MrGroove gets this question at least 2 or 3 times a week, so he asked me to do a quick write-up with the details on How-To Sync your iPhone or iPod Touch Email, Calendar, and Contacts. I just bought a new iPhone but I can’t figure out how-to synchronize my email, calendar, and contact list with my computer. Can you help please?
What is Microsoft ActiveSync?
Microsoft ActiveSync is a feature built into Microsoft’s flagship email product Microsoft Exchange. It allows mobile devices to sync Email, Calendar, and Contacts over the Internet to a corporate inbox.
Google Sync – Microsoft ActiveSync
Google licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft so any ActiveSync capable device (iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile) can now take advantage of ActiveSync to Sync their Mobile phone to the Google/GMAIL Suite of applications (Email, Calendar, Contacts.) Being that an iPhone and iPod Touch have either WiFi or 3G, this will allow you to SYNC your device to Google wherever you are in real-time!
One answer for you home users is to SYNC your Apple device with your GMAIL Calendar and Address Book/Contacts via the new Google Sync Service. Get calendar alerts. Using your phone’s native calendar, you can now access your Google calendar, and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration. Always in sync. Your contacts stay synchronized whether you access them from your phone or from your computer. Add or edit contact information right on your device or on your Google account on the web. Before we get into the How-To. Please note the following:
FIXED! Google Sync via ActiveSync will now sync your Email, Calendar, and Contacts as long as your running the latest iPhone and iPod Code! Google Sync via ActiveSync will not Sync your GMAIL Email. Google Sync only Synchronizes your Google Calendar and Contact List/Address Book. At this time, keep your Gmail Inbox in Sync via iMap.Fixed again! The latest iPhone’s OS will now support multiple ActiveSync accounts! For those of you who are already syncing your iPhone with your Corporate Email Server via ActiveSync, you’re outta luck. The iPhone and iPod Touch only allow you to set up 1 ActiveSync connection. You will need to choose between your Corporate Email or Google Services, or do like me and just use GMAIL via iMAP on the iPhone.
- First, confirm your iPhone or iPod Touch has the latest firmware; 2.2 or higher is required. You can find your Firmware settings under Settings > General > About > Version on your device. If you find you need to update your firmware you can do so easily with iTunes. 2a. Tap the Settings application icon
2b. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Tap Add Account
4. Tap Microsoft Exchange
5. Enter the required information into the fields on this next page
Email – Be sure to Enter your Full Email Address (ignore the screenshot below; I need to update it.)Server – You must enter m.google.com however you will only get this option AFTER you enter your username.Domain – Leave that blank. This setting is for corporations ONLY (who have their own Exchange Server.)Username – Must match your Google account information. Although the Google Instructions show a screenshot of “User@googlemail.com” – for 99.999% of us, this will not work since we all use “user@gmail.com.” So, just use your GMAIL account info.Password – Yeah, that’s your GMAIL Password.Description – This can be anything; I usually use my email address.SSL – On.
6. Tap Off or On anything you want to Sync with your GMAIL Account. Click Done.
All done! Now that you have synced your device, any changes made to the iPhone/iPod Email, Calendar, and Contacts Address Book will automatically update your Google Calendar and Contacts Address Book and vice versa (when the Internet is available to the device of course.) VERY GROOVY INDEED!!! Questions? Comments? Tags: iphone, ipod-touch, google-sync, gmail, apple, activesync, exchange, email, calendar, contacts, address-book I synced my exchange email without any issues today for the first time. Mail was flowing from both entities no issues. When I left my work wi-fi and got home the ipod touch connected to my home wi-fi the exchanged mail stopped coming. I have my blackberry synced and it was receiving mail from the exchange with no issues. So I read the article and saw the note regarding the fact I can’t have two active syncs at once. So, I deleted the gmail and powered the ipod touch 4 gen down. I brought it back up and it is stuck at checking for mail. Any thoughts Danny? Thanks, Jen MAC I finally cracked ithe “password incorrect” problem On the wifi settings on the Iphone and on the Ipod touch, there is a Proxy setting, which had defaulted to HTTP. I changed it to “AUTO” and it solved the probelem. Thanks Excellent! Great info as well. That’s one thing to remember with GMAIL. GMAIL ignores all Periods ( . ) in the email address. This is a tip to remember in the future. Test it out. Send yourself an email to a.b.c.1.2.3@gmail.com and you will get the email. I use this at times to have multiple accounts on a system however still using a single GMAIL account. Thanks again! I have a new iPod Touch (4G). I have Windows 7 on my desktop PC with Microsoft Outlook for my calendar and contacts. I have high speed internet with a router. I have to figure out how to sync my