I've neglected my Surface tablet for a few months. I purchased it to stay at least somewhat up-to-date with the happenings in Windows world, and to be able to field at least some questions from friends with Windows computers, and questions about upgrading to Windows 10. Now that the free upgrade period has ended, I'm not sure if I should expect more or fewer questions.
One of the confounding challenges I met was setting up my calendar events and my Contacts List I had built on my Mac and iOS devices. No matter how I set up the account in the new Windows Mail Application, I could not get my iCloud tools to sync. So, out to the Internet to find more details as to how to manage this issue. As usual, there's lots of misinformation out there as to what steps to take, but here's what finally worked for me:
1) Install iCloud on the Surface.
This gives me access to all my iCloud tools through the Edge web browser on the Surface.
2) Create an App Specific Password.
Some time ago, to reduce the opportunity for someone to hack my Apple ID, I set up two-factor authorization on my iCloud account. This requires, for any changes I want to make to anything within my iCloud account, a confirmation of the access by entering a 4-digit code sent to one of my other trusted devices - most often my iPhone. Since the Windows 10 Mail Application is not an Apple product, and can't be party to the two factor authorizations, Apple has set up an option to create a specific password used only for one specific non-Apple / non-iCloud application. There is the opportunity to have 25 of these application specific passwords at a time. To learn more about, and apply the Application Specific Password, I followed the somewhat outdated instructions at iMore.com to set up an App-specific Password for the Windows 10 Mail Application, and all my calendar events and contacts were synchronized. (YAY!!)
I subsequently visited the Apple Support page as well, and found the steps clearly outlined, but without the images contained on the iMore site.
My opinion is the error messages provided by Microsoft for setting up the iCloud synchronizing could have been much clearer, and referenced the need for the Application-specific password. Hmprf!