After updating to Windows 8.1 iCloud no longer syncs with Outlook

Solution 1:

1. Open iCloud Control Panel on your Windows 8.1 PC
   
   
2. Un-check the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Tasks with Outlook” option and apply the changes.
   
   
3. Now, check back the box next to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Tasks”
   
   
4. Open Outlook on your PC and see whether the issue is resolved.

Solution 2:

1. Run iCloud Control Panel on the computer
2. With the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Tasks” option checked, click “Sign out”
   
   
3. Upon prompt, click “Delete from computer” this will only temporarily delete the contact and calendar entries from your Windows PC but will not affect the data saved in your iCloud account
   
   
4. Sign back in and select “Sync to Outlook”
5. Run Outlook on the PC and see whether the iCloud contacts and calendars have been synced

Solution 3 – Manually sync iCloud contacts and calendars to Outlook

If the above solutions fail to resolve the issue, use the following utility to manually sync your iCloud contacts and calendars to Outlook on any Windows 8.1 PC.

1. Download the tool from the following page. It works in a similar way to the iCloud Control Panel:
   
   http://www.copytrans.net/copytranscontacts.php
   
2. Run the program on your PC and connect your iCloud account by navigating to More > Cloud setup
   
   
3. Click iCloud
   
   
4. Enter the iCloud account username and password
   
   
5. Your iCloud contacts will appear in the main program window. You can see that these are sourced from iCloud by the little cloud icon on the left. Click on “Export selected”
   
   
6. Click “Outlook (direct export to Outlook)”
   
   
7. Select the Outlook Contacts where to transfer the iCloud contacts and click OK
   
   
8. The iCloud contacts are now manually synced to Outlook on Windows 8.1 without the need for iCloud Control Panel.
   
   

Solutions provided by Microsoft and Apple

• Despite the issue being widespread, Microsoft does not mention any details about it on the Windows Compatibility page dedicated to iCloud Control Panel.
• Apple, features a troubleshooting article for a related issue in case iCloud Control panel 3.0 or earlier fails to sync with Outlook due to an error message reading “The set of folders cannot be opened. The information store could not be opened”
• The following Apple Community thread could also be helpful in sorting out the iCloud failure to sync issue on Windows 8.1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5462019
• Apple doesn’t mention anything about the Outlook sync problem on the iCloud Control Panel page dedicated to the latest v3.1.

Let me know in the comments section below if you found more solutions for iCloud Control Panel not syncing on Windows 8.1.