Current mood:

aggravated

Blackberry sync with Outlook fails if no mail account is configured

It surprises me how software that is published by and widely used by major corporations can be so badly written.

I recently tried installing Microsoft Outlook and RIM Blackberry Desktop Manager so that I could sync my Blackberry with my PC.  When I tried to configure the Blackberry Desktop Manager to sync with Outlook, I received a cryptic "Option's value is unacceptable" error message.  It would have been nice if the software told me which option, what the value was, and why that value was unacceptable. 

After much searching, I finally came across an article from RIM that explained this was because my Outlook e'mail (MAPI) profile was invalid.  That was probably because I hadn't configured Outlook to access e'mail.  I use Yahoo! Mail's web (HTTP) interface and didn't want to use Outlook (or any other POP client) to access my mail.

But apparently Desktop Manager requires that Outlook be configured with an e'mail account, even if I don't plan to access e'mail via Outlook.  So, I dutifully added my Yahoo Mail account to Outlook, and simply told Outlook to never access it.

But that wasn't good enough.  I then received an error from Outlook:  "The operation failed. An object could not be found."  Once again, the error is cryptic.  What operation failed?  Which object was not found?

A Microsoft article explained that the only cure for this error was to configure a whole new user profile in Outlook.  I did that, and finally my Blackberry would sync. with Outlook.

The experience was very disappointing.  These are products that have been shipping for several years, and which I paid good money for.  I don't understand why they would fail so badly.