calendar on my PC with my Ipod Touch calendar. Can you help me? Thanks.. Tom My work Outlook syncs to my phone and updates automatically. My personal Outlook on my laptop only sync’s when connected with the cable. How can I get my laptop to sync automatically? I would really appreciate your help with this frustrating dilema. Thanks so much! Loren This works great for mail and calendar but does not seem to work as well for contacts. It has synced my contacts correcly but when I make any changes on my ipod it doesn’t show the changes if I look at my contacts list on my email via computer. Should it work like that? Thanks Charli sorry if this sounds supid but how do i back up my contacts and calendar on ipod touch. they both have thnigs like bdays, annivereries, emails. I do not want to lose these oviously. can someone help me back up my ipod. thanks in advance Jim (sorry for any typos, i am doing this is a rush) ******************* I have windows vista home edition I have ipod touch 8gb (i think it is 2nd g) EDIT*** I also want to know if there are any other programs to sync calender with ipod touch – i do not have outlook- i am happy to use google but any other programs would be good- thanks in advance Jim Confirm those 2 things. Looks like I need to update the article. I wrote this over a year ago and a few things have changed since then… As of the 3.0 software, the iPhone and iPod touch can also sync in both directions using the CalDAV protocol, as well as subscribe to published .ics feeds. To set up CalDAV syncing, go into the Settings, and select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars.” From there, add an account and choose “other” and add a CalDAV account. Then, select http://www.google.com as the server, and provide your Gmail e-mail address as your username and your password. NOTE. It is http://www.google.com NOT m.google.com You can add as many caldav accounts as you like Thanks again for your help.. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the links and info. BTW – As of IOS 4.x, you can add multiple Exchange Activesync connections. I have 3 on mine currently. That of course assumes you have 4.x running which many complain is WAY to slow on the original iPhone 3.x / iPod Touch. After this process I was asked by my iPhone what to do with the contacts already on the iphone. Since they’re duplicates of what I have on Gmail, I decided to delete them. Love this cloud integration. Only downside is that iphone and google seems to differ about various fields (like IM and addresses). Still cool though (y) I just found a solution to adding/showing multiple calendars from your Google Calendar account (tested on iOS 4.3.2 on an iPod Touch 3rd generation)! I thought I’d share this with you all, since I couldn’t find a solution for this in the comments. I added my Gmail mail as a Microsoft Exchange account (see the comments above), so I now have Push-capabilities. If you add Gmail through the Gmail option, ironically and unfortunately you won’t have Push-capabilities, which means you have to manually check for new e-mails… So add your Gmail (Mail + Contacts) through Microsoft Exchange, and disable Calendars in the account sync options. Then, add your Google Calendar calendars with Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account… > choose Gmail Enter your data and choose to sync Calendars only, so disable Mail and Contacts. By now you will see only one calendar (your primary calendar). Now, to enable more calendars: go to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect , log-in to your Google account and choose which calendars you want to show on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Good luck! right now, I’m using the Microsoft office Outlook 2010 calendar on both work and home PCs. I’m not happy with the way they sync for the following reason: at my office, I use the cable to connect to iTunes and synchronize with my calendar on the office PC. That works great. But when I come home and I use the cable to try to sync with my home PC, it requires that I my home computer by replacing my home computer calendar with my iPod calendar. That choice is okay until I enter new dates on my home PC. At that time, it does not automatically sync with the iPod unless I exercise a choice that deletes everything on the iPod and replaces it with the content oon the home PC. The bottom line is that I can’t really use the calendar on my home PC. Is it possible to do what I want to do by using Google calendar on both home and office PCs as well as on my iPod Touch? Paragraph thank you for your advice. Tom I have a new iPhone 4 and followed the instructions in the main message to synch my contacts. Now I have the incorrect password problem often mentionned here above. I tried the various solutions proposed here but none works – I just did not find the Wi FI settings. Any idea ? Tanks ! I’m trying to set it on my Husband iPhone iOS 4.3.2 i want to sync his info before i upgrade his iOS It let me set the new account saying all is well, but once it set you go to mail/contact or calnder and you get an error msg. saying conection to the server as failed and it wont let me see the info. pls. note his email as dots in it: name.last name.no’@gmail.com Pls. HELP Thanks Comment Name * Email *
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