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Outlook 2003/iPhone 3G v2.0 Synch Troubleshooting

PROBLEMS
(I) iPhone 3g (2.0) synchronizes Outlook 2003 Contacts but not Calendar. No error message appeared. (Also, I think in my iTunes 7.7 Info's Calendar section had no item at all in the box area under "Selected calendars" -- i.e., that box was totally empty.)

(II) After finally successfully synchronizing my Phone 3g (2.0) with my Outlook 2003 Calendar, new events entered (or modified) on the iPhone's calendar would not show in Outlook 2003's Day/Week/Month view but did show in Outlook's "By Category" and other table views plus in the "Outlook Today" view.

ENVIRONMENT
Outlook 2003 (SP2); Windows XP Pro (SP3), 3G iPhone (v2.0), iTunes 7.7

SOLUTION - Problem I
Changing my Outlook pst file structure from the old pre-Outlook 2003 structure to the newer, Unicode structure first available but not required in Outlook 2003.

My Outlook 2003 data file (.pst file) was still in the old non-Unicode format called “Personal Folders file (97-2002)” because I used to have Outlook 2000 and continued to use the pst file it created even after upgrading to Outlook 2003. Determine your .pst file's format by starting Outlook and right-clicking the "Personal Folders" (top-most heading in your data) and choosing Properties, then Advanced: read "Format" type.

The old pst file structure does not use “Unicode” and therefore is incompatible with the iPhone calendar. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1324

CONVERT YOUR PST TO UNICODE TYPE "Personal Folders"
(1) BACK UP YOUR CURRENT PST FILE!!!!! Don't even think of messing with it until you've done this!!!!
(2) Close Outlook and move your pst file somewhere else so Outlook can’t find it.
(3) Start Outlook 2003 and when it complains that it can’t find your .pst file and prompts for its location, type a new file name and specify a location (and observe/confirm it shows "format"/type as "Personal Folders," which is the newer Unicode pst type -- NOT "Personal Folders (1997-2002)").
(4) With Outlook open and your new empty pst data file visible, FILE/OPEN your old PST file with all the data (proceed passed the Outlook warning prompt about your old pst file being in the old non-Unicode environment). You now have TWO pst files open: the empty new one above and full old one below.
(5a) Drag your old email, tasks, notes to their corresponding folders in the new PST file BUT NOT YOUR CALENDAR ITEMS YET (e.g., drag sent email from your old pst file's Sent folder to your new pst's Sent folder; drag the contents, NOT THE FOLDERS); but do drag unique folders in your old pst to the new pst file (e.g., "unresolved complaints" FOLDER in your old Inbox to the new Inbox; or if on the same level as the Inbox, drag it to the new "Personal Folders" parent).
(5b) Right-click the old "Personal Folders parent folder" below your new one and choose "Close..."
(6) Create one new test calendar appointment in your new Outlook calendar.
(7) Start iTunes and go to Edit Preferences/Syncing and RESET Sync history. I also recommend under your iPhone's SUMMARY section UNchecking "automatically" sync until the dust settles from all of this.
(8) Synchronize! Check your iPhone for that one test calendar entry you entered in your new and nearly empty Outlook calendar.
(9) If the test entry is there, go to Outlook, and re-open your old Outlook data file as in step #4, then click on your old Calendar and change the Outlook view (View menu/Arrange By/Current View) to "By category" in order to display your old calendar items in a table view and by category.
IF NOT, HELL IF I KNOW, it worked for my and I'm burned out on this.
(10) Drag over a few recently entered NON-RECURRING appointments from your old Calendar to your new PST file's Calendar, then CLOSE the old Outlook data file again, then go to iTunes and sync again and check your iPhone's Calendar.
(11) If they're there, get ready to drag way more NON-RECURRING calendar items to the new calendar within Outlook, but do this first: scroll through the table view of your old Calendar and delete any weird events (with strange symbols instead of readable text) and empty events; consider only dragging newish calendar entries (I did 2 years worth) to the new calendar but I recommend only drag about 6-months at a time between re-syncing and re-checking your iPhone;
(12) Instead of dragging RECURRING events from the old pst to the new within Outlook, RECREATE THEM in the new Outlook Calendar; look at (and better yet print) your old Calendar's recurring appointments in your old PST after OPENING THE OLD PST AGAIN, and after grouping them together in the convenient table view by changing Outlook Calendar view to "by Recurring Appointments" instead of "By Category."
(13) Right-click the old "Personal Folders parent folder" below your new one and choose "Close..."
NOTE: CONSIDER KEEPING THE OLD PST FILE AS AN ARCHIVE OF THE OLDER CALENDAR ITEMS YOU DID NOT BRING OVER TO THE NEW PST, IF ANY; AND CONSIDER RENAMING THAT OLD PST FILE TO "OLD-CALENDAR.PST" OR "ARCHIVE.PST" OR SOMETHING DESCRIPTIVE LIKE THAT. REMEMBER, you also have your backup of the original old pst somewhere else, right?!
(14) Close Outlook, wait a minute or so, then restart Outlook and make sure it looks fine. Make sure your iPhone Calendar looks fine. Recreate your Outlook email accounts within Outlook if necessary (e.g., if you deleted your outlook Profile at any point and subsequently selected "with no email support" ).
(15) Put a horse's head in the bed of Apple iPhone's Quality Assurance (QA) Manager and retrain the pissy Apple phone techs to not blame Microsoft whenever they're stumped.

