Mike Southby

I have been more than happy with the ability to synchronise my calendars between my Outlook and Google using Google’s own sync tool until recently when I began using Outlook 2010.  You see the problem is that Google have yet to release an update to their tool to allow the tool to work with Outlook 2010, a surprise considering how long Outlook 2010 has been available and the positive feedback it has been receiving.  Remember that positive feedback equates to more and more people using the latest version.

The problem appears to be not that Google’s sync tool will not work with Outlook 2010 but that it performs a version check on execution and will not get past the fact that it ‘thinks’ it will not work, so it simply gives an error and halts.

There is of course a way round this.

Caveat:  I take no responsibility if you manage to break your Outlook installation, remember to take a backup first and if you are unsure or have no experience of Hex editors, perhaps think twice before following these steps.  If you do a search on Google there are already Outlook.exe files available for download that have had the change made, although – importantly – be very careful downloading and running .exe files unless you are sure they come from a trusted source!

You’ll need to use a Hex editor, there are a few available in you do a search; I used Notepad++ with the ‘Hex-Editor’ plugin.  Firstly locate and make a backup (very important in case something unexpected happens!) of the Outlook.exe file which is located at c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\ and at assembly location 0×000c09b2 change the value to 0×32 in the ascii dump (it will have originally been 14.0.0 but now should read 12.0.0).  This in theory should only change the version number that the Outlook Add-In Manager reports to add-ins.

It works fine for me, I’m now happily synchronising between Outlook 2010 and Google once again.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I have been getting a lot of emails asking if I can upload an OUTLOOK.EXE file with the Hex changes in place, so, if you simply want to download a patched file without making the changes yourself heres the link.  It goes without saying that you download this file at your own risk. To prevent antivirus programs blocking the file I have placed it inside a ZIP archive so you will simply need to unpackage it and place it into your c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\ folder but please remember as always to backup the original file first.  If you find this useful, please leave a comment.  Thanks.