iPhone, iPad, iPod Forums at iMore.com

[Rene Ritchie]

I and a few of the people I work with have been having some really annoying Exchange 2003 issues with iOS 4, I think following a recent ActiveSync update but I'm not sure.

In the first you create or accept and Exchange event invitation, it gets added to your Calendar, and then -- poof! -- it's gone. But only from ActiveSync. If you look in Outlook or OWA (web interface) it's still there. If you're relying on ActiveSync on your iPhone or iPad, you could miss your meeting, call, conference sessions, etc.

The second involves receiving an Exchange invitation and trying to accept or decline it and being told your message can't be sent. It's not a business killer like the first one but it's incredibly annoying and can cause problems for teams trying to keep track of who is attending which event.

For a Mac user like me these problems are exacerbated by both Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Office not supporting Office 2003 over ActiveSync, only Exchange 2007 and later. That leaves OWA (the limited version supported outside Internet Explorer) as the sole way to look at a true representation of your Exchange system.

Anyone else experiencing these or other problems with iOS 4 (iOS 4.0, iOS 4.1, or iOS 4.2) and Exchange 2003? Any workaround you've figured out -- other than copying events to Google Calendar for safe keeping?

[gotcha]

I too have experienced this since 4.0. I have yet to see a solution. I am a consultant have have sadly pushed multiple users to the iphone saying its a better phone\email platform than the BB. I sort of have egg on my face now. I still have many clients using Exchange 2003. This is a tough one to swallow. I wonder if there is anywhere we can push the issue?

Great site btw. I follow everyday.

[johnq]

I'm also having this issue - however I have it on the Mac using Google Calendar.

My set up is I use two Google Calendars (Home and Work), on the Mac I use CALDEV to subscribe to them. I also subscribe to these calendars on my iPhone and iPad. I use Mail on the Mac and similarly on the iPhone and iPad.

When an OUTLOOK user sends me an invitation, I see it it Mail and I accept it, it pops into iCal correctly then it simply evaporates! If I open the same invitation using Gmail on the Web, and I accept it, it appears in the Google Calendar web interface and it then stays correctly in iCal.

I really don't have a good handle on how to effectively tackle this, or even where the problem really lies, but it does seem surprisingly similar to yours!

[DusanCarSilni]

Thank you for this tipp

[frodo]

I must say that this tread has kept me very nervous for the past days. Exchange calendar must work flawlessly in an Enterprise context. Without 100% reliability, iPhone will be discarded by most companies. Losing calendar data and not being aware of a meeting is totally unacceptable.

So, I ran some test this afternoon at one of my customers’ site. They are using four Windows 2003 Servers along with Exchange Server 2003. Exchange is on a 2 node Microsoft Cluster (active/passive). Emails and Calendar are heavily used. Since calendars are mostly shared, management have their calendar directly access by the secretaries so there is less need of sending meeting requests. I have just finished moving all worstations to Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Anyway, I freshly updated one user’s iPhone 3Gs to iOS 4.2.1 I then sent about 10 meeting requests to this user from a different account and accepted, refused, cancelled meeting requests directly on that user’s iPhone. In all cases, meetings were correctly added/moved/removed from that user’s Calendar on his iPhone (and reflected on the Exchange Server) according to the choices that were made on that iPhone. I asked that user to keep one of these test meeting events for a week to see if that test entry would stay put, since nobody on this thread specified when the entries suddenly disappear from the iPhone (immediately or after a while?).

So, at least at that specific site, Exchange 2003 and iPhone iOS 4.2.1 seem to work as expected (at least for now). I will sleep better tonight…

[pairof9s]

That's excellent to hear you do not have the problem. As I have the issue of my calendar replies to Exchange invites not being taken, I'm in dire need of a resolution. So it's good to know it's not systemic.

Can you describe you settings, in general example, on your iPhone, Exchange 2003? It must be some manner in which our iPhones are set up or the Exchange server is that causes this issue.

TIA,

D9

[DigitalDuff]

We are running Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition on Windows 2003 Enterprise Server and have not seen this issue yet on any of the iPads the firm owns. Is the problem specific to the Standard version of Microsoft Exchange?

[frodo]

Of the four servers I talked about previously, the two servers setup as a MS active/passive Cluster are indeed Windows 2003 Enterprise Servers running Exchange 2003 Enterprise Editions. The two other servers are Windows 2003 Standard, one as FrontEnd OWA access (Exchange 2003 Standard) and the other for Backup and Antivirus management.

[happycamping]

I have a similar issue in another form....

When a calendar apt is accepted in outlook on the computer it is still showing on the iphone to be accepted and doesn't go away.....HELP~!! Very annoying!

[iphoneuphone]

I have one user with the IPHONE 4s. We're on Exchange 2003. Everything works except....if he enters an appointment or meeting or whatever in his calendar on the desktop, it shows up on the IPHONE no problem. However, if he enters an appointment or meeting information on the IPHONE, he can see it on the phone, but it doesn't show up on his desktop calendar. This is causing quite the problem, not only for him, but for his Administrative assistant who uses his schedule as well.