SOLUTION/Workaround - Problem II
(calendar events created on my iPhone are invisible in Outlook's Day/Week/Month view but visible in Outlook calendar's table views, such as "By Category.")

Though some people posted online solutions involving exporting their Outlook calendars to CSV then importing the CSV back (and re-configuring recurring event settings lost during the CSV transition), this did not seem pertinent to my problem, since all my Outlook calendar items created in Outlook already appeared properly in all Outlook views and on my iPhone 3G. I therefore tried another suggested workaround posted by someone else that requires an extra step on the iPhone whenever creating (or modifying) event on the iPhone v2.0 UNTIL APPLE FIXES iPhone v2.0 software and/or iTunes 7.7 synchronizing software.

On the iPhone 3G, when creating a new calendar entry (or modifying an existing calendar entry) do this extra step: change the event's "Repeat"setting from "never" to "yearly" AND the setting "End Repeat" from "never" to THE SAME DATE AS THE EVENT you just created (this prevents the event from actually recurring).

OPTIONAL: open the iPhone-created event in Outlook's calendar after synchronizing then click "remove recurrence" ; this isn't necessary since the event won't recur anyway, but it cleans it up a little.

Based on the numerous online postings about this, the problem seems to be with iPhone v2.0's calendar's handling of the "repeat" field (a.k.a. "recurrence" field) even and especially when no repeat is specified. The workaround sets the field in a way detectable by Outlook in its day/week/month view (the table view always shows the such events).

Microsoft has online Knowledge Base documents about this problem (events invisible in Outlook's day/week/month view but visible in table views and the Outlook Today view for events created programily (spelling?); this issue seems to have cropped up for programmers screwing with calendar data in Exchange Server environments but sure seems relevant for Apple's own sucky sunk sync programmers.

TROUBLESHOOTING
I tried nearly all the troubleshooting suggestions I read on a few excellent online message boards that were filling with painful postings about these iPhone 3G sync problems. I also found the solution to my first problem and the workaround to my second on these same boards.

Here are posted suggestions I tried that didn't help:

- reinstall iTunes cleanly (tried it, didn't help)

- run "detect and repair" within Outlook (didn't help)

- export the entire PST file to another PST, (didn't help) then create a Unicode PST and import everything back from the export-PST (this is a highly unstable method opposed by at least one Microsoft MVP message-board contributor because it's buggy and often causes Outlook to create dreaded "Recovered Personal Folder" corruption, which was my experience); removing the horrid "Recovered Personal Folder" entries within Outlook required deleting the Outlook PROFILE(s) via the Windows "Mail" Control Panel then creating a new Profile.

- move the existing pst file to Microsoft's default location (c:\documents and settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook) (didn't help). This didn't make sense to me, though I tried it, since iTunes 7.7 successfully found the pst for synching Contacts. I could imagine, though, how perhaps Apple programmers coded correctly for syncing Contacts in a pst located anywhere but screwed up and coded only the MS default path to the pst for Calendar synching; this seemed extremely unlikely but I tried moving my pst to the default path -- didn't help.

