How are you handling Outlook.com category issue and syncing

[astro46]

I have a win7 with Outlook 2013, to sync with Nokia 925 Windows 8.1 phone. Want to sync contacts and calendar.

Outlook.com doesn't accept Outlook categories, and assigning categories on the computer if syncing through Outlook.com is unstable. Also email groups don't transfer. It never occurred to me that a Windows phone would have such issues with a Windows program. Naive.

How are others dealing with the sync issue? Use Outlook.com only for calendar and some other program for contacts? Give up categories? Reassign all contacts on Outlook.com to "groups" and only assign contacts to groups while on Outlook.com site? Other ?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

My recommendation is to use groups on outlook.com - they sync to outlook as categories. The only drawback is that they can't be managed in outlook.

 

[astro46]

Thanks Diane. Categories is the primary drawback for me in using outlook.com. That contacts are stripped of categories, they can't be reliably assigned in outlook (even though group assignments show up in Outlook contacts looking like categories), and that at Outlook.com and on Windows phone contacts don't indicate which groups they are in. To look at a group, one has to remember the name of group and search for it like a contact. The is no category/group view. Reminds me of Outlook Journal, which MS, version by version, made more difficult to use, until they eventually removed it altogether.

Anyone else want to offer responses to dealing with the sync issue?