Sync address books across several computers

[John TCI]

Today Plaxo have advised that they are ceasing Outlook sync for their free
version in 3 days (ultimatum of paying US$47.95 per year or forget it).

Although Plaxo has improved over the years, and no longer seems to corrupt
and/or destroy our address book on such a regular basis as previously, it is
not yet worth paying for.

Is there another product that you can recommend to sync Outlook address
books across multiple desktops (5) and laptops (3)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Is there another product that you can recommend to sync Outlook address
books across multiple desktops (5) and laptops (3)?

Do you mean Contacts folders? Outlook doesn't have an address book. See if
something here helps:
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.asp

 

[John TCI]

Thanks Brian,

Sorry but I'm confused. I've always called where I store my
addresses/contacts etc. an address book. Even more confusing is that my
versions of Outlook 2003 and 2007 have address books (in 2003 it is the 3rd
line of the drop down menu in "Tools" and in 2007 it is the 4th line).

That aside, the link is really difficult to understand to a computer layman.

Therefore, still grateful for a specific recommendation of a "web based"
method of synchronizing my Outlook Address book and/or Contacts Folder across
several computers as a replacement for Plaxo.

I don't need all the mails to sync as I'malready using Outlook to link with
g-mail using IMAP (which is excellent and saves an enormous amount of time).

I suppose what would be ideal would be an equivalent for contacts and
calendars. Is there a way to link the addresses/contacts and/or calendars
through IMAP?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Sorry but I'm confused. I've always called where I store my
addresses/contacts etc. an address book. Even more confusing is that my
versions of Outlook 2003 and 2007 have address books (in 2003 it is the 3rd
line of the drop down menu in "Tools" and in 2007 it is the 4th line).

If you call it an address book when it's really a contacts folder, it can lead
to confusion.

In Outlook, the "address book" is just a view of your COntacts folders. In
other mail clients, there is a separate database or file that stores addresses
and a separate application that opens that file. For example, in Outlook
Express, the contacts are kept in a Windows Address Book file whose type is
".wab" and which is accessed by the WAB.EXE application. Outlook doesn't do
it that way. All Outlook contacts are stored in the Contacts folder and the
"Outlook Address Book" service scans the Contacts folders you've told it to
include and locates those contacts in those folders that have electronic
addresses, presenting them to you and providing a mapping from the contact
name to the address. The address book is not really a separate data store.

That aside, the link is really difficult to understand to a computer layman.

Therefore, still grateful for a specific recommendation of a "web based"
method of synchronizing my Outlook Address book and/or Contacts Folder
across
several computers as a replacement for Plaxo.

How about Live Mail? You can copy your contacts there and access that
contacts folder from another PC.

I don't need all the mails to sync as I'malready using Outlook to link with
g-mail using IMAP (which is excellent and saves an enormous amount of time).

I suppose what would be ideal would be an equivalent for contacts and
calendars. Is there a way to link the addresses/contacts and/or calendars
through IMAP?

IMAP is a mail-only protocol. It knows nothing about contacts and calendars.

 

[John TCI]

Thanks again Brian.

The more I read on the subject yesterday, I also thought that Live Mail
might be a potential solution. Unfortunately, I also thought of 2 potential
problems. (i) Have to decide which of the Outlook or Live Mail Contact
Folders would make the best “master� (ii) The sync back to each family
computer to update into Outlook, or vice versa, would all have to be done
manually, which is rather laborious for 5 desktops & 3 laptops, 4 family
Gmail accounts and 4 family Live Mail accounts (although latter are hardly
used, only for Live Messenger) . . . . sort of defeats the whole object, but
could be an interim solution until I can identify a “syncing†replacement.

Anyway, last night I tried to export the contacts/addresses from Outlook to
Live Mail (CSV file) and received the following error message:-

There was a problem importing your contacts.
Phone numbers and websites can only contain English characters (a-z or A-Z),
numbers (0-9), and specific symbols (such as @). Please try again.

Retried many times and laboriously went through all the contacts in the CSV
file looking for the offender(s). As we have well over 400 contacts, trying
to go through them all to find the one (or more) that contravenes the rules
for Live Mail Contacts but not for Outlook Contacts finally defeated me . .
.. . especially not knowing which rule had been contravened (presumably a
symbol . . but which?).

Finally crashed (me not the computer) but woke up this morning refreshed and
with the thought to try and export the identical CSV file to Gmail . . . it
accepted it in its entirety and without hesitation (case of enemies
communicating better than siblings?)

A few minutes ago, I attempted to re-export them from Gmail to Live Mail . .
.. would you believe it also worked (Gmail must have some form of
translator/filter/correcting mechanism). However, I have no idea what, if
anything, has been changed.

So thanks, I have my temporary solution but would far prefer a permanent web
based/on-line “syncing oneâ€.

Any other ideas?

 

[homeLAN]

You should use Exchange. Find a hosted Exchange provider that works for you.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

The more I read on the subject yesterday, I also thought that Live Mail
might be a potential solution. Unfortunately, I also thought of 2 potential
problems. (i) Have to decide which of the Outlook or Live Mail Contact
Folders would make the best “master� (ii) The sync back to each family
computer to update into Outlook, or vice versa, would all have to be done
manually, which is rather laborious for 5 desktops & 3 laptops, 4 family
Gmail accounts and 4 family Live Mail accounts (although latter are hardly
used, only for Live Messenger) . . . . sort of defeats the whole object, but
could be an interim solution until I can identify a “syncing†replacement.

In your case, I'd create a new Hotmail account and use that account to share
the data. Each family member would know the username/password and access that
account from their Outlook or Windows Live Mail client. No import/export
needed. Just copy the contacts you wish to share to the Hotmail account's
Contacts folder you'll see in Outlook because you'll be using the Outlook
Connector. You can also do this with the Calendar.

I'd be curious to know if you see any unusual characters in the phone fields
of the CSV file.

 

[John TCI]

Brian . . . this was an excellent suggestion.

After a little reading, I had already decided that a hosted Exchange server
was serious overkill just to coord our contacts and calendars. However, using
the Outlook Connector is a brilliant solution. We don't even need to set up a
new account as we already all have our own and can now have separate but
coordinated calendars and contacts as well.

Most gracious thanks.

P.S. Cant see any "unusual" characters in the phone fields unless Live Mail
doesn't accept the + sign, which is used to indicate the international
dialing code which varies from country to country (e.g. 011 in the USA and 00
in most countries in Europe) . . . but that has been a convention that to my
knowledge has been in use for over 30 years . . . surely that can't be the
glitch? We have hundreds if not thousands of them in our contacts. There was
also one entry with a forward slash / for two consecutive numbers and
hundreds of brackets () for area codes put in by Outlook itself. However,
after importing via Gmail they are all still there.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Brian . . . this was an excellent suggestion.

After a little reading, I had already decided that a hosted Exchange server
was serious overkill just to coord our contacts and calendars. However,
using
the Outlook Connector is a brilliant solution. We don't even need to set up
a
new account as we already all have our own and can now have separate but
coordinated calendars and contacts as well.

Most gracious thanks.

You're welcome.

P.S. Cant see any "unusual" characters in the phone fields unless Live Mail
doesn't accept the + sign, which is used to indicate the international
dialing code which varies from country to country (e.g. 011 in the USA and
00
in most countries in Europe) . . . but that has been a convention that to my
knowledge has been in use for over 30 years . . . surely that can't be the
glitch? We have hundreds if not thousands of them in our contacts. There was
also one entry with a forward slash / for two consecutive numbers and
hundreds of brackets () for area codes put in by Outlook itself. However,
after importing via Gmail they are all still there.

The slash is the most likely culprit, although when I created a contact with a
slash in the phone number field and then exported to a CSV, Outlook 2003
didn't complain and the contact's phone number in the CSV did contain the
slash, although the export process added a space in front of the slash. I
couldn't test it with Outlook 2007. "()" are parentheses. Brackets ("[" and
"]") could be a problem in phone numbers. Parentheses or the plus sign
shouldn't be an issue, however.

 

[John TCI]

Brian,

So happy to have my address book/contacts folder problem resolved, I should
close with a comment:-

I guess you must be North American. I am British. We not only have
differences in spelling and humour [sic] but also in punctuation. Now let's
see if I can cover the second and third.

This is the Wikipedia entry for "brackets":-

Quote: Brackets are punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or
interject text within other text. In the United States, "bracket" sometimes
refers specifically to the square or box type.

There are four main types of brackets:
• round brackets, open brackets or parentheses: ( )
• square brackets, closed brackets or box brackets: [ ]
• curly brackets, squiggly brackets or braces: { }
• angle brackets, diamond brackets, cone brackets or chevrons: < >

Unquote

However, the biggest difference is what you call the dot that you put at the
end of a sentence. We call it a full stop and you call it a period. We
reserve the latter for something connected with ladies that may put a "full
stop" to something else but not a sentence.

Think that brings me back to where we came in . . . address book verses
contacts folder . . .

Therefore, it only remains to reiterate my thanks for a great solution.

John

Brian . . . this was an excellent suggestion.

After a little reading, I had already decided that a hosted Exchange server
was serious overkill just to coord our contacts and calendars. However,
using
the Outlook Connector is a brilliant solution. We don't even need to set up
a
new account as we already all have our own and can now have separate but
coordinated calendars and contacts as well.

Most gracious thanks.

You're welcome.

P.S. Cant see any "unusual" characters in the phone fields unless Live Mail
doesn't accept the + sign, which is used to indicate the international
dialing code which varies from country to country (e.g. 011 in the USA and
00
in most countries in Europe) . . . but that has been a convention that to my
knowledge has been in use for over 30 years . . . surely that can't be the
glitch? We have hundreds if not thousands of them in our contacts. There was
also one entry with a forward slash / for two consecutive numbers and
hundreds of brackets () for area codes put in by Outlook itself. However,
after importing via Gmail they are all still there.

The slash is the most likely culprit, although when I created a contact with a
slash in the phone number field and then exported to a CSV, Outlook 2003
didn't complain and the contact's phone number in the CSV did contain the
slash, although the export process added a space in front of the slash. I
couldn't test it with Outlook 2007. "()" are parentheses. Brackets ("[" and
"]") could be a problem in phone numbers. Parentheses or the plus sign
shouldn't be an issue, however.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I guess you must be North American. I am British. We not only have
differences in spelling and humour [sic] but also in punctuation. Now let's
see if I can cover the second and third.

Yes, I'm in North America. The United States to be more precise. Sorry to be
so parochial.