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OLC Beta 12.1 Frequently Asked Questions

Thanks to all of you who have installed the latest Outlook Live Connector Beta version 12.1. We’ve received lots of feedback through our blog, so we wanted to recap the top questions and provide some answers all in one post.

Question 1: Do tasks and notes sync?
No, the beta does not sync tasks and notes.  We are currently evaluating whether to support task and notes sync in a future release. If you are a premium customer (meaning you have a paid MSN subscription), you can go back to using the native DAV support to get this functionality.  You can do this by removing your Hotmail account and then re-adding it using the ‘Internet E-mail’ account type in the Mail control panel.

This Office Online article details how to use the Mail control panel to modify accounts:

Overview of Outlook e-mail profiles
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA012304751033.aspx?pid=CH100622151033#4

Question 2: I get lots of “4102” errors. What are they?
There is a known issue with non-Western European character sets thhat can cause this error, and will be fixed in an upcoming Beta 2 release of the OLC.  For now, avoid categorizing/flagging your mails with these character sets.  If you are already in a state where you get the 4102 error, the easiest way to fix it is to re-sync your mailbox by removing your account and then re-adding it

Question 3: I see errors with msncon32.dll when I boot Outlook after uninstalling the OLC.
This can occur when the OLC is installed in your default profile, so the account is still present in Outlook but the OLC components are not. You can fix this by going into the Mail control panel and removing the Hotmail information manually. See the above link for instructions on using the Mail control panel.

Question 4: Does Windows Mobile sync with the Windows Live Calendar?
The current version of Windows Mobile does not support syncing with the Windows Live Calendar when it is connected to Outlook using the Outlook Live Connector

Question 5: I’m not running the Beta, but sync stopped working shortly after the Beta released.
Coincidentally, an upgrade in our server environment caused some unforeseen sync problems for the non-Beta Outlook Live Connector. You can resolve the non-Beta sync problem by either upgrading to the Beta, or trying again in a few days when the server side issues are resolved, requiring no action on your part.

We hope this answers some of your questions about the newest release of the Outlook Live Connector. Thanks for the feedback and please keep using the Beta!

Kristel Leow
Software Development Engineer in Test
Microsoft Office Outlook

Posted: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 8:53 PM by outblog

Comments

Ed said:

Native DAV has the ability to customize the From address when sending. However, in Outlook Connector 12, that feature was missing. Is the feature coming back in the 12.1 timeframe?

# August 5, 2008 6:38 PM

Jurgen said:

Please at support for Tasks and Notes syncing. It's very usefull.

# August 5, 2008 7:07 PM

davidacoder said:

My vote on the task/notes thing is VERY simple: Please include it. Two reasons:

- Always bad to remove features that were present in previousl versions. Especially with this one, you are going to get a lot of protest from Office Live Small Business users, that certainly use the full set of Outlook features, if the new version of the connector suddenly doesn't support this anymore

- Sync is a killer feature in my opinion, but only if it "just works". If users have to first read lists and documentation on what exactly is synched and what isn't, and if that information is then even very detailed ("follow up flag dates aren't synched, follow up flags are, tasks aren't etc") the whole things will not take of for normal users. So, you should try as hard as possible to simply synch what is in Outlook, completly. Otherwise users have an incredibly frustrating experience.

Thanks for following up so quickly on the comments of the last blog entry. Rock on!

Cheers,

David

# August 6, 2008 4:00 AM

efriend said:

Its only synchronizing Inbox folder of my live email. How to make it sync other folders too ?

# August 6, 2008 9:12 AM

N 'Man O' Rage' R said:

"The current version of Windows Mobile does not support syncing with the Windows Live Calendar when it is connected to Outlook using the Outlook Live Connector"

Does this apply to the iPhone (over iTunes) as well?

Be honest - I will stop tasing the Apple developer.

# August 6, 2008 12:40 PM

Vojtěch Vít said:

Hi! I think that support for Tasks+Notes synchronizing really whould be a great advantage for Windows Live platform!:-)

For example if you work on your home PC, notebook and pocket device, synchronizing of Outlook data (Tasks typically) gets quite complicated (especially between notebook and PC). I know there are specialized 3rd party programs to solve this problem, but they aren't usually very good. And they are paid, of course..

