If you use both GMail and Outlook to work with through the day you might like to know that you can actually sync calendar dates between the calendar built in to Outlook and the online version. To achieve this you need to install a free app from Google that runs a small application that can be set to sync items from Outlook in to GMail and back.
To get the GMail Outlook Sync working you simply load the software, enter your GMail username and password, set how the details will be synced, ie 2 way or 1 way and set it going. You can set the time between each sync which defaults at 120 minutes but can be dropped down to 10 minutes if needed.
After testing the system I see it works very well. Data was synchronised within minutes and now I can use both my GMail calendar and Outlook together.
If you are using an Exchange server for email, calendar etc… you might wonder why this is needed as Exchange offers OWA which is a web based Outlook client that allows you full access to tasks, calendar and email. The main reason for me wanting to test the GMail Outlook Sync is so that I can also sync my GMail/Outlook calendar over to the calendar on my Android based phone. Exchange support on Android isn’t that great at the moment and although you can get TouchDown, it does create a separate calendar that is kind of awkward to use. By syncing your Outlook Calendar with GMail and then on to the Android you always have your calendar with you. Update it on your phone it then eventually syncs to GMail which in turn, syncs to your desktop allowing you to maintain just the 1 calendar rather than manually creating more appointments.
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