Ever since the release of iTunes 11 for iOS 7.0 distribution, I lost the ability to sync my calendars on my iOS devices thru the application. I work on a software company and we use Microsoft Outlook for work. I use the calendar in Outlook extensively for meetings and reminders and I was really disappointed when syncing this on iTunes got lost.
I looked for options to sync my Exchange calendar in iCloud but it was not that smooth. I thought installing the iCloud tool would make it easy on my Windows machine. I was able to research using Google Calendar and that seems to be a good option. I saved my calendar from Outlook and imported it in Google Calendar. I select a month's worth of events to be imported to the service. Again, its not that smooth since (1) I have to manually export and import calendar for a specific duration and (2) new calendar events are not synced automatically unless I perform (1) again exporting and importing. I chose this option though for a couple of weeks because I find it more efficient than the iCloud tool in Windows.
Just this week, I was able to read an article about an update to the Sunrise Calendar application gaining support for Exchange calendars. When I was reading the article, it mentioned that I still have to setup my Exchange account though in the Settings app of my iOS device. Then it struck me, why don't I try setting up my Exchange account just to get the calendar events? So that's just what I did!
I went to the settings app of my iPad mini first then to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. You should be able to see Accounts there and just have to setup your Exchange account by selecting it, place now your username and password. After successful validation, you'll see toggles for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders and Notes. This will allow you to choose which Exchange information you allow to be fetched by your iOS device. In my case, since I only want my Calendar, I disabled everything else except for it. Afterwards, I went to the Calendar app on my iPad mini and I saw that its trying to sync already. I noticed though that my Exchange calendar is not adding up. When I closed the Calendar app, I was prompted that I should update my Passcode lock. I then realized that since I now added my Exchange account, I should update my Passcode (8 characters minimum) which understandably is for Security purposes. I have updated my Passcode accordingly and when I launched the Calendar app again, all my Outlook events are synced! I performed the same steps on my iPhone 4S.
I was so dumbfounded because why didn't I thought of this in the first place. My initial impression before was that I can only sync Mails on it which I do not want especially for Work mails. I receive a lot of them, I don't want to get annoyed by it and I don't want unread emails to be displayed on my Mail app, that's just how OC I am on stuffs. This is a good find and something I'd like to share to my readers. Hope you find this article helpful.
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Image at the very top courtesy of Placeit
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