[CrackBerry Question]

Hi, I have this problem with BB Contacts - a nice and simple contact management tool (even if it misses jumping to lettes), black theme (completely black, please give AMOLED some love) and some other relatively minor things.

However, my boss and I have moved from Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile. I made him move to BB Android with me, although I got the PRIV and he got DTEK60. The problem is that he actively uses Live (or Outlook.com nowadays) synchronisation for his contacts and would like to keep it that way. Now that in itself is not a problem, but what is is that the whole cooperation of Contacts by Blackberry with MS servers of Outlook.com . When I try to add an Outlook account into Contacts, first the log-in form/procedure keeps resetting itself throwing something along the lines of "Server configuration has changed". This happens on both devices. Then, once I manage to get the account registered to the application, it tries to start synchronising contacts. At first it was pouring in really slowly, that's something we could live with. After a day, however, my boss got only about 400 contacts out of more than a thousand. So I deleted the account (since the number had not moved for a while), re-added it, and the result is that only one contact got into the device from Microsoft's "cloud". This is despite the fact that the contacts look just fine in the Outlook application, but I cannot pin those on the home screen and it's generally inconvenient. And when I try to do that on my PRIV, I get "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly". Despite the fact that the Outlook application synchronises just fine, I should add.

I would appreciate any assistance.

Thank you

[BB-JAM215]

When you said you added your Outlook.com account to the Contacts app, I assume you meant you added it to the Hub and selected Sync Contacts?

[Damien H]

Actually I just went through Contacts (>menu>add account), but I presume those are linked.

[BB-JAM215]

Yes, that would be the same add account function then. We're you doing this over a data connection or WiFi?

[Damien H]

I tried both, actually. It didn't/doesn't seem to make much difference. It's also the only type of account that seems to have these issues. If anyone here has an Outlook.com account linked to their Android BB and it works, please rise your hand.

[BB-JAM215]

I started syncing my Office Outlook contacts and calendar through Outlook.com when I was on BlackBerry 10 and started having problems with BlackBerry Link on Windows 10.

Now I'm doing the same on BlackBerry Android and it continues to work very well, updating quickly in both directions -- but then I probably have less than 100 contacts.

[Damien H]

That really is strange... I used the same procedure for two devices and had only varying degrees of failure. And I don't think the number is an issue here.

Speaking of BB Link, is there something similar for Android BB devices?

[BB-JAM215]

There's now no need for a PC based program like Link on Android. Your Google account includes enough space on Google Drive to backup OS related and app information. Some apps like WhatsApp can also backup their settings.

Contacts and calendar can be backed up through a cloud account such as GMail or Outlook. There are apps that can sync to iTunes.

You can also manually copy whatever else you want to backup to your PC or use cloud based backup options like DropBox.

[Damien H]

This is not very relevant to the Outlook.com issue, but personally I prefer to have my contacts locally and manage them also locally. There is the need.

[Damien H]

Just something to note - the Outlook accounts are actually not visible in the respective Hubs of each device at all.

[BB-JAM215]

This is not very relevant to the Outlook.com issue, but personally I prefer to have my contacts locally and manage them also locally. There is the need.

I prefer to manage my contact's on my PC on Office Outlook most of the time but I also add contacts on my phone when I need to. Either way everything is automatically sync 'd and backed up quickly through Outlook.com

[BB-JAM215]

Just something to note - the Outlook accounts are actually not visible in the respective Hubs of each device at all.

My Outlook.com shows up in the Hub, but then I set it up to sync mail as well as contacts and calendar even though I don't normally use it for email.

I'm sure if you set yours to sync email it would also show up in the Hub.

[Damien H]

Could you tell me how did you add your account to begin with, if you remember?

[BB-JAM215]

I did it through HUB: Add Account. I don't recall having to do anything other than entering my Outlook.com email address and password.

[Damien H]

Yeah, I guess there is the problem. The account in question doesn't actually use any MS domain like outlook.com, live.com, hotmail.com, etc... It's our own domain. And the autodiscover thingy, naturally, won't look for Outlook credentials with that.

Think you could post/list your account settings with everything personal omitted? That might help a lot.

[BB-JAM215]

I also have a Windows Mobile 8.1 phone and just checked the settings for my Live.com account. The server setting is eas.outlook.com which is the same used by my Outlook.com account on my DTEK, but unlike with most devices there is no Port number or other settings usually found under Advanced.

The Server Settings on my DTEK are:
Server: eas.outlook.com
Port: 443
Security Type: SSL/TSL

It sounds like you may have a Microsoft Exchange account. If so, you may need to contact the person who administers it.

See: https://support.office.com/en-us/art...2-83e5c6036793

[jgrobertson]

Yeah, I guess there is the problem. The account in question doesn't actually use any MS domain like outlook.com, live.com, hotmail.com, etc... It's our own domain. And the autodiscover thingy, naturally, won't look for Outlook credentials with that.

Think you could post/list your account settings with everything personal omitted? That might help a lot.

I went through some similar problems. I have my own url on ipage.com bit I use the free @outlook.com account to sync my contacts and calendar across my Priv and three computes. I had some of my own url mailboxes set up on outlook as aliases and that was a disaster. Now I have the one outlook.com mailbox on my Priv and several of my own url mailboxes too.

Remember, the 2016 outlook.com account is on an exchange server at MS and you have to let BlackBerry Hub set it up automatically. The other boxes on my own url at ipage I configure manually on hub.

and discovered that with the free @outlook.com account you can think it is

[Damien H]

So I have to go to Hub and add a new Exchange account manually, use m.hotmail.com as the server, then it seems to work. Thanks for leading me to that point!

[BB-JAM215]

This may help:
http://www.lifewire.com/outlook-exch...ttings-1170669

[werkregen]

I've had problems both with BB Contacts app not syncing properly, or duplicating contacts and with an Outlook account.

To solve BB Contatcs, I removed all contacts accounts, rebooted and re-added the accounts.

To solve Outlook, I've tried lots of thing but I think I've solved it by exporting all contacts, deleting and re-importing after a day (in outlook.com).

[BB-JAM215]

I also had a problem with duplicates when I first setup my phone to sync my contact's through Outlook.com to Office Outlook on my PC.

I decide to go with the lowest common denominator, which in this case is Outlook.com. I deleted any duplicates on my phone and PC that did not exactly match Outlook.com and any editing I needed to do was done on Outlook.com.