Reimporting Contact Book birthdays back into Calendar?

Question

I had an odd issue that resulted in all of my birthday information in my phone contacts and on my calendar up and disappearing. This happened both in Outlook 2007 and on my iPhone, so I don't know which blew away the other, just that they're gone. I was able to get the contact birthday information back, but I've been unable to get either Outlook or my iPhone to dump the appropriate information back into either calendar. Anyone have any idea how to force either program to reimport the data back into their respective calendars?

Answer 1

Just like you all, I suffered from this problem with a WindOHNOs machine. I too couldn't find a solution since 99% of the forums listed iCal fixes. So... I did it on my own. Now I'll have to warn you up front, the solution isn't pretty, or extremely fast, but don't fret, you wont be manually editing every single contact (well, kind of).
Follow these steps:
1. Go into outlook and open your calendar
2. Select View -> Arrange By -> Current View -> Annual Events
NOTE: All of your contacts that have birthday listed SHOULD show up on this page now. No they are not events yet; Yes its dumb that outlook 'knows' they're annual events but doesn't put them on the Calendar; Yes be patient.
3. With a contact highlighted, hit CTRL+A, which is the command to select all the items that populate that list. Alternatively, you could hit HOME then SHIFT + END to select the entire list as well. Whatever.
4. Right click any one of the contacts that are all highlighted, and select "Open Items"
NOTE: Outlook will warn you that opening alot of items may take a long time and doesn't recommend it. I opened 280 contacts almost instantly, no lock up or slowing, on a craptop, so don't fret and just agree to it.
5. With all those windows open (stop crying, I know its alot), get your fingers ready. No we're not going to have to click around everywhere and take a million years. Just some fast finger work is all.
6. Push ALT + U, ALT + Y, ENTER, ALT + S
NOTE: What you're doing here is manually selecting the recurrence button, then selecting yearly for the recurrence, then closing that window, then saving and closing that contact. You can click all that with your mouse, but getting into a rhythm on your keyboard makes it so you don't have to look at the screen and can go as fast as you can type perfectly.
7. Once you get the rotation down, it will start to be like this, ALTS,+U,Y, ENTER, ALTS,+U,Y, ENTER, etc etc etc.
Before you go on a diatribe saying how ghetto this is, realize you can do each contact in about a second and a half, so anyone should be done in about 5 minutes if you keep your pace up.
The reason I did it this way is that there's no way to mass-change all of your contacts' settings for the recurrence of the birthdays built into Outlook. None. There ARE third party programs you can use, but every single one I found cost money ($30 for some stupid keystrokes? no thanks.) This is a ghetto, jury-rigged solution that isn't pretty, but you cant complain about it taking a long time. Sack up and just do it, its a one-time fix, so get over it.
Cheers,
Chris