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

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.

Solution / workaround for using Outlook contacts on Android:

• Open Chrome
• Go to https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/people
• Log in with you Outlook / Microsoft / Hotmail account if necessary.
• Tap the menu dots in the top right corner
• Tap Add to Home Screen

Now whenever you want to add or edit a contact use this new shortcut. New contacts can be added using the bug plus (+) in the upper right corner.

> Let us not forget there are a lot of people who say 2 way contact sync between MS

> account (exchange) and Android actually works.

I'm one of those people. I used the "Corporate" account type on my Android device (6.0.1) and the standard Email, Contacts, and Calendar apps work just fine in both directions. I can update in a web browser, on the phone, or with Outlook 2016 on a desktop and the changes sync across all. I do not use the Outlook for Android app.

This worked for me on my Samsung Galaxy S8.

Installed the recently updated Outlook app and added my Outlook.com account.  (Note: I have a custom domain hosted on Outlook.com.  Pretty sure you can't do that anymore, but if you are one of the legacy users like me, this will work.)

After I added my account, I went into the Outlook app and under settings, and tapped the account (named for my email address) in the Accounts section.  There I enabled "Sync Contacts".  Microsoft was thoughtful enough to display a note saying the sync may take up to an hour to complete but mine synced immediately.

From there, I went to the native Android contacts app to confirm that the Outlook account was now listed for sync.  Tap Settings and then Contacts to Display.  You should see the Outlook account listed there.

Guidance is here for both Android and iOS...

https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/06/05/improving-people-in-outlook-for-ios-and-android/?wt.mc_id=AID600843_QSG_SCL_143295

This worked for me on my Samsung Galaxy S8.

Hi, did you try the two tests?  I.e.

1. create a new contact directly on the phone using the phones people app or equivalent, then do a sync, and see if the contact was then deleted?
2. Edit an existing contact on the phone via the phonse built in people app, do a sync, then see it was overwritten with the old version from the PC?

It could be that it works for samsung phones, which have quite a lot of samsung customisations and apps on them, and not on a google nexus (which is more pure android)