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My happiness at finally connecting my local Outlook 2007 to my 2 agent's websites was shortlived.  It is no longer working.  I added a contact via Outlook, but it will not sync with the site; I receive a SharePoint error.

The online "project manager" has an issue also.  I will post in another thread.

Hi Assistant 2,

When you said you added a contact via Outlook, did you add the contact to [Contacts in admin@site1.com] or to [Contact Manager - Business Contacts]?  The reason I asked is because they are two entirely different address books.  One (Contacts in admin@site1.com) works via Outlook Connector and will allow for complete synchronization.  The other (Contact Manager - Business Contacts) works via Sharepoint, you can only retrieve and edit contact info in Outlook but cannot add (could be a bug).  For Contacts Manager, I have found that you can only add via the Office Live web interface.

Hope this helps,
Royster
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Hello Royster

Thank you for taking the time to reply.  As of last Thursday, with your help, I had linked 'business contacts' under 'contact manager' and calendars for both site1 and site2 with Outlook 2007 on my local pc.  At that time, I could add or edit a contact using Outlook on my local pc and it would appear in the 'business contacts' file on the Outlook Live site as well as in the Outlook 2007 on my bosses' pc (linked also to the same OL acount).  It worked fine and we were very pleased. 

Today, it does not work. I am receiving a SharePoint error (see examples below) and neither site is synchronizing data, only email.  Although it says that contacts were "successfully refreshed", changes are NOT appearing in OL.

-----------------------
Outlook Connector Version 12.0.4518.1068

Account: support@annreale.com

Signed in successfully at 3/31/2008 10:36:32 AM                                                                        

Mail: Last successfully refreshed at 11:45 AM.                                                                         
Calendar: Error at 10:36 AM.                                                                                           
Contacts: Last successfully refreshed at 11:45 AM.                                                                     

Errors :

Time: 3/31/2008 10:36:34 AM
Error in Calendar
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.

------------------------------
Outlook Connector Version 12.0.4518.1068

Account: support@beckiboor.com

Signed in successfully at 3/31/2008 10:36:32 AM                                                                        

Mail: Last successfully refreshed at 11:45 AM.                                                                         
Calendar: Error at 10:36 AM.                                                                                           
Contacts: Last successfully refreshed at 11:45 AM.                                                                     

Errors :

Time: 3/31/2008 10:36:34 AM
Error in Calendar
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.

Here is the error I receive when trying to sync contacts:

Task 'SharePoint' reported error (0x80004005) : 'An error occurred either in Outlook or SharePoint. Contact the SharePoint site administrator.'

Hi Assistant 2,

The errors you got for the Outlook Connector saying that calendar did not sync are normal (we all get that because the calendar that they are referring to is the Windows Live Calendar, not the one you use in Office Live).  Again, when the Outlook Connector states that it had sucessfully synced with Contacts, it is correct - but it is not the same contact list as I think you might be thinking.  As I mentioned in an earlier message, the one referred to in the Outlook Connector is the "Personal Contacts" that you can access via Office Live Mail (when you access your emails via mail.live.com on the web, there is a contacts list that you can access - this is what is being referred to in Outlook Connector).  The contact list that you want to update is the Business Contacts (the workspace in Office Live).  However, the error you got for Sharepoint is not normal if you were able to synchronize with Business Contacts before.  I am guessing it might have something to do with your account today since you said you experienced problems with creating new tasks in project manager.  I am, however, surprised to hear that you could add new contacts via Outlook to  Business Contacts as I have never been able to do that (only edit and retrieval was possible).

One thing you can try is to remove all the Business Contacts links in Other Contacts in Outlook.  Close Outlook.  Then go to Office Live again and try to do a "synchronize with Outlook" for Business Contacts in both sites.

Hope this helps,
Royster
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And, as I mentioned in another thread, I still cannot add task to project manager in Becki’s site.  It appears to function (all the customized dropdown lists are filled), but it does not save the task.

I hope I am making myself clear.  And again, thanks for trying to help.

The saga continues….One of the other factors involved is location/LAN connection.  At home I am on a WPA secured LAN (Ethernet & wireless) which connects to the internet via a cable company (zoominternet.net).  At work, the office is an entirely unsecured wireless network (they have their reasons).  I am not sure of the ISP.  Today, my Outlook/OLSB issue was the same in both locations.

