About Synchronization

When you mobilize Outlook data, synchronization becomes a key issue. But why? For that, we need an example. Suppose you have Outlook on your desktop PC connected to the corporate Exchange server, along with a notebook computer where you want access to your Outlook data. (Don't worry about how the data moves between the two machines for now). The easiest way for things to work would be to copy any changed data from one machine to another whenever there is a change. This would work great, except...

...what happens if the same item changes at both ends, or if a change on one end conflicts with a change on the other? Imagine that you are at a customer site and enter a new appointment with a customer using the copy of Outlook on your notebook computer. At the same time, your boss schedules a meeting with you that overlaps the customer meeting you scheduled. Now what happens? If the changes just get copied to the other machine, one or the other of your appointments will get trashed.

This is why synchronization is necessary. The synchronization software analyzes the changes from each machine before doing anything. It then copies all non-conflicting changes to both machines. If there are conflicts that the synchronization software can't resolve, it notifies you of the conflict so you can resolve it.

How synchronization software does its job is more than I can explain here (I used to work at a company making synchronization software and I still don't fully understand it!), but the important thing to remember is that synchronization software makes sure your Outlook data is consistent wherever you view it.