With the introduction of Outlook 2011 for Mac, many Mac users are asking the burning question around how to sync Outlook 2011 for Mac with the native Mac Address Book.

This is especially relevant as many users now sync their mobile phone contacts (Blackberry, Android, iPhone) with the native Address Book contacts manager. For example, RIM’s Desktop Manager for Mac syncs with iCal and the Address Book and relies on Sync Services to sync with Outlook 2011 contacts. If you will now be managing your contacts inside Outlook, you will need a way to sync these contacts back to the native Address Book.

This is also true if you are using Scrubly to clean up your Address Book contacts.  You will need to turn on Sync Services inside Outlook to sync your newly cleaned up contacts from Address Book to Outlook Contacts. Follow the steps below.

Before we begin, you should note that Outlook 2011 will sync contacts from Address Book, and you can sync e-mail accounts with Mail. However, Outlook 2011 won’t sync events or tasks from iCal (in part because Microsoft’s primary design goal with Outlook was to make it work with Exchange). Outlook 2011 also does not support CalDAV.

Setting up Sync Services for Mac:

1. Before turning on Sync Services inside Outlook 2011, be sure to turn off all other 3rd party sync services you may be running in the background. Once Outlook 2011 has completed its initial sync with Address Book, you may turn these services back on again.
2. As a precaution, make a backup of your Address Book contacts. File > Export > Address Book Archive. It’s important to make a backup of your data after you clean it up and before you sync. This way if there are problems you can erase and import the clean backup file.
3. In Outlook 2011, open Outlook Preferences by clicking Outlook > Preferences
4. Click Sync Services and select Turn on Sync Services for Contacts. Outlook 2011 does not yet support sync for iCal.
5. Select the accounts you would like to sync, (i.e. Address Book or MobileMe). Note that Outlook 2011 does not support MobileMe calendar or tasks sync at this time.

Troubleshooting Sync Services for Mac:

The above steps are really quite easy, however, many users have complained that syncing does not occur after following these steps. Here’s a few troubleshooting tips you can follow in the event this happens to you. Important: Be sure to back up your Address Book and Outlook Contacts before testing any of these Troubleshooting steps.

Turn on iSync – Skip this step if you are running Mac OS Lion 10.7 or later as iSync is no longer supported in current Mac OS versions

1. Launch iSync, located in the Applications > Utilities folder
2. Open preferences window in iSync Application Menu
3. Check “Enable syncing on this computer”. Sometimes this option seems to be disabled or you can’t check or uncheck this option after starting iSync. In this case, wait for iSync to complete the sync process and then the option will be available again.
4. Reset Sync History. Important: If you are using the new MobileMe Calendar, resetting sync data is not an appropriate troubleshooting step to solve calendar sync issues. Instead, please see Troubleshooting new MobileMe Calendar issues. If you’re not sure how to tell if you’re using the old or new MobileMe Calendar, see this article.

Delete Plist Files

1. Force quit all applications currently running.
2. Go > Home > Library > Preferences
3. Search for all files containing “com.microsoft.outlook.XXXXX.plist” drag these files to the Trash
4. Search for the file “com.microsoft.SyncServicesAgent.plist” and drag this file to the Trash
5. Start Outlook
6. Tools > Sync Services and confirm that “Turn on Sync Services for Contacts” is checked on

Close and Re-Start Sync Services Agent

1. Force Quit Outlook
2. Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor
3. Look for the Sync Services Agent under Process Name
4. Highlight this process and click Quit in the upper left
5. Close Activity Monitor
6. Re-Start Outlook

Additional Troubleshooting Tips for Office

http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/troubleshoot/

Additional detailed steps for issues syncing Contacts and Contact Groups in Address Book

