I started out trying to do something I though would be really simple but wasn’t. I have been trying to sync my work and personal calendars recently and thought I should share my partial success. To be honest my partial success would be counted by most of you as a failure but as I have managed to save myself some time then I ‘m gonna be generous.
The setup
Work – thin client PC running windows XP and Internet Explorer 7. Seriously locked down with blacklists on any file sharing sites including Google docs, Dropbox and no option of installing any software. Outlook calendar synchronising with a Blackberry over Exchange server. Remote access through Citrix.
Home – