How to Sync your Outlook 2007 contacts and calendar with a T-mobile G1 (Google Android) phone

IronTech — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:53:00 +0000

The T-mobile G1 is the first phone sporting the new Google Android operating system. Just like the first generations of Windows Mobile or iPhone, the Android has bugs. The e-mail and contact synching issues have been some of the major problems with the G1 since it was released on October 22nd.

The Android does not have any built in Exchange server functionality at this time. You will have to use IMAP. There are talks of third party clients coming soon so until then, G1 users have to cobble together their own solutions to get “Exchange like” functionality.

Setting up an IMAP email account on your G1 is quick and easy. Contacts are a different story. I spent a good 3o minutes attempting to export my Outlook 2007 contacts into my Gmail account after getting my G1 but unless you have both a FIRST and LAST name on every contact, Gmail will display the contact with just a phone number. Dennis O’Reily posted a great solution of taking advantage of the Outlook Express or Windows Mail exporting feature (which is a lot easier than using full blown Outlook’s export feature).

http://windowssecrets.com/2008/11/06/03-Sync-your-Outlook-and-mobile-phone-contacts

• Step 1: Open Outlook 2007 and export your contacts using Outlook’s Import/Export feature. Click File, Import and Export, select Export to a file, choose Comma Separated Values (Windows), click Contacts, and choose a path and file name to save the file to. Exit Outlook 2007.

• Step 2: Now open Outlook Express (XP) or Windows Mail (Vista) and use the programs’ Import feature to add the CSV file you just created. In Outlook Express, click File, Import, Other Address Book; and then select Text file (Comma Separated Values). Choose Import and select the CSV file you created in step 1.”In Windows Mail, select File, Import, Windows Contacts; click CSV (Comma Separated Values) and choose the CSV file you created in step 1.

• Step 3: Once the contacts have been imported into Outlook Express or Windows Mail, you export the contacts back to a CSV file. Give the new export file a different name so you do not overwrite the original Outlook 2007 contacts CSV file.”In Outlook Express, select File, Export, Address Book; choose Text file (Comma Separated Values), click Export, and enter a path and file name to save the contacts to.”For Windows Mail, select File, Export, Windows Contacts. Click CSV (Comma Separated Values), choose Export, and select a path and file name to save the contacts to.

• Step 4: To import the contacts into Gmail’s contact list, log into your Gmail account and click the Contacts link in the left column. After the page has loaded, click the Import link in the upper right, select the CSV file that you created in Outlook Express or Windows Mail, and click the Import button.”Presto! All of your contacts are properly imported and should be synched with your G1 phone in a few minutes.”

Make sure you go to Menu > Settings > Data Synhcronization > and uncheck the Contacts box. Otherwise your G1 will continually try to update contacts from your Gmail account and run down your battery. My contacts never really change so I synch them manually when I need to instead.

Great! So now contacts are synched up. But what about your calendar entries? How do you synch Outlook calendars with your G1? The answer is thankfully very simple, use Google Calendar Sync. It’s just a little agent that sits on your desktop and synchs your Outlook calendar with your Gmail account at an interval you specify. It can even do 1 way synchs if you prefer. Follow these instructions and you should be up and running in 5 minutes.

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955

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How to Sync your Outlook 2007 contacts and calendar with a T-mobile G1 (Google Android) phone