At home this evening, we installed a Network USB HUB and reconfigured several peripherals.  For reasons too lengthy and irrelevant to explain, my laptop PC was reset to a restore point from early yesterday.  Guess what?  The synchronization between my Outlook and the business contacts at beckiboor.com works again!  So the mystery for me is what changed?  I have not a clue.  But, I’m setting another restore point now.

Thanks for all of you who are following along, patiently.

Hi Assistant 2,

That really does seems strange!  However, I'm glad that things are working again (sort of).  Keep us posted on whether this continues to work or not.

Royster
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Well just to update you on how the system is working, or not....  Today I needed to add contacts to the Business Contacts on BeckiBoor.com.  I was successful in adding 8 via Outlook 2007 on my local PC.  They synchronized with the OL site and successfully downloaded to my bosses Outlook 2007 (Becki's local pc).  Two more contacts needed added that I knew existed in another contact folder on her machine (Outlook Business Contact Manager).  I went to her PC, BCM, highlighted the contact and chose Edit, Copy to Folder, and selected the Sharepoint list 'Becki's OL Contacts'.  It copied on her local machine to the OL Contacts folder and successfully transferred the contacts to the OL Business Contacts.

Happy? NOT!  When I went back to my local machine and looked at my local Outlook folder for Becki's contacts, the contacts are not there.  I get the following error:

Task 'SharePoint' reported error (0x80004005) : 'An error occurred either in Outlook or SharePoint. Contact the SharePoint site administrator.'

All of this happened within a 15 minute period.  Four hours later I still cannot sync with the contacts on Becki's site.  Nothing on my side changed! This was just walking from PC to PC in the office.

This is driving me NUTS!

Hi Assistant 2,

That must be very frustrating.  Three things we can check for:

1. Are you sure those contacts were definitely copied to the OLD Business Contacts?  That you actually logged into OL via the web and checked?
2. Did you try closing your Outlook completely, reopening it and then do a resync with OL?
3. When you added the 8 contacts on your local PC, did you do that manually or copied from Outlook Business Contact Manager like you did with the 2 on Becki's PC?  Have you tried creating entries on Becki's PC manually (not copied from anywhere else), update them successfully into OL and were able to download/sync those entries on your own local PC?

Royster
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Hello again Royster

First let me thank you for your continuing help and support.  A complete side issue, but the email I received has your items bulleted 1, 2 & 3.  The post to the forum lost that formatting…not really a bit deal, but your email is easier to follow than the post.

Anyway, I’m not clear about your first (1) point.  There are too many different files named ‘Business Contacts’.  But to answer the question, yes, the business contacts in Becki’s OL space did receive the 8 contacts I manually input through my local Outlook 2007 and did again synchronize with her local PC’s Outlook 2007.  So, these 8 new contacts exist in all three places, my Outlook 2007 contacts file, the web space’s ‘Business Contacts’ at beckiboorcom.officelive.com and Becki’s local Outlook 2007 contacts.

(2) Yes I repeatedly tried closing and reopening Outlook and resyncing.  I even went to the website and chose the ‘Connect with Outlook 2007’ again.  No good.

(3) I added the 8 manually; I did not copy them from Outlook BCM.  Actually I can’t imagine how this would make a difference as it is the loss of contact/synchronization that is the issue.

BTW, it is still not connecting (getting the SharePoint error still) 36 hours later.

Sandra

Hi Sandra,

Suggestion: Try deleting those 2 contacts you added to Becki's OL Contacts, making sure that they are deleted on both Becki's machine and her OL Contacts Manager.  Do a resync and see if the Sharepoint error still pops up.  My reasoning is that there is something odd with copying entries from Outlook BCM into OL Contacts directly.

Also, I am assuming that you are using the correct administrator's account to access OL on all the machines.

Royster
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I am certain that has nothing to do with the current problem because that is precisely how I populated the original ‘Business Contacts’ on the website in the first place. 

We have been using the ‘Business Contact Manager’ add-in to manage Accounts and Contacts so that is where all of our customer data is stored. (I understand that this is really a database file and not the same format as Outlook Contacts) 

As I mentioned before, there are about 1200-1500 contacts in the file.  After I created the site (beckiboorcom.officelive.com), using Becki’s PC (the one with the data file in BCM), I went to Contact Manager, selected Connect to Outlook, and a blank contact file was created in her Outlook under ‘Other Contacts’.  I named this file ‘Office Live Contacts’ so that it would be clear that this was the data synchronized with the website and to differentiate it from ‘My Contacts’. 

