iPhone Can’t Sync Information

While a lot of iPhones sold to corporate customers are connected to the company's Exchange server, even more float around officially unsupported. At least until something goes wrong. When your VP of Marketing signs a two-year contract on a new toy, your IT department has just gotten into the iPhone business. Which is why it's so frustrating when you see a message like this sitting in your trouble ticket queue:

iTunes cannot sync information with the iPhone "3G" because
syncing has been disabled on this computer.

The dialog even offers you the opportunity to enable syncing again, but the option doesn't actually result in anything. Once this error appears, you can't synchronize any of the data in the iTunes "Info" tab (including contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and mail accounts), though music, picture, and video syncs work normally. Home users might not notice for months, but if an iPhone is meant for business this issue renders it basically useless.

The problem is corrupt SyncServices data, the system that keeps track of information between Macintosh systems and applications. The solution is to delete the the files in ~/Library/SyncServices and ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices, log the user out and back in, then reset the sync preferences in iTunes. This forces OS X to rebuild the SyncServices database, resolving the issue.

Entourage Won’t Update Calendars

Most Windows users have learned the hard way not to update more than they have to. After all, you never know what the newest fix might break. But when Microsoft issued the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update, including "fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of a computer's memory", that sure sounded to Mac users like an update they shouldn't wait on.

And they were right. Sort of. The update fixed a long-standing, cross-platform, critical bug that allowed malicious Excel files to execute code on a victim's machine.

Unfortunately, it also prevented Office 2008 users with both POP and Exchange email accounts from updating, or responding to, shared meeting invitations. This may not be a common configuration among stand-alone Office for Mac users, but it's the most common setup for Macintosh users in corporate settings.

The good news is, the problem was fixed just two weeks later. The bad news is that because the update isn't considered "critical", many Office for Mac users still can't participate in the scheduling of meetings, appointments, and holiday parties. If you haven't run the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.4 Update, it's worth doing so immediately.