Calendar Options

[SonshineQ]

Can I use my Outlook Calendar and Contacts in the Droid or does everything have to be gmail based?  I just got my Droid motorola yesterday and my 30 days are ticking.  It is a "business" phone, so some of the posts I have read are pretty scary: lost emails, emails that keep reappearing, a hobbyist phone rather than a business phone, etc.  I like some of the apps it offers, but my main concern is phone, reliable email, and maintaining a calendar.  Maybe I should stick with a Blackberry upgrade?

[Doppelbock]

Someone at work turned me on to Exchange Touchdown by NitroDesk so that my Moto Droid can talk to our Exchange server. It is a great piece of software IMO and worth the $20. You can download the free demo that lasts 30 days to make sure it works in your environment first. Search for Touchdown in the market and it should be at or near the top.

[jasnmar]

Depends quite a bit on how your corp Exchange server is set up. I've been running for about 6 months now and had 0 problems syncing calendar, email and contacts with exchange. I've heard of others that have had nightmares, had to use 3rd party software just to get it to kinda work.

I know at least 5 others in my company with the same experiece as I, and can only assume that it is largely dependant on settings on the servers (which I'm not responsible for).

Milage may vary

[SonshineQ]

Hmm......  I am self-employed (home based business), so my "company" is on my desktop.  I have Road Runner for home emails and LunarPages for my website/business emails.  I guess I need to check and see if their servers will support Exchange; or download the free trial and see how far I can get with it.  Seems like nothing is "easy".  Thanks for the input.

[SonshineQ · Accepted solution]

Yea!!!!!  I did a little more research and the following worked.  I downloaded Google Calendar Sync to the laptop that I use for my small business and selected my sync options.  On the Droid I turned the AutoSync on under Accounts and Sync Settings.  Voila!  Now all the events I had on Outlook are now on my phone.  (I REALLY didn't want to have to type in all those birthday reminders again!)

[Doppelbock]

Syncing with Exchange definitely requires some work on the back end by the company. We weren't set up for this until a month ago. Before that I would forward meeting reminders from my corporate e-mail account to my Gmail account where a single click could add it to my GCal. At least that way I didn't have to re-key meetings (even if I didn't have access to my business e-mail).

[jaynet]

ok, so I have only had my droid a couple of weeks.  Are you saying that you can sync the outlook (not express) calendars, reminders, etc to the droid on a perhaps daily or weekly basis.  please enlighten me!