Calendar & People Disappeared After Reconnecting OL 2016

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Nonya

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Outlook version
Outlook 2016 32 bit
Email Account
IMAP
Ugh -- I'm freaking out in a serious way & will sincerely appreciate any assistance. I'm not sure what's happened & what info is needed -- please ask if more detail is needed, and apologies for the length.

For years, I've used the EAS, Outlook, & Outlook.com method to sync Calendar & People (I don't use the outlook.live.com account for email -- just for Calendar & People) between my desktop & Windows Phone. I read "something somewhere" about the then-impending EAS change, but I think my account must have been one of the last migrated because when I last checked in late October, my account hadn't been migrated. (As an aside, I never use the outlook.live.com site -- I make all new calendar & people entries & changes on my desktop PC in OL 2016.)

Long story shorter: I received the "Action Required - Reconnect" email a day or two before Christmas & then had hand surgery the first week of January. The final cast came off yesterday, and today I pulled up the instructions from the email to do the reconnect. I used the "Alternative Option" method because I have several non-Outlook.com accounts in my OL 2016 profile.

Before following the instructions, I checked at outlook.live.com to make sure the appearance change indicating that migration had happened was present (it was) and that my Calendar was current -- as near as I could tell, it looks like Calendar entries quit syncing from OL 2016 to outlook.live.com around 1/27/2017. Yikes, but that wasn't a big deal for me because since my hand was in a cast from the beginning of the year, I hadn't added anything other than a couple of doc appointments that would be easy enough to add after the re-connection.

Then I followed the instructions to remove & re-add the account, and everything in OL 2016 went flawlessly, I thought -- the app password (I have two-step verification enabled) worked fine, and then I went into Account Settings to change the default data file to the reconnected account. There was a message saying the change would take effect when I restarted OL 2016, so I restarted it.

Now, however, there are no entries in Calendar or People in OL 2016. To say that this is devastating would be an understatement. My Calendar goes back to 2000 and while everything is still present at outlook.live.com, I use OL 2016 all day every day.

I recall from some years back there was sometimes an initial sync issue such that a sync wouldn't happen until a calendar or contact item was added, so I tried that without success. There are still no Calendar or People entries in OL 2016 other than the "test" one of each I added to try to trigger a sync. And, the "test" calendar & people entries I made in OL 2016 don't seem to be syncing to outlook.live.com.

Also, after following the steps & restarting OL 2016, I received an email from "Microsoft account" with the subject "Reconnect Outlook 2016/2013 to Outlook.com to resume email access," which seems to be saying the reconnect didn't work? Here's part of the email:
Dear Outlook.com customer,

To finalize your upgrade to the new Outlook.com, it’s necessary that you reconnect Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 to your Outlook.com account. It appears that you have not yet reconnected your account, and as a result, your Outlook.com emails are no longer syncing to your desktop version of Outlook.

What you need to do: Reconnect your desktop version of Outlook to your Outlook.com account to resume access.

You can access step-by-step instructions to reconnect your account at our official Microsoft support website at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=837697.

Once you reconnect, your Outlook.com emails will resume syncing to your desktop version of Outlook. Note that your Outlook.com email account is still active and all your messages remain accessible via a web browser.

We recognize that having to reconnect your account is inconvenient. Taking this action ensures that you are able to take full advantage of the new Outlook.com, and we’re confident you will love the benefits and performance of the upgrade. If you have any questions not answered by the support article above, please contact customer support at https://support.office.com/home/chat.

Thank you for being an Outlook.com customer.

Sincerely,
The
Outlook.com team

Clearly, removing & re-adding the account triggered something to generate that email, yes?

I'm receiving no sync error messages that I can find, but when I went back to Account Settings, Email, that account is still showing as "Exchange ActiveSync," which is the same as before. Shouldn't removing it, re-adding it, and allowing OL 2016 to automatically configure the account have changed this?

In trying to problem-solve this, I also went back online to outlook.live.com, and the Calendar & People entries are still there, but I don't know what I missed to make things sync.

I'll sincerely appreciate any guidance -- my head is about to explode. I've been going over & over & over things to see if I could figure out what went wrong where, and I'm having no luck. What do I need to do differently to get my Calendar (which is my life) and my Contacts back from outlook.live.com to OL 2016?

Thanks,
Saundra
 
Yeah, anytime you use autoaccount setup following the migration, it should use Microsoft Exchange, not EAS. If you click Manual Setup then Office 365 and enter your outlook.com address, does it set it up as Exchange?
 
Diane - thank you so much! I hope it's OK if I report my experiences (in case the info is helpful to anyone) and then ask for further direction, if possible

The good news is that I have my Calendar & People back (mostly) on both my PC & SP3! The problem I wrote in about was on my PC: removing my Outlook.com account, reconnecting it, and allowing it to auto-configure didn't work when I followed the Alternative Option since I have several other email accounts. Not only was the account still identified at an Exchange ActiveSync account, all of my Contract & People entries were gone.

After reading your response, I decided it might be worth trying on my SP3 -- it runs Windows 10, the same version of Office, and the same OL 2016 build as my PC. Instead of following Step 2 of the Alternative Option at the link, I did it all within OL2016. First, I did File, Account Settings, Account Settings, Remove to delete the outlook.com account. Then, I did File, Account Settings, Account Settings, Email tab, and then clicked on New. I entered the required info (name, email address, app password, told it to save my credentials). OL2016 said the settings would take effect after restart, and they did!!! My Calendar & People were back -- whew!

I then did the same thing on my PC with the same results :) It's always possible I mucked up on the first attempt, but I really was very careful to follow them precisely. I have no clue as to why it didn't work that first time & why changing that one little thing made things work, but it did.

I'm very grateful to have things mostly back, but I've run into a few things that aren't quite right & am wondering the best way to fix the things that are amiss?