1. Open Address Book.
2. Back up your contacts by choosing Export from the File menu and selecting Address Book Archive. Specify an export location and then click Save. The resulting archive file will contain a backup of all of your contacts information that you can restore later into Address Book (if necessary) by double-clicking it in the Finder.
3. Remove any duplicate or unnecessary blank entries by using Scrubly to delete duplicate contacts inside Mac Address Book.
4. From the Address Book menu, choose Preferences and click the vCard tab. Ensure the 3.0 option is selected for vCard Format and that both the “Export notes in vCards” and “Export photos in vCards” options are selected.
5. Create a new folder on the desktop. Select all of the contacts in the Name category in Address Book by choosing one of them and then choosing Select All from the Edit menu. Next, drag all these contacts into the new folder on the desktop by clicking and dragging one of the highlighted names; this will result in one vCard generated with all your contacts.
6. Open iSync, then choose iSync > Preference and deselect the option to “Enable Syncing on this computer.” Skip this step if you are running Mac OS Lion 10.7 or later as iSync is no longer supported in current versions of Mac OS.
7. Delete all of the contacts and groups in Address Book. Quit Address Book.
8. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, open the Library folder, and then open the Application Support folder.
9. Locate the “Address Book” folder and move it to the Trash.
10. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, then open the Library folder.
11. Open the Preferences folder, in the Library folder.
12. Move the following files to the Trash: com.apple.AddressBook.plist and com.apple.AddressBook.abd
13. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, then open the Library folder.
14. Drag the files located inside the “Caches” folder to the Trash (do not move the “Caches” folder itself, only its contents).
15. Choose Go To Folder from the Finder’s Go menu, then go to this location:
    /Library/Caches
16. Drag the files located inside the “Caches” folder to the Trash (do not move the “Caches” folder itself, only its contents).
17. Log out of your user account (choose Log Out from the Apple menu).
18. Log in to your user account.
19. Open iSync and then choose iSync > Preferences > Advanced > Reset Sync History. Then, select the option to “Enable Syncing on this Computer.” Skip this step if you are running Mac OS Lion 10.7 or later as iSync is no longer supported in current versions of Mac OS.
20. Open Address Book. Drag the vCard from the folder you created on your desktop to the Address Book window to re-import them. To re-create contact groups, create the groups first in Address Book and then drag the appropriate vCards to each group.
21. Attempt to sync normally using iTunes for your iPhone, iPod, and iPod touch, or use iSync for other mobile devices.
22. If the contacts still do not sync, try starting your computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding down the Shift key after hearing the chime on startup. It may take several minutes to start your computer in Safe Mode. After starting in Safe Mode, restart your computer and then attempt to sync normally.
23. If your contacts don’t sync, consider contacting AppleCare for support, or see this article for more information about removing the Sync Services folder. However, removing this folder is strongly discouraged, and should only be performed when the syncing Mac has been started in Safe Mode.
24. Once your contacts and groups sync correctly, create a new backup of your contacts, using the procedure outlined in step 1. This will preserve any of the changes you made that fixed your sync issue.

Your online address book shouldn’t be a dumping ground of everyone that you’ve ever met. Sure, you never know when you’re going to need to contact that person you met three years ago in the mall, you know, the one that worked for that company that you keep trying to sell to, or buy from, or work for. But will that person remember you if you haven’t contacted them since? If you feel that the person you just met might be worth keeping in touch with in the future, go ahead and enter all of their contact information into your address book as soon as possible after meeting. And, as a best practice, send them a short email or connect through Facebook or follow on Twitter to let them know that you appreciated connecting with them and look forward to staying in touch.  This way, the likelihood of them remembering you when you do reach out to them a year from now will go up exponentially.

Alternatively, if you really don’t think you have any interest in keeping in touch and if you wouldn’t take the time to write that contact info down in your physical, bound-paper address book, they definitely shouldn’t be in your online one.

When you go to add your contacts to an online service like Facebook, it helps if they’re organized and up-to-date. That person whom you met in the mall probably won’t “friend you” if they have no clue who you are, and the only people who’ll agree to your request are those you contact often, so you’d be better off cleaning out the list on a regular basis. But how to begin?

For starters, think of categories. Organizing your contacts is easy, since many web-based emails have sections for nicknames or category listings. The easiest groupings are those that you’ll remember: close friends and family. After that, you can group them according to contact type: type of business (media, accounting) or the name of the company that they work for.

As you go and add them to the categories, delete those that you either haven’t heard from or haven’t contacted in two years. Why two years? If you haven’t had to get a hold of them in that amount of time, then you never will.

The only exception here is family. Be sure to save them, since you never know when you might have to send that cute kitten forward to your second-cousin Martha.

OK, here’s where it all comes together – thanks to all of you.

After listening to all of your thoughtful feedback and smart ideas around
building an entirely new address book cleanup tool plus several months of
heads down focused development, today we’re ready to pull back the
curtain and give you a peek at what we’ve built.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on Scrubly!

About 90 days ago, we sent out an email and video asking for our SyncAcross beta testers to provide candid feedback on the idea of BluCapp creating a standalone address book cleanup tool.

The response rate was incredible!  Thank you to the huge number of insiders that responded.

Below is a quick video that releases the results of the survey with some pretty surprising details.  It turns out that you and our insider group of SyncAcross beta users and friends are serious connectors! In the video I share the details on the type of platforms where the group manages contacts and a statistic on the iPhone that blew me away!

Today, we are making Scrubly available for invite-only beta. After countless hours of brainstorming, designing, colorizing, architecting, coding and testing, we went live today and welcome our new private beta users.

Scrubly is the world’s first cloud-based address book cleanup tool. The service automatically removes duplicates and merges matching contacts inside Outlook, Mac, Gmail and Google Apps address books.

Thanks to everyone who helped us get to this point (especially our SyncAcross beta users) and we hope you will join us as we work to make your experience with cleaning up your address book using Scrubly an amazing one.

We will be releasing more beta invitations in the coming week, so look for an announcement here on the blog soon.

Welcome to the next generation of address book cleanup tools where all of your information is crisp, clean and duplicate free!