outlook.com contact groups

[humblin...@gmail.com]

Hi Mark,
is there a way of syncing the outlook.com contact groups to thunderbird with tzpush? SO far it's only importing the contacts, not the groups/list.
Thanks for your help!
Chances

[Mark Nethersole]

First thoughts were no. I had this question a long time ago. But..

Things move on, I had a look at the wbxml sent by outlook and it does indeed send a category tag corresponding to the group. So I could create Thunderbird mailing list based on these tags.

I will do a bit of investigation. But it does seem doable.

Mark  

[Mark Nethersole]

Have written a small script to to add contacts to groups(mailing list). Give me a few days to get it into a usable form. 

Mark

P.S. You caught me on a good day for this. Off work!  

[humblin...@gmail.com]

Thanks!
When this works out in the end you'll be my personal hero for making newsletters much less annoying.
Sending them as well as adding recipients when requests arrive instead of having to open outlook.com first - nice!

[Mark Nethersole]

ActiveSync has Category tag. They are not the same as mail-list.

But... 

They are used for mailing list in outlook.com. 

So here is a small add-on that will sort ActiveSync catergorys into thunderbird mail-list.

This works, but it will only use one catergory. If outlook contacts appear in two mail list, it will only use the the latest one. This I will work on, needs some code added to tzpush.

After installation it will add an entry to the tools menu. Works silently. You will know it works when you look at address book. 

No problems foreseen. But maybe try in test profile.

One way only, from server.

This is proof of concept, will build into tzpush as option in future.

Mark

  

[Mark Nethersole]

This is tzpush with the sort function built in.

It will also will honour all groups sent from outlook (or other z-push server?).

Set tzpush.sort to true in thunderbird prefs ( This xpi is set to true as default)

Will need a resync (NOT RESET) to get the multiple groups sorted if needed.

Mark

[Mark Nethersole]

Newer version of tzpush with sort built in and bug fix. Set extensions.tzpush.sort to true.

Or use standalone tzsort. For testing only will be retired soon.

Have tested with zarafa and outlook.com. 

mark

[Mark Nethersole]

I am looking into problems with groups/mailing list.

It has been pointed out to me (thanks Gian) that Thunderbird can not have a mailing list with no email address. see http://www.pirules.org/addons/gcontactsync/faq.php

I have noticed that it also needs to be primary email address. Adding a contact to a mail list with email address 2 creates a new card, which causes problems with sync.

Also nested mail list are not possible with tzsort.

I thought this was an easy one! Ho Hum.

Will try some work around.

Happy Holiday

Mark

[Mark Nethersole]

Can interested people give me some feed back on this one.

First set tzpush.sort to false.

Then try this standalone sort. 

If email address is blank, this adds a du...@dummy.zzz email address, add it to maillist, then resets the email to empty.

Seems to work?

The sort will create maillists based on activesync category or add to maillist if they exist in the address book used by tzpush.

Mark

[sma]

Hi Mark,

Is group/mailing list syncing now part of TZPush? I recently switched from the discontinued Windows Live Mail to Thunderbird and am having trouble getting contacts and groups to sync.

Groups don't sync at all, and contacts only seem to sync from Outlook to Thunderbird but not vice-versa. I'm using Thunderbird on two computers and need to be sure my address book is the same everywhere. Are there settings I need to change to get this to work?

Thanks so much!

[john.b...@googlemail.com]

Hi sma,

are contact groups working for you at the moment? If not, there is something new to try out...