Apple iCloud is an excellent service to manage our Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Reminders as it syncs with all Apple devices and some third-party services. I guess you already know how to synchronize your Hotmail account with Outlook.
Now if you want to sync your iCloud data with your Windows PC then Microsoft Office Outlook is perhaps the best way as Apple comes with an iCloud Control Panel for Windows that can sync your Internet Explorer Bookmarks (requires IE 8 or later) with iCloud and your iOS Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Notes and Tasks with Outlook (requires Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010 or later).
If you haven’t already setup iCloud on your Windows PC then you need to set up iCloud on all your devices and then download the iCloud Control Panel for Windows (requires Microsoft Windows Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7, or Windows 8).
The iCloud Control Panel makes it easy to keep your contacts, calendars, and bookmarks up to date automatically between your iOS devices and Windows PC.
It also includes Photo Stream, which wirelessly pushes photos you take with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the Pictures library on your PC — no cable syncing required.
You can also share select photos with friends and family using Shared Photo Streams, complete with notifications and comments.
How To Sync iCloud With Outlook
Open iCloud Control Panel on your Windows PC and select all the following three options
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Mail, Contacts, Calendars, & Tasks with Outlook
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Bookmarks with Internet Explorer
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Photo Stream
…and click “Apply”.
Note: When you turn on iCloud sync with Outlook at iCloud Control Panel on your desktop then Apple will sync your Contacts, Calendars, Notes, Bookmarks (IE) automatically with your iPhone (and other iOS devices) over the air so that you need not sync the same using iTunes.
That said, you can still sync all of them using iTunes if you have contacts, calendars, notes, and bookmarks on your PC that are not in iCloud (that is on your iPhone) but it may result in duplicate entries.
If you still want to sync your iCloud data manually with Outlook then open iTunes and navigate to:
iTunes > Devices > “Your iOS Device” > Info
…and select the following options:
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Sync Contacts with Outlook
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Sync Calendars with Outlook
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Sync Mail Accounts from Outlook
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Sync Notes with Outlook
iCloud Notes Update: Microsoft Outlook doesn’t sync with iCloud Notes. As you can see iCloud Control Panel doesn’t have “Notes” mentioned. But it’s syncing Contact, Calendars and Reminders pretty nicely over iCloud. And I tried to sync iCloud notes with Outlook manually via iTunes and it doesn’t work either.
So, How To Synchronize iCloud Notes With Outlook?
Well, you can still use iTunes’ manual sync for that but there are some limitations. If you want to sync your Notes between your PC (via Outlook) and iCloud then it’s not possible. However, if you want to sync your Notes with your iPhone then you can enable manual sync option at iTunes so that it will create another Notes account in your iPhone which looks like,
You can now use the “From My PC” Notes account on your iPhone so that whenever you want to sync it with PC you can do so via iTunes’ wired sync or Wi-Fi sync.
Note: If you choose the “From My PC” Notes account on your iPhone then it won’t sync with iCloud and hence those notes won’t be available on your Other iOS devices like iPad, iPod touch etc.
Hi there,
Did exactly what you are instructing above, all good with notes email but when i press on the people tab, and options of which address book i want to use when i press icloud contacts it messages ‘outlook has stopped working’ followed by looking for solution then shuts on me. Ran microsoft fix it to see if it gave me a solution and it attempted to sync on xp mode which works fine, pictures details everything. dont know what that means. could it have to do with the 2010 outlook previously installed? something with imap? address book location? Really dont have a clue. any ideas what i could try? should i try to uninstall icloud sync app and reinstall it?
thank you.
Yeah, I had the same problem but the contacts should appear if you have categorized the iCloud contacts. It was working fine when I click on Contact’s groups within Outlook. And I read somewhere that iCloud 2.0 is not compatible with Outlook 2013 yet and Apple is still investigating the issue. They need to fix it by releasing an update for iCloud for Windows. And DON’T uninstall iCloud for Windows as it MAY remove sync with Outlook 2013 as a whole. It happened to me and now iCloud is NOT syncing with Outlook 2013. I reinstalled the iCloud app ‘coz of Notes issue. Now the notes are syncing via iTunes but everything else stopped.
Check out http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4445.
Thanks!
Mahesh:
Another great post. iClouds are definitely the future, despite the few concerns it really helps the office just get things done.
I also switched to Outlook and used your online software tutorials and it worked like a charm.
Since downloading and installing iCloud Control Panel for Windows 8, I have one problem: I cannot edit events in Outlook 2013 that were created prior to my sync.
Does anyone have this problem, and/or a solution to it?
You mean editing calendar items or reminders from within Outlook 2013?
I have just tried the same… I created a calendar item from Outlook and it was synched with iCloud. And then I edited from iCloud and from Outlook and it was syncing as usual.
You can click on “Refresh” on the iCloud menu in Outlook. And for editing you need to double click the item in Calendar.
Thanks!