Syncing iCloud with Windows and Outlook

22.10.2011
Apple's iCloud is a nice tool for keeping contacts, calendar items, and other data in sync between my iPhone and iPad, but what about keeping everything synced up with my Windows PC? Apple has that covered as well with the iCloud Control Panel for Windows.

You can from the Apple.com support site. The roughly 40MB utility installs as an option in the Windows Control Panel--just click Start, Control Panel, iCloud to access the tool and manage your iCloud account, as well as what information is synced between iCloud and your Windows PC or Microsoft Outlook software.

There are five checkboxes available that let you choose to sync email, contacts, and calendar items with Outlook, and keep your browser bookmarks and iCloud Photo Stream synced. Below the checkboxes is a display indicating how much iCloud storage space you're using along with a button to manage it. At the very bottom is a checkbox to add the iCloud tool to the Systray at the bottom right of Windows for easier access.

Checking the Mail, Contacts, or Calendars & Tasks checkboxes adds iCloud as an additional account in Outlook. Mail doesn't seem to actually sync with any of my existing accounts in Outlook. Instead it adds the iCloud email account to Outlook. But, I already have my own domains and established email addresses, so I have no intention of using the iCloud account. I guess that means my email won't be synced between devices, or with Outlook.

With a little cleanup to weed out any duplicates the contacts and calendar added to Outlook work fine. I can add a new contact on my iPad, or for me from my iPhone, and those updates will automatically populate to Outlook after a few minutes. There is also a button on the ribbon at the top to manually refresh from iCloud if need be.

The Bookmarks and Photo Stream checkboxes each includes an "Options..." button. For Bookmarks, the only option is whether to sync bookmarks from Internet Explorer or Safari--sorry Firefox and Chrome users. The Photo Stream options let you choose the folder locations where you want iCloud to store files it downloads from Photo Stream, and where you want iCloud to automatically upload from to share pictures with your other iCloud-connected devices.