I had a question this week from a user who wanted to sync only his calendar to certain computers.
I'd like to stop the autosyncing of contacts via my Exchange account, or at least stop it on selected computers. I want to sync calendars but not contacts on select pc's.
With an Exchange account you have one option: Synchronization filters. The folders will show up in your Outlook profile but will contain only the items that meet the conditions in the filter.
To create the filter, right click on the folder you want to create a sync filter for, choose Properties then Synchronization tab.
To prevent all items from syncing, set up a filter that will not apply to anything. To prevent your Contacts from syncing, you could filter on the email address, entering @microsoft.com or @yourdomain.com as the address and only contacts with that address will sync.
The filters are local to the Outlook profile the filter was created in, so you'll need to set up filters on every computer.
Sync filters work but all Exchange accounts, including Outlook.com, Office 365 Exchange Mailboxes, and on-premise Exchange accounts.
Geek says
Diane, we cannot get these filters to stick in Outlook 2016 for shared calendars. Can set the filter, then as soon as the calendar syncs or you close/reopen Outlook, the filter is gone. We're using Office 365/Exchange Online. Works fine in Outlook 2013 for us.
We're sharing between two user mailboxes. With or without delegate rights gives the same result. Works fine on the primary calendar, just not on shared calendars.
Any ideas? Thanks.
Mustana says
How often do this filter run? I have setup several filter like this but they don't seems to be running. They may have run once or twice.
Diane Poremsky says
The filter is applied every time outlook syncs with the server - that should be any time a new item is added to the folder.
dkemper says
What does the filter do exactly? Does it just effectively take that folder out of offline-mode (meaning the ability to work offline, not necessarily current status) ? IOW, does it keep everything on the server and not synchronize locally or keep everything locally and not synchronize back to the server?
Diane Poremsky says
It keeps everything on the server and only syncs the items that meet the condition of the filter over to the computer.
outlook_user says
How to do this using VBS
Diane Poremsky says
Set the filters using VBS? I dont think you can - but will double check.
internetevil says
I would also be interested in this, is it possible to set sync filters via a script or macro? I want to set one for lots\ all of individual folders!
Diane Poremsky says
As far as I know, the filters are not scriptable - at least not using VBA. I don't know if Redemption (from outlookspy.com) expose them. In a quick look, I didn't see anything though.