How do I get Outlook app on Android to sync contacts? (Not Outlook.com app)

Anonymous
2015-06-03T04:43:19+00:00

I got a message on my Android phone that Microsoft was no longer going to support the app Outlook.com and that we should use the Outlook app. So I uninstalled outlook.com app and installed the Outlook app.

Now new contacts that I entered on the People page of Outlook on my computer do not show up on my phone. I went to Settings, Accounts, Microsoft Exchange, and clicked on sync for mail,, contacts, calender, and tasks. It said that the sync was done moments later. However, I still do not have the new contacts on my phone. This was not a problem with Outlook.com app.

I am about to uninstall the Outlook app and go back to Outlook.com. However, if you don't support it, I could have problems not getting updates to protect against malmare and hacking.

I don't particularly like the new Outlook app's appearance with all those colored squares with people's initials on the left of the email listing. I prefer to have he boxes on the left so I can look at the list and check off one or more messages and then delete them all at once. What if there is a message with a virus in it. I want to be able to delete suspicious messages without opening them.

Thanks for your help,

Jacki

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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2015-06-04T04:27:02+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Office Community.

Please provide us the additional information to help you better.

  1. Are you able to see the new contacts on Outlook.com webmail?
  2. Does the existing contacts show up in Outlook app?
  3. Did you setup the Outlook.com account as Exchange Active Sync in Outlook app?

If not, you may setup as EAS account and verify whether contacts synchronize.

If yes, create new contacts in Outlook phone app and check if it syncs.

Microsoft is collecting feedback from customers regarding Outlook app user interface. They are actively looking into the concerns raised by the customers.

You may provide feedback regarding outlook app interface using the In-App function in Outlook for Android. 

I look forward to your reply to assist you further.

Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-20T19:50:28+00:00

    I have just picked up an LG G4 and have had quite a painful experience...

    Agreed that the Marshmallow 'included' mail app connects and sync with an Exchange server OK. However, if you use the notes field with contacts, only the first 1000 characters get synced to the phone, and, worse still, if you make any changes, the server copy then gets truncated as well. It seems that there is no history to recover lost data other than from a backup. An earlier version of Android (4.4.x) did not suffer this limitation so Google have obviously changed something.

    I suspect that if you use the Outlook App and sync to the phone contacts, the same thing will likely happen if the sync goes 'both ways'? Does the Outlook calendar also sync to the phone calendar, and if so, are there limitations?

    It would be great to know if MS or any third party vendor doe snot suffer this limitation so one can have, say, 2000 characters in the notes field of a contact which is reliably synced back to the Exchange server on an update?

    In both the above cases, it might be useful to be able top establish a 'one way' only sync between the outlook app and the phone apps to avoid messing up the primary server calendar and contacts.

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-31T16:47:06+00:00

    It also bothers me that the Outlook app contacts will not sync to the phone contacts.  I have a feeling I know why. 

    I have no inside information, I'm just basing this on my years of mobile email support for the company I work for and also because I'm heavily focused on Office 365 and Intune right now for a proof of concept we are doing.

    The Outlook app, like the other mobile apps, are getting "containerized" with Intune.  This means they can put passwords on the app, and not the device and keep all the corporate data inside those apps.  They can disable things like Save As when you're those protected apps.  It allows you to use those apps for personal documents, but the corporate stuff is walled off.

    We're currently using Good Mobile Messaging which is a containerized app.  There is actually a policy that we enable that allows Good to sync contacts to the phone.   You can control what you allow to sync and in our case we just allow name and phone numbers so things like Caller ID will work.

    From my testing of Intune so far, no such contact policy exists so my gut tells me until they add that feature on the backend to control it, you won't see it added to Outlook.

    Again, this is just me guessing....  I'd really like to have the feature....

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-01T23:28:14+00:00

    This does work but what I have noticed is then I can not see the groups that I have created on the web.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-01T23:35:03+00:00

    Can we just get a major update for the app

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