At the end I'd like to thank you that you are working on that 4102 error. It really got me angry when I was finding out what is the cause.. I hope you'll finally end this problem.

# August 7, 2008 5:48 AM

Vojtěch Vít said:

I've found a bug in the beta!

Always when I try to synchronize repetitive appointment created in Outlook, synchronization breaks and everything is "broken" from that moment (needs to re-create outlook data file).

# August 7, 2008 8:07 AM

Dunross said:

One last thing - Why aren't the Contacts categories synchronized with Hotmail? Every time I'm forced to re-create outlook data file and download contacts from Hotmail they loose their categories assignment...

# August 7, 2008 8:57 AM

Malloc said:

My biggest question is, "Why are Hotmail Plus customers treated like second class citizens?" There isn't much of an incentive for Hotmail Plus these days, and even though we are a paid user, we don't pay enough for get the premium features.  

If there isn't a need for Hotmail Plus, then cancel it. If there is, then give us a benefit, such as full features of a program like Outlook Connector.

# August 7, 2008 10:29 AM

MdB said:

It would be really nice to be able to sync the new Windows Live Calendar with my Exchange calendar (in Outlook) using the connector. Now I have my Exchange Calendar and my Windows Live Calendar side-by-side, but they are not synchronized automatically.

I tried to accomplish this by publishing my Exchange Calendar to Office Online, and than subscribing to it from the Live Calendar. Unfortunately the latter doesn't work (I think it's not supported somehow).

Keep up the good work.

# August 7, 2008 3:41 PM

Carl-Alexandre Malartre said:

Hi,

There is no bug report form, so here it is.

Outlook as a strange behavior when I open the calendar, the tasks and the contacts in new windows.

If I close Outlook, the windows are closed in a determined order. If I open Outlook again, the windows are opened, but in an inverse order.

Each time you close and open Outlook, it change the order. I would like that the order stay the same and be predictable from use to use.

malartre AT gmail.com

# August 8, 2008 11:13 AM

Jerry said:

I have been receiving an error in Outlook 03 for the last two days under the server status.  The calendar is not syncing.

Outlook Connector Version 12.0.6237.1003

Account:##########@hotmail.com

Signed in successfully at 8/9/2008 4:08:22 PM                                                                          

Mail: Last successfully refreshed at 4:08 PM.                                                                          

Calendar: Error at 4:08 PM.                                                                                            

Contacts: Last successfully refreshed at 4:08 PM.                                                                      

Errors :

Time: 8/9/2008 4:08:23 PM

Error in Calendar

Synchronization error.

Time: 8/9/2008 4:08:24 PM

Error in Calendar

Synchronization error.

Using the beta connector.  Mail and contacts are working fine.

# August 9, 2008 11:53 PM

Ben said:

The Beta connector works great for me so far. I have a few comments.

* The new AJAX on-line calendar is great.

* Thanks for making this available for free.

* I am opened to a (modest) paid subscription of MSN once this works properly and that the features I need are added! This is great for families.

I think the following is needed:

* Notes and tasks please!

* Subfolders in mail.live.com mail folders

* Flags and color categories!

* The ability to have mail.live.com folders not to sync with Outlook. What's the benefit of having a 5GB mailbox if it all has to sync to the desktop!

Maybe one of the problems is that many of us are used to Exchange. I would like my personnal e-mail experience to be comparable. Well, a hosted Exchange solution is not affordable for families and individuals.

# August 10, 2008 8:43 AM

Bob said:

How does the new Connector impact subscribers of Hotmail Plus? The sign-up page states that calendar synchronization is not supported.

# August 12, 2008 9:56 PM

Dr. Ward Ciac II said:

I noticed the thread on the junk email folder with Alessio Roic the Outlook Program manager is closed. None of his answers were helpful anyway. The outlook junk email folder randomly removes emails from the inbox and puts them in the junk email folder. This has happened several times to my boss and is seriously affecting our business. There has to be a way to turn it off. It is totally useless. We do not have any of the settings on to filter the email. We would just like to kill this junk email folder, permanently.

