That Syncing feeling: MobileMe and Entourage

I got a question from my friend Ellie on how to sync Entourage, Microsoft's email/contacts/calendar application for Mac users, with her iPhone, using Apple's MobileMe sync service:

"MobileMe mystifies me. It managed to screw up the calendar on my laptop when I tried to sync it to my iPhone. MobileMe needs to consolidate its interface. It's all over the place. If that wasn't bad enough, after my upgrade to Snow Leopard and the last iPhone software upgrade, I can no longer sync my Entourage calendar to my phone with the wire at all. So for a calendar on my iphone, I've got bupkiss. Yuk!"

Nobody with an iPhone should have to put with with bupkiss on their calendar, even if they're using a Microsoft calendar on their Apple computer. So I thought I'd look into this.

Online sources, including Apple and Microsoft, tell you this should work. And with Mac stuff, you can generally believe it. It, as they say, just works. So I downloaded a free trial copy of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, set up Entourage, and tried to sync. "Just" four hours later, I got results.

So what I can tell you, Ellie, is you don't have to put up with this. It should work. I got it to work. Not perfect, but better than 'sort of.' And I got it to sync calendar stuff in 'real time' over the Internet without having to plug my iPhone into my Mac and iTunes.

So you can fix this. But the deal is, you will have to do this on your own, or work with a geek friend. Your local Mac Genius does not support Entourage, I'm told. You may have some luck with Apple's phone troubleshooting, based on the information on this Apple support page.

If you're inclined to try this at home, here are some ideas:

• Make sure your Apple, iPhone and Microsoft software is all up to date. Duh.
• Make sure your MobileMe account is set up.
• Make sure your Entourage calendar is set up to sync to MobileMe. MAKE SURE YOU PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THE PROMPT ABOUT REPLACING YOUR DATA SO THAT YOU DON'T WIPE EVERYTHING OUT! [Ellie, this may be the step that got screwed up when you upgraded to Snow Leopard.]
• Make sure your iPhone is set up to sync to MobileMe.
• Try publishing your Entourage calendar to MobileMe. This step shouldn't be needed, but for some reason it made a difference.
• If everything's hooked up right, your iPhone calendar App should have a calendar named 'Entourage' in it.
• You can also get help from Microsoft, or at least find some company for your misery. They have a forum thread called 'iCal sync does not work in Entourage 2008.' Even though it does work. Better than sort of.
• After you've gone through the exercise and proved that it works, dump the Microsoft stuff and switch to Apple's iCal … much nicer program, and it syncs more reliably to your phone.
• I kid. I'm a kidder.

Can I print from my iPhone?

My sister-in-law emailed me with this question today. She's a new iPhone user with a PC. I held back from asking, "why would you want to do that?" because, after all, people do things their own way.

She told me anyway: "I need to print out my iCal. I use it as a diary to record my mileage for tax deductions." See what I mean? Everybody has their own way of getting stuff done. We emailed back and forth a couple of times. She'd heard about MileBug, which is what I use for this purpose. It's a cute little program that makes it easy to make a habit of dialing in your mileage every time you get in the car for business, charity, doctor, whatever. You download the log to your Mac or PC at tax time.

But Deb had been doing it her way for a while, and wasn't ready to change to a new app. The problem is, with an iPhone and a PC, you can't really print your calendar. You can't beam or zap your iCal file to a nearby printer and get anything out of it. Of course, with a Mac, you just make sure you've synced up your calendar through MobileMe, and print it out from your Mac. But PCs don't have MobilMe or iCal.

The best solution I found, if you really want to do this, is to sync your iPhone calendar and other apps with Google Calendar using Google Sync, then print your Google Calendar. It actually doesn't look that hard, especially if you're into Google Apps already. I haven't tried it myself, but it all looks pretty straightforward.

There ARE however, some cool apps for printing photos and other documents. The best one out right now is HP iPrint, which of course is designed to work with HP printers, like this hot new PhotoSmart all-in-one. (It looks like printers have come a long way since I bought my last PhotoSmart (I believe the Smothers Brothers were still on CBS at the time). I can't wait for one of our four printers to blow up so I can buy a new one.) HP iPrint is free from the Apps store, installs without a hassle, finds a printer, and lets you print photos, as they say, seamlessly. I downloaded it and loved it.

There are a bazillion other apps in the App store (search "print") for printing photos to any printer, in case you don't have an HP (I have at least two. They breed like animals.)

If you want to print documents from your iPhone, I would place my bet on a suite of apps from a company called EuroSmartz. Four different apps print everything from photos to labels, spreadsheets, notes and other docs ... but alas, not iCal. They are priced from $2.99 up.

Bottom line, Deb decided to give MileBug a try. After all, why print something unless you absolutely have to?

As Deb's iPhone would say, "Good call."