Sunday, May 28, 2006

Subscribe to online calendars from MS Office 2007

Since I have my calendar online and published via Google Calendar, I'd like to see it in Outlook. Outlook will default you to a Office online website where you can learn more and subscribe to public calendars, but here's a more direct way:
  1. Go to your calendars box in the left column, click the arrow next to whichever one you'd like to get the web address for and from the pop-up menu, click 'Calendar Settings'.
  2. To get all the appointments, right/ctrl-click the orange-colord button that says ICS and copy the address/shortcut/URL.
  3. Paste the address back into your browser's address bar and replace the protocol prefix from 'http://' to 'webcal://'.
  4. Press enter or GO and choose to open the location with Outlook (or whatever calendar application you prefer).
I think this is more straightforward in iCal and SunBird.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i m a little out of track. do ur finding imply that Office 2007 could have away to let my PPC syn with Galendar finally ??

Will said...

That's a very interesting idea. I can't check for sure because I don't have activesync installed. I'll be able to check again once I install the beta on my other computer, though.

If we do this, Outlook would just be a bridge between Google Calendar and our Pocket PCs...

Sad, because my iPod reads ICS fine.

Anonymous said...

ipod reads ICS fine??..o sorry lately I really got outdated. But soon a nano will be delivered to me (a bank's gift), so I just check out that (a second ago) in ipod.com: it has "Calendar & Contacts".

Wawa...just as u posted, we really dun need a PPC anymore. In ur experience, does ipod work well as a PI?

I think thateven if Outlook can direct google to PPC, it is still inconvenience to bring back data from Outlook to Google. Same as all users, I just hope that G will have a in-house s/w to do the job.

Will said...

Outlook (2003+) <-> PPC is still superior to Outlook -> iPod, which is better than Google Calendar -> iPod. There is a script somewhere online that automates the synchronization of your Google Calendar with iPod.

Why the above order? iPod offers no way to input data. Secondly, iTunes synchronizes Outlook with iPod, which is easier than manually downloading the ICS file from Google onto the iPod.

I can say a couple of things about iPod and ICS files. For the most part, contacts work ok, probably as VCFs. For some reason iPod doesn't show location, but everything else is alright.

Unfortunately, until the 2007 beta, I only had a legit copy of Office 2002, which only saves individual ICS files. That said, you can import ICS files into Google from Outlook 2002+, but because each event has to be saved individually, it's a very tedious task.

Still haven't set up my desktop since coming home from school so no Outlook 2007 + Activesync testing yet.

Will said...

BTW, by Office 2002, I mean the Outlook 2002 bundled with our PPCs.

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