Create a setting to enforce one-way Contacts sync only. This way, Outlook on Android can't mess up Exchange Contacts.
Please create a sync setting that forces Contacts/People to only sync one-way. In other words, I only want data to push from the server to my Android device, and not vice-versa. If I create a brand new Contact on my Android device, then that can sync to the cloud, but lock existing Contacts on my Android device so that I can't edit them.
Why? Well, your Contact sync engine is not reliable yet. In fact, it's screwing up my precious data. This is totally inexcusable. Want a case study? OK, here you go...
I was so excited when you added two-way Contacts sync between my Exchange data and Outlook on Android a few months ago. Unfortunately, the first thing that happened is that Android wiped out / deleted the body text field of data on thousands of my Contact records. Ouch! I had to resort to backups to recover my data that I have spent 20 years building. So, I naturally disconnected my account from Outlook on Android, and figured I would take another run at it in a few months. Well, I did that. The good news is that it didn't delete my body text this time, but it messed it up certain notes that I had in my records. In the body field of my records, if I had an email address such as "You@Microsoft.com", it took it upon itself to reformat that as "You@Microsoft.com<mailto:You@Microsoft.com>". NO! I don't want that!! It screws up things big time for me. Don't change my data!
...OK, now please don't tell me to submit this to Help. I have already done that. This is not a troubleshooting ticket. This is truly a suggestion to allow the user to only allow one-way Contact/People syncs from their Android devices until we can trust that your sync engine is rock solid.

1 comment
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Hall commented
Please create a sync setting that forces Contacts/People to only sync one-way. In other words, I only want data to push from the Exchange server to my Android device, and not vice-versa. If I create a brand new Contact on my Android device, then that can sync to the cloud, but lock existing Contacts on my Android device so that I can't edit them.
Why? Well, your Contact sync engine is not reliable yet. In fact, it's screwing up my precious data. This is totally inexcusable. Want a case study? OK, here you go...
I was so excited when you added two-way Contacts sync between my Exchange data and Outlook on Android. Unfortunately, the first thing that happened is that Android wiped out / deleted the body text field of data on thousands of my Contact records. Ouch! I had to resort to backups to recover my data that I have spent 20 years building. Therefore, I naturally disconnected my account from Outlook on Android, and figured I would take another run at it in a few months. Well, I did that. The good news is that it did not delete my body text this time, but it messed it up certain notes that I had in my records. In the body field of my records, if I had an email address such as "You@Microsoft.com",
it took it upon itself to reformat that as "You@Microsoft.com<mailto:You@Microsoft.com>". NO! I don't want that!! It screws up things for me. Can you please stop Outlook on Android from messing up Exchange Contact data? I am not sure if you were aware that the sync engine was reformatting those email addresses as I have described. It is dangerous for it to change user's data like that.
...OK, now please do not tell me to submit this to Help. I have already done that. This is not a troubleshooting ticket. This is truly a feature suggestion to give the user control by only allowing one-way Contact/People syncs from their Android devices until we can trust that your sync engine is rock solid.
While you are still working on getting the kinks out for the Contacts sync engine, is there a setting to where I can allow my Contacts to be synced one way? In other words, I want updates and new Contacts to come down from my Exchange data in the cloud. However, I do not want Outlook on Android to push Contact / People contacts back to the cloud.