Then, I went to ‘Business Contacts in Business Contact Manager’, did a Select All, Edit, Copy to Folder and selected ‘Office Live Contacts’ under ‘SharePoint Lists’.  It gave me the little pop-up warning about some data being lost in translation, and I said okay.  Shazam!  It took about 10 minutes, but everything loaded to ‘Business Contacts’ in Contact Manager on the website.

As an experiment, I went to my other agent’s PC and tried copying a contact from BCM to the OL Contacts folder.  Again I received a SharePoint error.  So, I went to her site (AnnRealecom.officelive.com) and reconnected Business Contacts to Outlook AGAIN.  Well, that fixed it.  Becki’s machine is not here, so I’ll have to try it later. 

I’ll keep you posted.

Hi Sandra,

I've been following your saga here with some horror because this story of contacts/calendar sync is much more confusing that we had hoped. You've got multiple contacts stores, multiple calendars, and multiple sync technologies all working at the same time.  You seem to have hit the perfect storm.

One question I'm not sure I have gleaned from your posts so far... you are using multiple user accounts (aka Live IDs), right?  So, you sign into Office Live Small Business with emailaddress1, click sync to Outlook from your contacts, fill in your user name and password again and then sync your contacts to Outlook.  Then sign out of Office Live, and do the whole thing over again with emailaddress2?  Everything seemed to work fine, but then later they stop syncing?

This may not be the cause, but when you first sync your contacts into Outlook and you are prompted for your user name and password, did you click the checkbox to remember your account credentials?  If you did, this may be storing your credentials into Office/Windows.  If that happens, Outlook may be remembering only one or the other of the two sets of credentials that you entered.

If you are still stumped on this, you might try this:

• Go to Outlook... delete the sync'd contact store from both Office Live accounts you are using
• Close Outlook and all of your browser windows

• On your machine, navigate to the Control Panel, open User Accounts.

• Click the Advanced tab, and then click Manage Passwords. 

• In the list, select any item with (Passport) or (Live ID) in its title, click Remove, and then click OK.

Note: if you're on a Windows 2003 Server machine, you can do this by navigating to Control Panel --> Stored User Names and Passwords.

Now, start over again, but when you sync your contacts, make sure NOT to check the checkbox that says 'remember' these credentials when Outlook prompts you for your user name and password. 

We have a similar issue when using multiple sets of credentials with SharePoint Designer, another Office application that works with Office Live.  Here's a discussion about that on our developer forum.

Hope this helps.

Chris

Thank you Chris for your reply.  Sorry I've been away from the forum for about a week.  First my laptop totally crashed (would not boot, period) and required a complete new install.  Then, we had a family medical emergency.

But I'm back and I have to agree that the Passport/LiveID is at the root of the problem. Since the new install, my synchronization problems have not reoccured!  Here's how I have it set up:

OL Site 1:
beckiboorcom.officelive.com
2 users:
bboor@prudentialpreferred.com (owner)
support@beckiboor.com (adminstrator)

OL Site 2:
annrealecom.officelive.com
3 useres:
areale@prudentialpreferredrealty.com (owner)
support@annreale.com (administrator)
AND support@beckiboor.com (administrator)

I only need to log in as 'support@beckiboor.com' and a dialog box appears (http://home.officelive.com/Settings/Pages/choosesubscription.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0) stating that I have access to more than one domain account and lets me choose via dropdown box (I do not have either set as default).  Once I'm in one of the sites, say on the 'document manager' page, a dropdown box remains in the upper right corner allowing me to switch back and forth between the two without logging out and back in.  Very handy!

On my recently refreshed machine, under 'stored user names and passwords' in control panel/user accounts, my 'Passport.Net\*' account is 'support@beckiboor.com'.  Royster had hit upon this issue in the thread 'SharePoint Error - Please Help!' back in March and it helped, but never completely solved the problems.  I have to add, that for several years I have had a hotmail account for personal use, and I think that ID was also contributing to the problem.  Now that 'support@beckiboor' is my only 'Passport.Net\*' account, it seems better. I have not had sharepoint errors this week.

I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.