Synchronization Settings (pro mode only)

Use the Synchronization Settings (from the Settings menu) to establish synchronized information exchange between TimeTo™ and Microsoft Outlook ... as well as Google Calendar, Android, and other Outlook-syncable devices and applications.


For Microsoft Outlook Users

You can choose to:

  1. send additions, changes and deletions in TimeTo™ to Microsoft Outlook 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, or 2016
  2. send additions, changes and deletions in Outlook's Calendar and Tasks to TimeTo™,
  3. or both.

Outlook Exchange user? Our Outlook synchronization works for Exchange users. However, unfortunately, changes made to your Outlook items that originate from other Exchange users will unfortunately often result in a new item being created in TimeTo rather than changing the existing corresponding item in TimeTo.


Automatically Send Changes In TimeTo™ To Outlook:
Non-recurring items added, changed, or deleted in TimeTo™ schedules will be reflected in Outlook's Calendar (if item has a Set Start Time) or Tasks (if item doesn't have a Set Start Time) moments later (or the next time you launch Outlook).

If you have more than one Outlook data file (these are files with .pst extensions), you can have TimeTo™ send items to more than one of them: TimeTo™ will send events to each .pst listed in the Data File Management window (from Outlook's File menu) that has Tasks and/or Appointments.

Notes: If the TimeTo™ item has a Note attached, the contents of the Note (or Shared Note) appears in the "body" of the Outlook item. If you make changes to a shared Note in TimeTo™, the change is reflected in the body of all items in the corresponding series in Outlook.

If you make a change to an existing item in TimeTo™ and that item did not yet exist in Outlook, the item gets automatically created in Outlook.

The resulting item in Outlook will have its Show Time As field set to "Busy".

Tip: you may find it annoying that an item created in TimeTo with an alarm that results in an item in Outlook with its own Reminder yields two alarms sounding on the same computer for a given event. It's valuable to have both: for instance you may be then syncing Outlook to your smartphone (upon which you'll also want that reminder to chime). However if the extra alarm chiming in Outlook annoys you, do this: in Microsoft Outlook, turn off reminders (while allowing the Outlook items to retain their reminder settings) by choosing Tools > Options > Other > Advanced Options > Reminder Options > then uncheck the Display The Reminder checkbox.

Troubleshooting Tip: if you are amongst the minority of users who are having trouble getting TimeTo™ to send appointments to Outlook due to how your Outlook is configured, here is an alternative approach:

  1. Check the Automatically Send Changes In Outlook To TimeTo checkbox in Synchronization Settings.
  2. Choose the Edit Tools Menu command from TimeTo's Tools menu, and add something like this to the list:
    &OutlookAppt C:\Progra~1\Microsoft Office\Office11\outlook.exe /c ipm.appointment
    (you will have to change the path to match where you outlook.exe is located).
  3. When you need to add an appointment, choose this command from TimeTo's Tools menu, which will put you in Outlook starting a new appointment. Then, once you save the appointment in Outlook, the corresponding appointment will automatically be created in TimeTo for you.


Automatically Send Changes In Outlook To TimeTo™:
While the Automatically Send Changes in Outlook To TimeTo checkbox is checked, appointments and tasks that you add to Outlook on this computer (or other programs that add to any and all Outlook .pst files that have Calendars and Tasks and are not archive .pst files) will automatically appear moments later in the schedule you have open in TimeTo™. (Immediately after you check this checkbox, TimeTo™ launches the TimeTo Outlook Plug-in, and also adds the TimeTo Outlook Plug-in to your Startup Group, as TimeTo™ must be running while Outlook is running in order for this feature to work, and part of what the plug-in does is to take responsibility for launching TimeTo™ if you make a change in Outlook when TimeTo™ is not yet running. Unchecking this checkbox will also remove the plug-in from your Startup Group.) Although it is not mandatory, you will likely find this arrangement more responsive if you agree to have TimeTo™ launched every time you start Windows, by checking the Start TimeTo When I Start Windows checkbox (in Other Settings).