- disable Outlook add-ins etc that might conflict with iTunes (didn't help)
This didn't make sense to me since Outlook does not need to be running during iTunes synchronization. When Outlook isn’t running, neither is any of its plug-ins, add-ins etc., ergo they can’t interfere when they aren't running. Therefore, they aren't causing the synch problem. CAVEAT: make sure Outlook REALLY isn't running by checking the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) for Outlook.exe. Outlook for years has had a problem of not totally exiting. If you see Outlook.exe listed under Process within Task Manager, click it once then click the "End Process Button." (P.S. This is why I installed the wonderful $5 Outlook Shutdown add-in from Daveswebsite.com.)

- run scanpst.exe to fix PST file corruption.
Scanpst.exe is the free MS program installed with every Office installation but buried in subfolders; search your hard drive for scanpst.exe but beware, IF YOU EVER HAD OLDER (or newer-but-subsequently-removed) VERSIONS OF OFFICE installed on your PC you may find two or more scanpst.exe files of different sizes and creation dates. Make sure to use the scanpst.exe file for YOUR CURRENT version of Outlook because upgrading Office still leaves the old scanpst.exe file behind. I had two different-size scanpst.exe files on my PC: one dated 1998 and one dated 2005; obviously, the 2005 one corresponded to Outlook 2003, NOT the older one. To complicate matters, I had been regularly using the older one and getting away with it because my active .pst file was still in the older file structure “Personal Folders file (97-2002)” instead of the newer (Unicode) “Personal Folders file.” When I ran the older scanpst.exe on my newly created Unicode pst, it always claimed it found errors and repaired them but actually corrupted my new Unicode PST file. Running the correct (newer) scanpst.exe after again creating a new Unicode PST file revealed no errors.

- bail on Outlook and use MobileMe instead I like this idea but found proliferating complaints online about horrid MobileMe problems, plus I don't like important aspects of MobileMe.

- use Outlook but bail on using iTunes to sync calendars and instead use Google Calendar's sync Windows program, which synchronizes with Outlook Calendars well; the iPhone can't sync its own calendar with Google's (as far as I could figure out) BUT the iPhone can easily display your Google Calendar within Google on your iPhone, especially via Google's free iPhone app. I tried it, but I feel it's a kludge without also having my contacts in Google. Still, this is a realistic workaround since iTunes could continue to sync Contacts but not Calendars, leaving the latter to Google sync.

BIG PICTURE CONCLUSIONS

(1) Web-based Contact management is the future except for people concerned with high-security. Google Calendar/Docs, MobileMe and Salesforce.com are all promising.

(2) Synchronization is NOT difficult programming, therefore Apple must not be using its best (or even decent) programmers or QA testers on it. Palm synchronization never had this non-Unicode/Unicode pst sync issue in my 10 years of using it and neither does Google's free sync program for Windows. If Palm (and Chupura) and Google can write synchronization apps that work without finagling, Apple has no excuse except for bone-headed dipsh#tery and pimply premature hubris.

(4) I probably swore more in the last 3 days working on this issue than in the last 3 years. iPhone 2.0 is no doubt causing an exponential increase in swearing. Now is also a good time to invest in manufacturers of Apple-programmer/QA tester voodoo dolls.

(5) Apple loves the bleeding edge of technology but can get away with it because its evangelical early-adopter base is so forgiving. Good for them and us, really. But I violated my policy of not being an early adopter because I thought the first iPhone released a year ago absorbed all that shock. I thought adding hardware capability, such as 3G and GPS, in the new iPhone would not cause bleeding-edge problems but I didn't realize iPhone 2.0 software put the iPhone back on the bleeding edge. I'll be more careful next time.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"EFF U, Apple iPhone sync programmers and Q.A. testers, you EFFING dip-@#$% loser pieces of !@#$!! How could you QA people miss these problems with this essential functionality?! Didn't you try syncing with Outlook?! You're FIRED!! Go work on Vista, where you'll fit right in."