outlook.com contacts will only sync one way with android and outlook app

Anonymous
2017-02-12T14:17:29+00:00

I have added my hotmail.com account as exchange in outlook app on android (nexus 6).

Contacts sync one way only.

Problem:

  1. Any new contact added via the android native contacts app to the "hotmail.com" account is deleted without warning on next sync.
  2. Edits made to hotmail.com contacts in native android contacts app are overwritten and lost on next sync.

I have had this problem for more than 1 year. I have now spent about 50 man hours trying to find a solution.  Because the phone is unusable without the ability to add or edit contacts, I have been using my partners old iphone 5c, which syncs contacts both ways flawlessly but means I cant use my smart watch.

My hotmail account was "upgraded" to exchange some months back, but the result before and after is the same (after removing and re-adding of course)

I have spent probably 5 hours with MS support teams.  

  1. First I tried the outlook android app  "in-app" support. They got me to reinstall outlook and my account, and checked various things were ok, then said there was nothing wrong with my setup, and it must be an issue with the account itself. They sent me to the MS account support eam.
  2. The MS account support team said my account was fine, and it was nothing to do with them, and sent me to the desktop outlook support team.
  3. The desktop account team sent me back to the account support team.
  4. The account support team told me to go back to the android outlook in-app support team. they told me to get an apple phone instead.

So it looks like the 100 or so people who have the same problem have no support, and no solution, other than to switch to iPhone.

Outlook | Outlook for mobile | Outlook for Android | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-07-18T12:44:32+00:00

    There are good news:

    https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/06/05/improving-people-in-outlook-for-ios-and-android/?wt.mc\_id=AID600843\_QSG\_SCL\_143295

    Unfortunately, this will not actually solve the issue. The requirement is that if you edit or add a contact directly on the phone, it will sync back to your master outlook contacts. This is how it has worked on iOS for the last 4 years.  Currently in Android, if you edit a contact using the phones built in contact manager, outlook simply overwrites it. If you add a contact using the Android built in contacts app, outlook deletes it for you. If this does not change, using Android with a microsoft account for contacts synchronisation will still be fundamentally broken.  Who wants to be forced to always use outlook?  What if another app adds a contact to the android phone book outside of outlook? Presumably this will still be deleted by outlook as it is now.

    So I don't foresee being able to shift from iPhone back to Android any time soon.  It is a crazy situation where MS is forcing us to go Apple as its the only platform which works with MS Exchange contacts.

    Let us not forget there are a lot of people who say 2 way contact sync between MS account (exchange) and Android actually works. Even 3 MS technicians told me this, and tried to "fix" my phone. They could not.  So there is a question of if 2 way sync already works, but is broken for a large number of people.  I cant find any evidence either way as I don't know anyone else who uses MS accounts as their master.  I cant use gmail as my master account as there is no way to sync it with outlook on my PC, which I have to use for work purposes.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-07-18T11:35:34+00:00

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-07-18T11:21:13+00:00

    The problem you describe is an Android constraint. Same if using iOS. 

    Note, I do not believe this is entirely correct.  Firstly, 2 way sync works flawlessly on iOS, and android does not make any limitations for reading the address book. Also, Outlook app WRITES to the address book on android no problem, it just doesnt bother reading it to send back changes.  Many apps read the address book.  Why would google allow an app to overwrite entries, and create new entries, but not allow to read? That would make zero sense.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-07-18T02:23:10+00:00

    The problem you describe is an Android constraint. Same if using iOS. 

    The native mobile devices don't allow 3rd party application access to native features, so while Outlook mobile for Android works for email and calendar, contact features are restricted to the native contact manager. To get one-way push, you have to use ActiveSync (or whatever your phone calls the sync feature). 

    See **here**for a better explanation. 

    Syncing works, but we (I also use Android) are stuck with one-way push until 3rd party app providers implement a work-around for the mobile native constraints.

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-06-12T13:46:04+00:00

    The OP failed to provide a url for this apparent MS Statement. Some of what is said with regard sync is not correct

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