Can I connect Surface RT and PC with USB cable?

Anonymous
2012-11-30T00:08:13+00:00

I have a Toshiba Thrive running Android. I can connect it to my PC with a USB cable and access files on my Thrive on the PC. The PC treats the Thrive as a hard drive. Can I connect my Surface in the same way? I have tried and the PC does not appear to see the Surface.

This is a pain, one of the reasons I bought the Surface was to be able to do this type of hard connection and not have to use "iTunes" or the Cloud.

Surface | Other

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Anonymous
2013-03-05T02:57:40+00:00

Greetings SaeedR_706,

That is a good question, however I would suggest rather then using the USB cable, to transfer files over your WiFi network to a shared folder on your Windows 7 Laptop.

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Anonymous
2012-12-05T00:46:39+00:00

Hello Rrccw,

No, you cannot connect the Surface to the PC via USB. However, you can setup Shared folderson your PC. Once you have that, have the Surface connect to the same network via WiFi and then go into Network from the Desktop app, select your PC and then see the Shared Folders. From there, the Surface should have Read/Write access if you gave the permissions on the PC.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-08-11T13:42:53+00:00

    Thanks for the reply.  I may not be explaining my issue very well.  It's really not an issue of syncing email, its more an issue of syncing contacts, calendar, notes, etc.  My primary provider doesn't even offer an IMAP option, so even if that was the case, not sure how syncing email accounts with provider helps me.

    I will check to see what options may be available that allows Outlook to sync between devices, but in the meantime, will have to continue to copy the .pst file, since I don't see a better option.

    '

    Thanks again for the reply.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-11T13:15:03+00:00

    He's right. Your best bet is to sync your email on each device with your provider, rather than trying to sync it between devices.

    If you use IMAP, your messages will be stored on the provider's server, and synced to each device that you set up email access on.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-11T01:13:13+00:00

    For better or worse, you'd normally choose a (or more than one) online services, and then sync the type of data Outlook handles with them, versus trying to move a .pst file around.

    In terms of speed, you should be able to move files like that between any two PCs very quickly, it's just that that's not how you'd be dealing with that anymore, you'd need to use Outlook.com or Google or iCloud or whatever.

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