How do Notes work? If the Outlook item has content in its "body", the resulting TimeTo™ item get a Note and that Note will contain what was in the body of the Outlook item. If the Outlook item is a recurring item, this results in a series of items in TimeTo™ with a shared Note. If you make changes in Outlook to the body of one of the items in the series, the shared Note is changed in TimeTo™. (Because TimeTo's Notes don't allow formatting such as bold and italic, any formatting in the Outlook body gets removed.)

To suppress synchronization of particular items: You can optionally include the word "notimeto" anywhere in the Subject of an Outlook appointment or task to suppress it (or changes to it) from being transferred to TimeTo™.


Labels and Categories:
If you give an item in TimeTo™ a Label, that Label will appear in the corresponding Outlook item in its Categories field. However, the Categories designated in Outlook are not transferred to TimeTo™ (this is because Outlook allows more than one entry in the Categories field, while TimeTo™ items can only have one Label and the Label name must be one of those set in TimeTo's Labels Settings).

Aside from live synchronization of changes, you may wish to manually move your historical information to or from Outlook, perhaps just once during your first setup. To do so, use the Import Items and Export To Outlook commands on TimeTo's File menu. (Unfortunately, Outlook's Import and Export feature treats recurring items as a series of individual items, thus you may prefer to set those up using live synchronization instead.) Tip: If you'd like to force an existing item (an item that was created when Synchronization had not yet been enabled) to be synchronized, then edit (or delete then undelete) the item.

Troubleshooting:

If, when synchronizing an item to TimeTo™, Outlook presents an unexpected window presenting this very confusing message "A program is trying to access e-mail addresses you have stored in Outlook. Do you want to allow this?", please choose Yes. This message is due to a bug in an overzealous security provision added in recent Outlook service packs for Outlook 2002 and 2003 (which is concerned with how it is possible to attach contacts with e-mail addresses to your Outlook appointments and tasks). We assure you that TimeTo™ is not accessing your Outlook e-mail or e-mail addresses in any way. However, you can eliminate such messages appearing by installing the free Advanced Security For Outlook add-in for Outlook (courtesy of MAPILab Ltd.) that you can download from http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/security and then install it ... then, the next time TimeTo™ tries to synchronize with Outlook, a new dialog box titled Advanced Security For Outlook will appear in Outlook where you should click Allow Access to timetooutlook.exe, and also check the "Always perform this action for this file" checkbox: thereafter the confusing messages should never appear again. Note that, once you install that product, it will be doing a fine job of detecting other processes it may think are suspicious, and so you may have to agree to Allow Access to those as well. (For an alternative solution, visit http://www.experts-exchange.com/Applications/MS_Office/Outlook/Q_20652766.html ).

If, when using Windows Vista, you are having trouble syncing from TimeTo to Outlook, and you possibly see this message "Failed to update the system registry. Please try using REGEDIT.", turn off User Account Control, and see if the problem goes away. Or contact TimeTo support for a more complex fix that we can suggest to you.


For Windows Phone, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC), Android, iPhone, Palm, Treo, and Blackberry users

Install Microsoft Outlook in your Startup Group, then leave it running: you don't have to ever use it: it will simply serve as the conduit from TimeTo™ to your PDA or smartphone. Then enable the Outlook settings as described above, and setup your PDA or smartphone to sync with Outlook.

Alternatively, you can instead use TimeTo's Export and Import Items commands to export and/or import your TimeTo™ appointments to your PDA's Calendar: read the Palm section of TimeTo's Export help topic for further instructions.


For Google Calendar users (or any application using iCal format)

Install Microsoft Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010, or Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003 in your Startup Group, then leave it running: you don't have to ever use it: it will simply serve as the conduit from TimeTo™ to your Google Calendar. Then install RemoteCalendars from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars .

Then enable the Outlook settings as described above.

Alternatively, you can instead use TimeTo's Export command to export to Google Calendar.

 


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