Droid X: The Missing Manual

Synchronizing Your Calendar with Outlook

When you set up your Droid X calendar, you either hooked it to an existing Google Calendar or you had to create a new one. But not everyone in the world uses Google Calendar. Plenty of people use other calendars—notably Outlook.

There’s no direct way to synchronize your Droid X Calendar with Outlook, so you may think you have to manually keep two sets of calendars in sync, by adding and deleting appointments in both places.

Luckily, there’s a workaround. It’s a bit kludgy, but it works. First, synchronize Outlook with Google Calendar on your PC. That way, Google Calendar and Outlook will stay in sync. Then, sync your Droid X with Google Calendar. So you’re essentially using Google Calendar as a go-between—it shuttles information between Outlook and your Droid X.

One way to do this calendar two-step is to download the free Google Calendar Sync (www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955) and use that to synchronize.

An even better bet, if you’re willing to pay a little bit of money, is Companion-Link for Google (www.companionlink.com). Not only does it sync your calendar, but it also syncs your Outlook contacts with your Gmail contacts, which means you can keep your contacts in sync between your Droid X and Outlook. You can try it for free for 14 days. If you decide it’s worth paying for, it’ll cost you $39.95.

Tip

Neither of these pieces of software work for syncing Google Calendar with Macs and iCal. However, Google has posted ...