Perhaps most importantly, all or most of the Color Categories in my Calendar (both on my PC & SP3), which I rely on extensively, have been completely muddled. What is the most desirable way to fix this so the Color Categories correctly sync in OL 2016 on both my PC & SP3? (While it would be nice for them to be the same on Outlook.com, that doesn't really matter to me since I don't use the site and my Windows Phone Calendar app doesn't show the Color Categories.)

Second, on a few entries, I've noticed they now have a Baja, CA time zone specified when it wasn't there before -- huh? I've always been in the Pacific time zone and have never used a Baja, CA time zone. So far, I've noticed it on a couple of recurring series entries while it's not in most. I have no clue where it came from, but is there some way I can Search for all Calendar entries with a Baja, CA time zone so I can fix them?

The only other issue I'm aware of so far is that I now have one of those ugly Outlook email addresses. Since I do not use that email address to ever send email (I use the Outlook.com account only to sync my Calendar & People across devices), does it matter? I know I read instructions somewhere for a fix or work-around, but if it doesn't matter, it's a very low priority item for me -- I'm much more concerned with getting the Calendar Color Categories fixed.

Many thanks for any suggestions!
 
Perhaps most importantly, all or most of the Color Categories in my Calendar (both on my PC & SP3), which I rely on extensively, have been completely muddled. What is the most desirable way to fix this so the Color Categories correctly sync in OL 2016 on both my PC & SP3? (While it would be nice for them to be the same on Outlook.com, that doesn't really matter to me since I don't use the site and my Windows Phone Calendar app doesn't show the Color Categories.)

Second, on a few entries, I've noticed they now have a Baja, CA time zone specified when it wasn't there before -- huh? I've always been in the Pacific time zone and have never used a Baja, CA time zone. So far, I've noticed it on a couple of recurring series entries while it's not in most. I have no clue where it came from, but is there some way I can Search for all Calendar entries with a Baja, CA time zone so I can fix them?

The only other issue I'm aware of so far is that I now have one of those ugly Outlook email addresses. Since I do not use that email address to ever send email (I use the Outlook.com account only to sync my Calendar & People across devices), does it matter? I know I read instructions somewhere for a fix or work-around, but if it doesn't matter, it's a very low priority item for me -- I'm much more concerned with getting the Calendar Color Categories fixed.

Categories *should* sync between all devices that support categories... but if the category wasn't added to the master list, then you'll need to add them (and fix the colors). The Add to color categories function doesn't appear to work on mail & contacts (only Calendar), so you may need to group by categories then select one message in a group and go to Categorize, All Categories. Select the one marked 'not on master list', click New then set a color.

TimeZones: i don't think there is an easy way to check, but it might be possible using a macro or a custom field. I need to look into it.

Outlook_ugly: if you set the outlook.com alias as the Primary address in the Microsoft account settings, you'll lose the outlook_ugly address, but will need to remove the account from outlook and add it back.
 
Well, that was easy - i already have a macro published that gets the zone. It's not exposed in the fields, but I have this macro that reads the zones and creates a custom field or assigns a category.
Use VBA to get an Appointment's Time Zone

you could use an if statement to skip any in your local zone and either add the custom field or category, or just print a list to the immediate window.

Code:
With obj
If .StartTimeZone <> "Eastern Standard Time" Then
  Debug.Print .Subject, .Start, .StartTimeZone
End If
End With

FWIW, it looks like the time zone names changed in a windows version - i have some appointments with "US [zone mane] Standard Time" and some with just "[zone name] Standard Time". Filter both out using this for the If statement:
If InStr(1, .StartTimeZone, "Eastern Standard Time") = 0 Then
 
Here is another way, which may or may not be helpful -
Create a Filtered view using SQL tab and paste this (change Eastern to your zones name):
Code:
NOT "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062002-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/825E0102" LiKE '%Eastern%'

This will show meetings created in other zones even though you'll see your zone in the (open appointment's) Time Zones field. It also shows all day events and other appointments that don't have a time zone in that property (but show a zone in the time zones field) - from looking at mine, it looks like these were imported from a spreadsheet.

filter-zone.png
 
Thanks, Diane -- I think the VBA/macro stuff is beyond my skill ability right now, although I'm adding it to my "when I have some time to learn more" list. Something weird seems to have happened with my Time Zones in a disconcerting number -- since seeing the Baja changes after (those recurring appointments were set up a couple of years ago) after reconnecting OL 2016 & outlook.com, I've found some other isolated definitely new time zone changes (to parts of the world I don't even know where they are) that are completely inexplicable to me. Those new oddities were for appointment I scheduled in December & January, so they never existed in previous versions of Windows or OL.

With respect to the mess of my Calendar Color Categories after reconnecting OL 2016 & outlook.com, I'm wondering if the problem might be related to using OL 2016 on two different machines? If I make the corrections in OL 2016 on my PC, will those sync to OL 2016 on my SP3, or do I also need to make the changes/corrections in the Master List in OL 2016 on both?

Mini-rant: other than a hard drive crash, this reconnection stuff with OL 2016 has been the most disruptive & frustrating experience in my recent computing years. The reconnection initially failed on my PC in spite of meticulously following MS's instructions, the time zone snafu gives me nightmares that some important reminder will fail because it's now in the wrong time zone, the Calendar Color Category snafu is annoying & time-consuming to fix, I have that stupid outlook_ugly email address issue, and now all my emails from OL 2016 are by default from outlook_ugly, which I never every use for email. Yeah, there are fixes & work-arounds for some, but what a major PITA that's taking more time to resolve than I have! This is one of those times I curse about someone (MS) fixing something that wasn't at all broke for me (syncing OL 2016 across all my Windows devices).

End rant :)
 
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