Configuring Blackberry Wireless Sync with 64bit Outlook

With the release of Office 2010 uses of Blackberrys have a new problem to deal with.  The blackberry desktop manager software which you install on your computer is only a 32bit application, so if you install the 64bit version of Outlook (or Office) then the Blackberry desktop manager can’t talk to Outlook in order to get your Exchange settings so that it can talk to the Exchange server and configure your Wireless sync.

Now the official fix from RIM is to downgrade to Office 2007 or older and wait for them to get around to releasing a new version of the desktop manager (my phrasing, not theirs).

If you have Windows 7 then you have a pretty easy to configure solution available to you.  That solution is Windows XP Mode.  Download Windows XP Mode from Microsoft and install it.  This will give you a 32bit VM to work with.  Install Outlook 2007 on the VM (if you have an MSDN or TechNet account you can download it from there) and then install the Blackberry software on the VM.

After you have everything installed, connect the phone to your computer.  In the Windows XP Mode VPC click on the USB drop down menu and attach the RIM device to the VM. Fire up Outlook and configure it to connect to your Exchange server using your normal account, then fire up the blackberry software and configure it like normal.

I just got done doing this on my machine, and it works great.

Now if you are using Windows Vista this will be a little harder.  The Virtual PC that works with Windows Vista doesn’t support USB, however VMware Workstation does support USB, but VMware Workstation has to be purchased.  The same basic technique can then be used, but you’ll need to install the OS instead of just downloading an already configured OS.

Now because you are running within a VM everything will be a bit slower, but it’ll let you get the job done.

Denny

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One Response

  1. Microsoft itself advises against the usage of the 64 bits edition of office, unless you really need the large memory allocation advantages.
    From http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/tech-guarantee/microsoft-office-2010-technology-guarantee-faq-HA101812304.aspx?redir=0

    Will a 64-bit version of the Office 2010 product be available?

    Yes, 64-bit Office 2010 product upgrades will be available. [B]However we strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition.[/B] The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC.

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