Exchange ActiveSync won't sync contacts on Android

Hi,

I never got it to work.   Android contacts and the phone book both don't show all my contacts.  When I start to type certain names they just wont come up.   I downloaded an app called Simpler.  With that app, I have access to all my contacts.  I'm not sure what it does differently, but it works great.  The only issue is that I have to use that app.  If I forget and just use the standard dialer, it will not read all the names so then I have to go into Simpler.  I'll happily hop on a webex session and show you the problem. 

Mike

Can you please share what adjustments are made to Exchange accounts to help with this contact syncing issue? It will help us other IT Engineers who are having issues with Exchange / Android Contact Synching. 

Thank you in Advance,

Thanks. I am new to Android (had Windows Mobile and Windows Phone for years--from version 4 to 10---zero sync issues with Exchange or Outlook up to Outlook 16 (Office 365)).

Tried that business card scan thing to add a couple new contacts on a Samsung Galaxy Edge 7 with Android Marshmallow. Would not sync with PC. I have Exchange Server (hosted by MS) and Windows 10 with Office 365. This was NOT an "Outlook.com" issue (I use that, too, but Exchange is for business and that's where I add contacts for business).

All I did was remove the Samsung scan card app, re-do the 2 contacts in question and all seems to sync OK again. Although MS seems to force manual contact sync (email and calendar are fine automatically). The Outlook app for Android does not allow contact editing (or adding) for some reason, so you have to use the Android app which works but not as well as it should. I did not have to remove Skype sync in my case. I also did not have to remove and re-add the account on the phone---just dump the scan card app and re-enter manually those two contacts. Time will tell if this solution persists.

I've had similar problems recently and found the following worked for me.  In my particular case I have used a personal, non-microsoft email address as the ID for my Microsoft Office 365 account for some time.  Up until fairly recently I could add this as an Exchange ActiveSync account in both Outlook 2016 on my PCs/Laptops and on my HTC Android phone and get syncing of Contacts and Calendar between devices.  I had to find out the ActiveSync Server name to do the configuration but it did work.  (The only problems I encountered were Categories not syncing between WIndows devices and unable to create Contact Groups but these are known limitations of ActiveSync accounts).

A few weeks ago something changed that stopped this working.  Not sure what it was but found that I could no longer configure the account in either Outlook 2016 or on my Android.  After much trial and error I found the following resolved the problem.  In my Office 365 account I created an alias using a newly created outlook.com address.  I then made this the primary address for the account.  I then used this address to configure an account in both Outlook 2016 and as an Outlook.com account on my HTC and all started working again.  Also configured the account successfully on a friend's Samsung Galaxy S6. The new outlook.com address is still an ActiveSync account by I'm hoping (and have been assured by Microsoft Outlook.com support via a chat session) that this will be migrated to a Microsoft Exchange account in the coming months thus removing the limitations mentioned above.

Hope this helps.

Once in a while someone gets a response of "Our support specialists made an adjustment to your account, try it now", but no one ever gets an actual answer or a description of why it went wrong and how to solve it in less than 6 months next time.  My guess is that ActiveSync on the server side is getting corrupted and they have to reset it so that everything downloads again.