Sync iPhone with Outlook (Office PC) and Macbook Pro?

[Ellen]

I have a Macbook Pro running Lion (yay) and a Blackberry from my company (boo) but now have the option of replacing the Blackberry with an iPhone (yay). I was wondering if anyone here has a similar situation and might help me with a few questions I have.

1. My work emails, Outlook contacts and Outlook calendar would sync with the iPhone via my company's Exchange server.

2. I was told that I could sync the iPhone with iTunes on my Macbook Pro.

3. Would I still be able to sync the iPhone with, and separately maintain, the Apple address book and iCal from my Macbook Pro? Could I therefore have 2 address books and calendars on the iPhone so that the Outlook info remains separate?

4. I was able to set up the Blackberry to add my Verizon email address so I imagine I could also do that with the iPhone? (Wasn't sure if using an Exchange server makes a difference here.) I do have an iCloud account/MobileMe but haven't been using that email address. If it simplifies things I would consider using it.

I suspect I'll wind up with a more complicated setup on the iPhone than having separate and work phones but this way my company pays for the data plan which is a big plus. I just want to be sure I can sync with the Macbook Pro which I can't do now. So before I talk to the IT dept. about these issues I wanted to check with the experts here! Thanks.

Thanks!

 

[Ellen]

I realize I may not had posted this in the right forum - should I have used iOS 5?

 

[Hamiltonian]

Yes you can sync your emails and contacts with Outloook through Exchange and sync with iTunes on you rMac without syncing with your contacts on your mac. Just make sure when you set up your iPhone that the settings for iCloud are not set to sync contacts.

 

[Ellen]

Thanks.

It would also be great to know if I could sync with both Outlook and the Mac and maintain 2 address books and calendars on the iPhone (Outlook and Apple) in order to keep the work and personal info separate.

 

[SDub90]

Thanks.

It would also be great to know if I could sync with both Outlook and the Mac and maintain 2 address books and calendars on the iPhone (Outlook and Apple) in order to keep the work and personal info separate.

If I'm understanding your question correctly: When you setup your Exchange account on your iPhone it will create a group in your contacts for your exchange account. Your contacts synced with itunes/address book will have a separate group. You will also have a separate calendars on your phone as well (they won't merge into one), but I do not think the colors would be the same if that matters to you (ie if you have green and purple calendars in Outlook, they may be red and blue on your phone and your iCal calendars on your make will also be a different color), of course these can be manually changed, but they won't select the same colors when they are first setup.

 

[Ellen]

Thanks, odds are I would keep one calendar and use Outlook (which is what I've been doing with the Blackberry), but the 2 address books are good.

Now I need to read up on iCloud! I have an issue not unique to the iPhone in that I have an Apple ID for several years and a Mobile Me account that when migrated to iCloud created a second Apple ID. So I just hope that Apple lets us merge them eventually.