In a previous post, I referred to an inelegant solution we devised to get my BlackBerry 9800 to sync with my Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Since that post was mostly to complain about Research in Motion (RIM) and how poorly the BlackBerry Desktop Manager (BDM) worked, I thought about all the individuals who posted complaints on the RIM (lack of) support site and how they must be suffering. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to devote one post to the solution we found to get the BlackBerry device to sync with Outlook.
A little background: I need to use the BDM because I don’t run Microsoft Exchange Server and therefore must rely on BDM to sync my contacts and calendar with Outlook. While I was able — after a week’s worth of frustration — to get the address books to sync, I could not get the calendars to sync. I rely on my BlackBerry calendar when I’m re not in the office in front of your Outlook, so I have a have a mobile calendar that’s up to date.
The solution is to use the Google Calendar running on your PC and Google Calendar running on your BlackBerry. Again, it’s not an elegant solution, but it does work.
Quite simply, after you download and install the Google Calendar app on your PC, you have it sync your Outlook Calendar to your Google gmail Calendar. Depending on how many entries you have (I have a lot), it may take several minutes. Calendar gives you the option of how often you want the calendars to sync; I chose once an hour.
Then, on your BlackBerry, you launch the browser, direct it to m.google.com and find the app for your device. Download and install it and then set it up. It’s that simply. Now I have 3 calendars in sync: Outlook, Google, and my BlackBerry.