[mousr]

I am a freelancer. I just purchased a Windows Phone 8 (NOKIA Lumia 810).

My Samsung Omnia II, Blackberry (all of them), Samsung Galaxy S III, iPhone 4s, all had a way of exchanging data with my Outlook.

After much research, I have learned that there is no way to sync my Outlook data with my phone unless I use my Hotmail account.

PLEASE: SOMEONE Tell me This is not true.

What is Microsoft thinking? I understand the "Cloud, Cloud, Cloud" thing...but, that doesn't mean I have to be forced to only use that. If I wanted to be bullied, I would have stayed with Apple and their iTyranny.

[phonohead]

Data? You mean your email and contacts, or files and such? Syncing your data [email, contacts] is not an issue or problem at all. Under "accounts + email" you can choose Outlook which covers "exchange", "outlook.com" and "Office 365".

[gapost]

Only option for local sync is really Akruto Sync | Own your data

You can sync Outlook to Google with Sync2

You can use Hotmail Connector and sync on contact list, multiple calendars to your Microsoft account (Outlook.com/Hotmail/live)

[RichHowerton]

if u have outlook connector installed on your outlook 2010, contacts will sync from phone to outlook. WHICH IS HUGE IMO. My old IPHONE was an absolute ***** trying to get the contacts to sync to OUTLOOK 2010. THANK YOU Windows Phone!

[ChrisRig]

Akruto Sync is indeed a terrific way to sync locally with Outlook and avoid the cloud. It is also just a simply great sync program even if someone does not care about avoiding the cloud. Love it how all my contact pictures got synced. I am just so happy I found it.

[companionlink]

CompanionLink now offers WP8 to Outlook sync. You can select between Wi-Fi sync and DejaCloud sync. It handles contacts, calendar, tasks, and categories.

[jhguth]

Why are you all afraid of using your Live/Outlook.com account (that you are required to have for the phone to work) to do this? What's the problem with letting them take care of this via exchange activesync protocol? it works really well, stop holding onto your 1990's methods.

Do you all also save your contacts on your SIM card and use one of those crazy universal cell-phone adapter that had every connector made to copy contacts?

Syncing tasks would be the only reason to use any of this

[rdubmu]

Outlook 2013 has Hotmail connector built in. You can now log in normally using your outlook/Microsoft account.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

[Narse77]

I was upset at first it didn't have a local sync but I made a outlook.com account and synced it there and it works beautifully. So now I don't see a need for a local sync.

[rdubmu]

It took a paradigm shift for me to get used to this. I actually like it better now. I still think they should add this down the road but having outlook.com being able to sync with Outlook 2013 is a great start.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

[Funky Cricket]

That people don't use an online source for email, calendar, and contacts is beyond me. It's cheap easy backup, you don't have to worry about "moving" it between devices, and dealing with cables or "syncing". all of your devices have the same info from the same source.

move all of your data up to an email provider that has contact and calendar integration and be done with it.

[Spookyville]

edit - managed to resolve by playing with the settings

[Janda45]

Current user of CompanionLink for my iPhone with ACT!. Wonderful product. Considering a switch to WP8. Will DejaOffice mean my contacts and calendars will be within the WP8 app and not the default Contact/Calendar/Tasks etc pieces of the WP8 delivered system? The WP8 devices are nice but the holdback is Microsoft's belief that people want to only connect via social networks. Being unable to sync directly/locally with Office 2010 or 2013 is simply ridiculous.

[Janda45]

It took a paradigm shift for me to get used to this. I actually like it better now. I still think they should add this down the road but having outlook.com being able to sync with Outlook 2013 is a great start.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

Do you have to copy over calendar appointments one at a time including recurring appts?

[Janda45]

if u have outlook connector installed on your outlook 2010, contacts will sync from phone to outlook. WHICH IS HUGE IMO. My old IPHONE was an absolute ***** trying to get the contacts to sync to OUTLOOK 2010. THANK YOU Windows Phone!

Nothing is easier than syncing between Outlook and iPhone. What are you talking about? I tried syncing Outlook to an old WP7 and it was a complete hack job. Had to copy over things to an online account and they didn't take and it was tedious. Got the sync to work for contacts but not calendars. I'm going to try a WP8 and hope for the best. Not confident without buying CompanionLink/Dejaoffice.

[rdubmu]

Do you have to copy over calendar appointments one at a time including recurring appts?

Not sure what you mean, but in Outlook you can drag and drop appointments between calendars. The recurring appointments will ask if you want to copy over the whole series or just the single appointment. I do with my bosses shared calendar since Shared calendars do not appear on Windows Phone Calendar or Windows 8 Calendar, only Outlook 2013.

Before I was using over 3-4 calendars and now I just use my outlook/Hotmail calendar. Works great!

[neo158]

Nothing is easier than syncing between Outlook and iPhone. What are you talking about? I tried syncing Outlook to an old WP7 and it was a complete hack job. Had to copy over things to an online account and they didn't take and it was tedious. Got the sync to work for contacts but not calendars. I'm going to try a WP8 and hope for the best. Not confident without buying CompanionLink/Dejaoffice.

Windows Phone 8 syncs the same way so you probably aren't going to like it either. Now that I think about it Android doesn't sync with Outlook either but you don't hear them complaining!!!

[pdaneophyte]

Why are you all afraid of using your Live/Outlook.com account (that you are required to have for the phone to work) to do this? What's the problem with letting them take care of this via exchange activesync protocol? it works really well, stop holding onto your 1990's methods.

Do you all also save your contacts on your SIM card and use one of those crazy universal cell-phone adapter that had every connector made to copy contacts?

Syncing tasks would be the only reason to use any of this

Reasons:
1. Data security. Anything posted on the internet can become public domain through legitimate or illegal means.
2. Privacy. Your contacts data is not yours to share with the public. You can share your personal info to the public, but you don't share other people personal info to the public. See reason no 1.
3. Currently Outlook.com do not sync perfectly with our Outlook desktop program. It has limitations, such as 40 characters limit on Company Names, 64 characters limit on Address lines, only 1 Address line per address (see this for example) etc.

Those are just 3 of reasons of the top of my head.
So no, I don't save all my contacts data on my SIM cards, but I have a healthy suspicion on the security of the cloud and the limitations of current cloud solution.