Outlook Calendar Syncronisation in 2011

[Brett Merriman]

I note with that 2011 has fixed the dreaded double entry issues with Outlook Calendar. I also note however that the sync is now bi-directional by default.

Is it possible to sync from ACT! to Outlook only? I have a number of client users (inc me) that have personal stuff deployed in Outlook that does not need to be displayed in ACT!

Regards Brett

[gmartin]

While you can't disable the 2-way synchronization, you can go into the Advanced Preferences (Tools > Synchronize with Outlook > Outlook Synchronization Preferences > Synchronize Calendar tab > Advanced Preferences) and uncheck the 'Appointments'  activity type. 

Outlook creates it's activities as Appointments, by disabling this it should keep the items created in Outlook from populating the Act! calendar.

[Brett Merriman]

Excellent advice Greg. Thanks.

[Brett Merriman]

A quick follow up here guys.

Greg is correct in his comment about Outlook activities being imported into ACT! 2011 as appointments however there is a caveat to this that you should be aware of.

Recurring events are brought in as meetings.

And whilst you can set ACT! 2011 to leave the activity in Outlook when an activity is cleared, there is no way of stopping the activity from being deleted in Outlook when you delete it in ACT!.

How can this effect you... reminders for personal activities such as weekly Squash games with your buddies for a start. Great on your iphone - not so great on your companies database.

My suggestion here is to not include both Appointments AND Meetings in the syncronise list and then create new activity types called say "Meeting - External" and "Meeting - Internal" within ACT! and use those. Hard though when others in your organisation will want to simply use "Meeting" and invite you.

Bit of a bother really but I can't see any other way out. Can you?

Regards Brett

[ritakog]

Is it possible to turn off the (contacts/calendar) sync service on the server since server will not be doing any synching with Outlook?

[alduet]

Marking the recurring event as Private in Outlook will make it a private activity in ACT! so other ACT! users won't see the activity in your companies database (though it would still show on that calendar as you noted).