I'm looking to buy a new Android phone, but before I do, I need to know that there's a reliable way of keeping the contacts and calendar data on the phone in sync with the data in Outlook 2010 on my laptop. For the past 8 years I've been using windows mobile phones, where Microsoft's ActiveSync etc worked well. Simply connecting my windows phone to my laptop via USB meant that everything almost always sync'd fine without any issues. I'm looking to get as close to that experience as possible.

I also need to avoid putting any of my data in the cloud (e.g. gmail), because my outlook data contains too much sensitive information. Security breaches may be highly unlikely, but the potential consequences are too dire to imagine. One answer to this sync question (Sync setup question: will Android, Outlook 2010, Gmail, calendar and contacts sync?) has a comment which says that Android phones will always sync with google, so I need to disable that. Is that possible?

I'm aware of Samsung's Kies, but I've never tried it. If anyone can assure me that Kies works well for what I need then I'd be quite happy to restrict myself to buying Samsung.

I've done other research and found a pcmag.com review from Feb 2012 that suggests in general this isn't an easy problem. However, that link (and answers that I've found here) are all over a year old, so what's a good way of achieving all this in June 2013?


You can easily turn of Google Sync for any Android phone. Just go to Account Settings, Sync. One problem is that whenever you get a new ROM, or Google does an update, these settings get turned back on. So you need to check periodically.

There are a number of 3rd party sync products, with free trial periods. Just give them a try. You can find them online. The best for security may be DejaOffice which has an encrypted mode to really lock down your data.

  • Thx vm :-). I've marked your answer as "useful", and when I get an Android phone in a few weeks time, I'll remember to come back and mark it as correct if I go with DejaOffice! – Stochastically Jun 9 '13 at 15:40

I finally ended up getting a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini i9195 LTE 4G, so I tried Samsung's Kies. As far as I can tell after just 1 day's use, it syncs the phone perfectly with my Outlook 2010, and avoids the cloud too (as long as the cloud sync to my google account is turned off on the phone).

  • How have you found this Stochastically? I've found it to stall with any decent amount of data after a couple of days/a week of use! It worked perfectly until then! :( – HaydnWVN Aug 4 '14 at 15:11

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