Calendar for Android

mubs

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Hi Guys,

I use MS Outlook in offline mode on my PC and use only the address and contact book. I sync this with my Samsung Android phone, and all was well till a year ago. Then my phone went wonky, and shows each calendar item twice. It also stopped respecting the reminder set; the phone calendar will make noises at arbitrary times. I've given up trying to fix it. I believe this is not the stock Android calendar but Samsung proprietary crap. The only good thing was their Kies software synced both calendar and address book between MS Outlook on the PC and the phone.

Anybody got suggestions for Calendar / Address book on Android that will sync with MS Outlook on the PC? Not interested in accessing email on the phone.

Thanks.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Android calendar software is weird because you can have multiple programs installed that are called "Calendar" in your App drawer and none of them are necessarily the Calendar provided by Google or even your handset vendor. The last Samsung Calendar I installed had a silly wood-grain trim along window panes.

My advice: Pick one calendar app, get it working the way you want. I suggest using one that didn't come from a handset manufacturer. The official Google Calendar app has a blue icon with a grey line at the top and two white dots inside the grey line. It's a decent choice, but it's made to work with the Google Calendar web service, which I don't think you use.

You might have to go bugger around in Settings - Accounts to see if you have two calendar providers with the same data in each or you might want to look at your Outlook settings to see if it's duplicated THERE. In the end, there are a lot of places where this problem could be introduced and it's not necessarily because of Android. You might've done something like imported a bunch of calendar events into the local calendar on the phone and then synchronized the calendar with the PC and gotten a huge number of dupes. Clearing things off and starting again might also be a faster fix, if you have another authoritative source.

I think Outlook for Android expects to sync through cloud services and/or an iCal server. I have no idea if it'll direct sync with desktop Outlook or not.
 

mubs

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Thanks Merc, I'm afraid you're right. I spent some time nosing around the web yesterday, and there wasn't anything promising.
 

MaxBurn

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I use fruux for my back end calendar and contacts. They are a really good and focused pay service and focus on dav for syncing. Work I'm using a google calendar.

On android I use the google calendar app, the fruux sync app and month calendar widget to devote a whole home screen to the calendar. I like that the google calendar app is available for anything now so that lends consistency to the experience. I'm even using it on a chromebook flip to get all my calendars on one screen in a familiar UI now.

On PC you could use outlook via a plugin if you wanted, I used to do this because i used outlook so much for work. Now I rather like Thunderbird and both work well there.

Fruux is worth the money IMO.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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There might also be a solid case for Blackberry Hub, which is $1/month. I installed it on somebody's phone today. It ties together Personal, Business and social media messaging and calendars and might be really cool if you have a lot of that stuff.
 

mubs

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Maxburn, thanks, will check it out.

Merc, the only "social media" I'm on is Whatsapp, primarily for exchanging info with immediate & extended families. No Facebook, Twitter or any of that stuff.
 
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