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If you have no need to transfer calendar items from Microsoft Outlook to Google Calendar and instead just want to update your home computer with your online centralized list of appointments, then you have no need for synchronization software of any sort. Load Outlook and your Google Calendar page. On the latter, click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of your calendar’s name. Select Calendar Settings to bring up a list of options and configurations. Scroll to the very bottom of the page to the section labeled Private Address. Right-click the green iCal button and copy the link to your clipboard.
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| The bottommost green iCal link is the one you care about. The link above it is applicable only if you’ve opened your online Calendar for everyone to see. |
Switch back to Outlook and click the Tools menu. Select Account Settings and select the Internet Calendars tab. Click the New button—a dialog box will pop up asking for the location of the Internet calendar you plan to add to Outlook. Paste the iCal link into this field and hit Add; don’t worry about changing the URL to webcal:// style. Fill in the pertinent details for your calendar on the subsequent screen and press OK. Now when you run any send/receive process in Outlook, the accompanying calendar will update with your current Google Calendar information!
If you thought Outlook’s calendar-syncing process was easy, get ready for a treat. Copy the same private iCal link to your clipboard before you fire up Sunbird, Mozilla’s open-source calendar-only application. Once the program’s running, click the File menu and select New Calendar. You’ll be adding a calendar to the network, so select that option and hit Next. Paste your iCal link into the location box on the subsequent screen and press Next again. Name your calendar, assign it a color, and you’re done—one-way synchronization accomplished in less time than it takes to drink a can of soda.
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| Remember how to get this screen: It’s the same place you’ll go to if you’re setting up a two-way synchronization. |
Comments are closed on this article
kookykrazee
April 28, 2008 at 10:00am
There is now a 2 way sync tool available from the Google website. This seems much easier to use. I have used it for a couple weeks and have had no problems with the tool itself. As always, everything Google is beta and some things don't translate well from Outlook calendar to Google calendar, but that is not Google Calendar Sync's fault.
trippisme
April 21, 2008 at 4:38pm
If I remember correctly Sunbird has a provider extension for google calendar that enables 2-way communication directly in sunbird.
