How do I properly sync Outlook with Google?

July 27, 2009 6:58 AM

I'm trying to find a way to synchronize Outlook Calendar (on Windows) with Google Calendar that actually works - as my current solution doesn't. Bonus points if I can sync contacts as well.

I want to synchronize Outlook with Google and then use Google's Exchange support so that I can get this information on whatever phone I'm using at the time.

At present I use Google Calendar Sync and a periodic export and import of a CSV containing my contacts.

This sucks for several reasons but the main one is that the Google application is buggy and has a habit of randomly deleting appointments. This is a well known bug and no fix seems to be coming any time soon. It's happened enough times for me to want to get away from the application.

The second major one is that exporting a CSV from Outlook and then importing it into Google isn't really syncing, a pain in the backside and prevents me from making any changes on the go because they'll just get lost.

I've done a search on the internet and there seems to be quite a few options - none of which appear to be free and several of which that want you to pay a monthly fee.

So, my question is - can you recommend any Windows applications which are free and sync calendar and contacts with Google?

posted by mr_silver to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

while not much better than a csv, i found a vbasic macro for exporting outlook calendar as a .ics file. i can dig it up if you want.

no app that i've found yet, though.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:02 AM on July 27, 2009

I recently did this search and came up empty. I ended up getting gsyncit (http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/) for $15, which I think was a fair price. It's worked very nicely for me for the past 2 months.
posted by reddot at 4:05 PM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]