Sync Outlook with a Smartphone or Tablet

Nowadays, that depends more on the mail account type that you are using as most phones and mail apps only allow “over the air sync”.

In some cases, you can use a local software application to sync your phone directly with your computer or from another phone.

Over the air sync

In an ever more connected world with Cloud based computing and people owning multiple mobile devices, the trend is to move away from syncing mobile devices with Outlook via local synchronization software and towards “over the air sync”.

Over the air sync basically means that your mobile device is using its data plan or WiFi capabilities to directly synchronize itself with the mail server rather than via locally installed software and a USB cable.

POP3

You can configure your POP3 account to leave a copy on the server to receive new emails on multiple devices. As a POP3 account can only download from the Inbox folder on the mail server, you won’t be actually synchronizing anything.

However, often mail providers offer both access via POP3 and IMAP. It is also quite easy to switch to Outlook.com without losing your current address but still enable syncing.

IMAP

If you are only interested in syncing your emails, configuring both Outlook and your smartphone and/or tablet with an IMAP account will do.

Syncing your Calendar and Contacts via IMAP is not possible as the protocol doesn’t support it.

Exchange ActiveSync

Various mail services also offer Exchange ActiveSync support which is capable of synchronizing E-mail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks folders.

On the Outlook side, you often require to install an additional connector to also be able to sync it with Outlook:

• Apple iCloud: iCloud
• Gmail: Google Apps Sync (requires a Business or Education subscription)

Note: You can switch to the Outlook.com email service and keep your current email address as well if you do not want to switch to an @outlook.com address.

Exchange and Outlook.com

If your mailbox is hosted on an Exchange server, there is no need to install anything.

Outlook can directly connect to Exchange mailboxes.

On your smartphone or tablet you can connect via your Mail app with Exchange ActiveSync or use the Outlook app for Android or iOS to sync your mailbox.

Sync software

Below are links for software provided by some popular mobile phone brands and mobile operating systems.

The provided software either allows for Calendar and Contact sync from Outlook, data and media sync or some other additional functionality.

In most cases, transferring data is also possible by connecting the phone to your computer via a USB cable.

The “over the air sync only” entry means that the vendor didn’t supply any software but Outlook data can be synced directly via a Mail app.

Note: If you can't find the one for your phone or tablet, contact your phone/tablet supplier or cell phone carrier instead.