# September 4, 2008 4:46 PM

outblog said:

Dr. Ward Ciac II: We've adopted a new comment policy (which I'll be posting about soon) where posts older than 90 days are closed for new comments. Additionally, the purpose of this blog is for the Outlook product team to share our insights and feature announcements, and give everyone an idea of “behind the scenes” with Outlook. It’s not an official channel for technical support and we are not equipped to be able to address requests for support. Please use one of the official support channels to request help for your issue. You can find more information about Microsoft support on http://support.microsoft.com, and can contact Outlook 2007 support through the methods described on http://support.microsoft.com/ph/8753.

--Ryan

# September 4, 2008 5:10 PM

Ben said:

My wife and I have been using the 12.1 Connector for about a month now. We share our calendars that way. Here's my biggest complaint so far:

There is significant latency in synchronization , even after successive send/receive. I use it on two machines (work and home) and e-mail messages, contact, calendar items do not always sync. Its a bit frustrating to add an item to my calendar on one machine and not have it show up on my wife's view of my calendar and vice-versa. Same for e-mails in my Inbox. I do a send/receive before leaving for the day and so I would expect that if I use my machine at home or get it using the Web, I would see what I synced.

And I'll repeat this from my previous post: "The ability to have selected mail.live.com folders not to sync with Outlook. What's the benefit of having a 5GB mailbox if it all has to sync to the desktop!"

Thanks for efforts and great work.

# September 10, 2008 10:57 AM

Bethany said:

Here are some bugs that I've run into so far.  i didn't expect the experience to be as good as with exchange, but i did expect more.

1.  when i send an appointment to people via outlook, they get it two times.  i'm not sure about the timing, but less than a day later, the meeting is deleted off my calendar.  this is not repro when i make an appointment that doesn't have attendees.  i'm trying to see if i make an appointment via hotmail on the web, then add attendees via outlook if it still repros.  the bad part is that windows live won't let you send invites out via their calendar.  you can only make appointments with yourself.  if you want to send out an invite, they redirect you to myspace and you essentially make an evite.  this is really a huge hassle because it won't be in your calendar and for simple appointments, you really don't need an evite.  

2.  some of my email shows up completely blank via outlook except the date.  when i go to hotmail, i can see everything.  i have noticed that this only happens with mail that was in my non inbox folders in hotmail prior to installing the connector.

3.  when i use conversation view in outlook, all new email shows up under conversation "none".  when i click on an email, focus is taken away from the email and it moves into the correct conversation or is moved to a new folder if there is a rule.  not repro if i group by date.  bummer because i love conversation view.

4.  in outlook with exchange, the reading pane was turned off by default in junk email.  not the case with the junk folder in hotmail via outlook.

issues with contacts (i was trying to merge my exchange contacts with my hotmail contacts (most of them from my IM).

5.  if i move a contact from my archive folder over to my hotmail account, and the same email address is on both, it asks if i want to merge the two, but it doesn't acutally merge the two, so i get dupes.  don't know if it's because i categorized everything.

6.  as a result, i went one by one (very tedious) and deleted my hotmail contacts and moved my exchange contacts over.  now the vast majority of my IM contacts appear in msn im as "non messenger contacts", so i can't im with them anymore.  i had filled in the outlook IM address field in my contacts.  turns out this is different than the field that msn im uses.  this field is not shown in the outlook contact form.  looks like i have more tedious work to do.

7.  some of my exchange contacts (archive folder) can't be moved over to hotmail.  rebooting doesn't help.

8.  hotmail respects my old categories for contacts, but doesn't have these categories in the "all categories" list.  shouldn't outlook just add these new categories?  it would make life much more simple.  easier to delete a category than to have to type it all in again.

# September 13, 2008 3:35 PM

SS said:

Using the 12.1 Outlook connector:

For some reason, my Autoarchive and manual Archive is not working on the Deleted Items folder (for hotmail).

All other folders will archive without issue. Even my gmail account (connected via IMAP) will archive all folders.

Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening?

I really need to archive my deleted items (please, no rants on why I need to archive "deleted" items).

Thanks to any and all for any help.

# September 17, 2008 11:29 AM

Kevin Chan said:

Ok, i realize that Windows Live Calendar does not Sync with Windows Mobile using the connector, but i wondering a possible work around would be to replicate the Calendar on the @hotmail.com account (Windows Live) to the local Outlook Calendar (from which Windows Mobile can synch to) - Any idea how to automatically 'synch' or replicate the WL calendar to the local outlook calendar/

# October 22, 2008 12:06 AM
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