Sync Outlook 365 (email, contacts, calendar and notes) with android phone

This whole chain makes fascinating reading. Clearly high tech users understand how POP3 IMAP Exchange etc work and hence their limitations. Then there are the low tech users who have become accustomed to software that just works the way you expect. 

Like many in this thread I have been using MS Office for many years and I have always found it functional and easy to use; but over recent years MS Outlook has lost much of its functionality. As has been pointed out it is just an email client so it can't manage synchronising without the help of an external application and MS have chosen not to create one. 

However I think the main criticism of MS comes from the fact that MS Office 365 costs money and provides less functionality for the average user than many free alternatives. Personally I now only use the MS Outleeook email client because I can write VBA code to help me do what I need behind the scenes, and it supports POP3, which I prefer. 

However I now use Google Calendar - which is free, works across all platforms and now even works off-line. Like other users I will probably start using One Note for Notes. But I will try the suggestion made in this thread to set up an Outlook email address to handle synchronising of contacts ONLY.

It seems to me that MS have long tried to be all things to all people but is no longer able to do so. Office 365 is becoming more and more targeted at smaller groups of users who are prepared to pay and MS are slowly walking away from the high volume of low tech users, leaving them to be looked after  by more intuitive, lower tech programs that 'seem' more powerful and functional.  But that's just my view

I agree that the sync between Microsoft outlook, 365 and Android is lacking. I just decided to use all of these for my work but after using google also they seem to be way ahead of Microsoft.  It is hard to understand how Microsoft did not consider this functionality.

I have a home subscription to Office 365 that I use on my Windows 7 laptop and a Samsung Galaxy S3 (Android 4.1.1).  I am not on a work server using Exchange, just my own GMail address.  I am wondering if there is a way for my phone to sync with my Office 365 Outlook instance so that it automatically syncs email, calendar, contacts and notes.  Thanks!

I have the opposite question - I want the Outlook 365/and Outlook Mobile version not to synch with my Work Enterprise Exchange Server. It is interfering with Addressbook and contacts and having difficulty locating and turning features off. I manually have to go in an delete / purge. At the point where I'm ready to uninstall outlook from mobile Samsung device which I suspect was the trigger impacting Mobile Iron

 My regret is that Microsoft and the Android clan haven't been able to do what Apple did--make it easy for people to accomplish something that most of us would like to be able to do--which is sync their calendars across platforms.

Just for the sake of accuracy - Apple provided a solution for Outlook to connect to iCloud (their proprietary service).

Android is a "platform" - not an <email account> type - in other words, there's no such thing as an <Android> email account. The <email client> used by any Android device connects to an <email account> using a specific protocol which governs what is and isn't sync'd. 

Additionally, if all you have is a POP or IMAP account, then there is no universal sync protocol for contacts/calendar regardless of vendor/device. Or to put this another way, contact/calendar data is governed by the email service provider - not the <email client> vendor whether that's Apple or Microsoft - in short, what you want is a universal standard for ALL email providers in terms of contact/calendar data which doesn't exist. Android (the platform) was purchased by Google in 2007, however, Android is "open source" so any manufacturer running Android on their device can modify it to taste (which has nothing to do with having a universal contact/calendar protocol that is email provider agnostic).

I still stand by the 4 Team product "Sync2" 

Sync2 is also an excellent option (just overlooked it in my previous post) - comes down to preference and approach. Not sure I'd let the $10 price difference be the deciding factor. Any program of interest should be tried and tested before any purchase.