Windows Phone 7 won't sync with the 64-bit version of Office 2010. And Microsoft has no plans to fix that, the company says. 
The problem has been known for months and documented in a Microsoft support article, KB 980513 posted August 26. In that article, Microsoft notes that Office 2010 64-bit is not a supported software version for the synching process.
As of Vista, Microsoft replaced ActiveSync with Windows Mobile Device Center. When users try to sync Windows Mobile Device Center with Outlook 2010 64-bit version, they get an error that says: "Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Outlook and set it as the default mail client"
The article says there are no plans to fix Windows Mobile Device Center to improve compatibility with Outlook 2010 64-bit, although this is not surprising, given that Office 2010 64-bit has always been known for epic incompatibility problems with everything from add-ons to ActiveX controls. On the other hand, it seems as if Microsoft could attempt to get its own calendaring/contact software to sync with its own phone.
For those poor users users who try to synch the two anyway, they may discover that the process wipes their data clean. Nice! Also, interestingly, there's no problem between synching data held in non-Microsoft clouds to a Windows Phone.
Microsoft states:
If a sync partnership already exists and you install an unsupported version of Outlook 2010, Outlook contacts, email and calendar items will be removed from the phone during the first sync time.
Mail, contacts, calendar and tasks can still be synced over the air with a Microsoft Exchange server running Exchange Active Sync. Windows Phone can also sync over the air with Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail and others. Windows Mobile Device Center can still be used to sync non-Outlook data from the computer to a Windows Phone even if running Outlook 64 bit or Outlook Click-to-Run.
So if you want to use your Windows Phone with Outlook, Microsoft has these words of advice ... find yourself a 32-bit version, and I quote, "If you want to sync a Windows Phone with Outlook 2010, you can use a 32-bit version of Outlook 2010 that uses a standard MSI installation."
More from Microsoft Subnet
- Microsoft to Android, iOS users: Get off of my cloud
- Linux Foundation wades into Windows 8 secure boot controversy
- Free Software Foundation petitions against Windows 8 secure boot
- Microsoft upgrades Intune cloud service, includes free Windows 7
- With Skype, Microsoft gains about 50 communications patents
- Windows Server 8: To the Cloud!
Read my other blog on Open Source. Follow all Microsoft Subnet bloggers on Twitter @microsoftsubnet
Follow Julie Bort on Twitter @Julie188