How to sync your Black Berry with Outlook is extremely easy, but not that many people want to do this (myself included), they would rather use a better e-mail client such as Thunderbird. What I am going to show you is the process I used to do this.

First you will need to set yourself up with a Google apps account. In this account you will need to have GMail and also Google calendar. To set one up click here.

Next, make sure that you have the newest version of Thunderbird installed and ready for use.  To begin with we are going to install the Zindus addon.  This allows us to sync our contacts from Thunderbird with our newly created GMail account.

To install this and the other Thunderbird addons do the following.  In Thunderbird, go to the

Tools -> Add-ons

Click on install and select the add on you wish to install.  Once it finishes installing Thunderbird will restart.

Now that you have Zindus installed it must be configured to work with your GMail account.  To do this go into Zindus’s configuration settings and add your new GMail account along with password.  Make sure to click Google for the sync with option.  Once you have these two settings in place you can use the test connection button to check and make sure everything is running properly.

To recap so far, we have Thunderbird installed, with the Zindus addon to sync to our newly created GMail account.  You can actually check in GMail to make sure that your contacts have been updated at this point.  Now on to setting up our Calendar.

In order for calendering to function we first must install the Lightning addon found here.  Once installed you will again be prompted to restart Thunderbird.  Once restarted you will notice on the right hand side a new calendar and task panel.  Now to sync the data from here with your Google calendar you will need to use the  Provider addon.  Once this is installed it will ask you for the private address of your Google calendar.  To get this information log into your Google calendar and go to

Settings ->Calendars->xml  See the picture below

Your finished in your Google calendar for a while now.  The next step is start creating a new calendar in Thunderbird.  Do this with the following commands

File->New->Calendar

A new window should now appear. The first option you should see will be for the location of the calendar – select “On the Network” and click next. The next option allows you to select the format for the calendar. Select “Google Calendar”. In the location box paste in the private address for your Google calendar that you retrieved earlier. Finally you will get to a “Google Calendar Login” window which will ask you for your Google account login.

At this point you should now be able to sync your Thunderbird calendar with your Google calendar!

The final step is to grab the Google Mobile Sync from here. You can get Google to send a link to your phone but I found that this didn’t work for me and just ended up downloading the app directly onto my Blackberry. Once it is installed it will ask you for your Google Account login information. After this press sync and you are on your way.

Additionally if you use a firewall that filters egress traffic you will need to open ports 443 and 80 in order for the Google Provider Add on to function correctly.