlement for the non-compete clauses the lawyers write.

Realism dictates that all software will always have bugs though. Small, tight code written by small tight teams, to do very specific things -- always seems to be the key to solid code. Giant teams of mediocre coders create giant cluster****s. ;)
 
So basically, you guys are telling me this is a software bug vs. a correctable condition?
 
Sac Arrow said:
Okay so my email is set up on an Exchange server, and I use Outlook on a desktop, and an iPhone and an iPad.

Email and calendars synch flawlessly. Contacts, not so well. If I set the contact up on Outlook, it shows up no problem on the iPhone and iPad. If I create the contact on the iPhone, it doesn't alway show up on the other two even after several months. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Ive been looking for some special attribute in the iPhone/iPad client that make it visible outside the device but I can't find it.

Anyone know how to force contacts created on an iPhone or iPad to show up on the Exchange server? I'm talking personal contacts, not shareable public ones.
Click to expand...

I can't recall ever having a contact syncing issue with Exchange and iOS, but one thing that I did notice was that sometimes iOS would not pick the Exchange contact group, thereby leaving the contact exclusively local on the device. Once it's in the "local" group, you can't move it without re-entering the information.

In the Contacts application, go to the "Groups" selection and ensure that your Exchange group is selected before creating the contact.

Alternatively, you should be able to make Contacts default to the Exchange group from within the Settings application.


JKG
 
Henning said:
You forgot you have an Apple product. Their failure to do what I want without having to find a kludge has been my complaint with them for close to 30 years now.

In 20 years the only thing left of Steve Jobs legacy will be curses for autocorrect...:rofl:
Click to expand...

What do you want an Apple product to do? Perhaps it already does, and you just don't know about it. Autocorrect, for example, is easily disabled.

The reality is that giving folks tons of options to "customize the experience" and making an OS and applications easy to use and consistent are opposing forces. In contrast to Linux and Android, for example, Apple has done a reasonably good job of providing some customization with minimal complexity. Although Windows keeps improving for the better, that stupid "Ribbon" in Office is a huge, huge, huge, step backward. I shouldn't have spend large amounts of time "learning" how to be productive with a device or application.


JKG
 
JGoodish said:
I can't recall ever having a contact syncing issue with Exchange and iOS, but one thing that I did notice was that sometimes iOS would not pick the Exchange contact group, thereby leaving the contact exclusively local on the device. Once it's in the "local" group, you can't move it without re-entering the information.

In the Contacts application, go to the "Groups" selection and ensure that your Exchange group is selected before creating the contact.

Alternatively, you should be able to make Contacts default to the Exchange group from within the Settings application.


JKG
Click to expand...


Ooooooohhhhh kaaaaay, we have a winner here. That was my problem. Probably doesn't solve the issue of how to transfer the local contacts into the exchange server other than reentering them, but at least I can ensure I don't do that again.

Thanks.
 
Update:

Sac Arrow is a happy boy!! I ended up transferring the "Iphone" group contacts to the Exchange server contacts by emailing the contacts to myself, dragging and dropping the VCF attachments to my Exchange contact list using Outlook, and deleting those local contacts on the Iphone group. There wern't so many to make that a long task.

Voy lah, now they all appear on Outlook, Iphone and Ipad. Woot woot!
 
Sac Arrow said:
Ooooooohhhhh kaaaaay, we have a winner here. That was my problem. Probably doesn't solve the issue of how to transfer the local contacts into the exchange server other than reentering them, but at least I can ensure I don't do that again.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There are third-party apps that will let you move them on the device. However, if you ensure that your Exchange account is set as the default for "Contacts" in the Settings app, new ones created on the device should always populate to Exchange.


JKG
 
JGoodish said:
I can't recall ever having a contact syncing issue with Exchange and iOS, but one thing that I did notice was that sometimes iOS would not pick the Exchange contact group, thereby leaving the contact exclusively local on the device. Once it's in the "local" group, you can't move it without re-entering the information.

In the Contacts application, go to the "Groups" selection and ensure that your Exchange group is selected before creating the contact.

Alternatively, you should be able to make Contacts default to the Exchange group from within the Settings application.


JKG
Click to expand...

Ahh yeah. That one. Default is to put it on iPhone to send it to iCloud. Forgot about that.
 
No, you can have iCloud enabled for various data without turning on the device backup feature.
 
I have my mail and other "info" stuff in iCloud -- even under a different AppleID than I normally buy things with (which actually kinda sucks, but it'll do it... I ended up with two AppleIDs because one was the one I've always used for purchases, and the other was my MobileMe account, which was migrated over to iCloud...).

Nope, there is no way to merge AppleIDs... don't get me started on that BS.
 
denverpilot said:
I have my mail and other "info" stuff in iCloud -- even under a different AppleID than I normally buy things with (which actually kinda sucks, but it'll do it... I ended up with two AppleIDs because one was the one I've always used for purchases, and the other was my MobileMe account, which was migrated over to iCloud...).

Nope, there is no way to merge AppleIDs... don't get me started on that BS.
Click to expand...

Another problem: I'd love to move my wife and I from GMail to iCloud, except that she often checks her GMail account from my iPad. When you navigate to the iCloud page from an iOS device, it won't let you log in via the web. I'm sure that Apple expects that we should all be carrying our own mobile devices around everywhere, but that isn't the case with us, and is just a silly premise for a "cloud" service anyway.


JKG
 
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When I go to the iCloud web page from iPad, I get this...

It'll let you set up iCloud on the device from there.

Is there a reason you need the desktop style web page? (I'm missing something here, I think.)

4b94241c-9e97-1d74.jpg
 
denverpilot said:
When I go to the iCloud web page from iPad, I get this...

It'll let you set up iCloud on the device from there.

Is there a reason you need the desktop style web page? (I'm missing something here, I think.)
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the problem. I don't WANT to set up iCloud on the device, I want my wife to be able to use MY iPad to log in to HER account to check mail, calendar, etc. With GMail, no problem, and they have a decent mobile web interface. With iCloud, Apple apparently thinks that everyone should be carrying around their own mobile device all the time, rather than logging in from a mobile web browser.


JKG
 
denverpilot said:
Ahh. Any of the alternate browsers work?
Click to expand...

Don't know, I haven't tried, but since a workaround isn't required for GMail or other services, I'm not sure that the added trouble is worth it just to move my email and calendar to Apple's system. Although, I don't trust Google and their data mining machine at all.


JKG
 
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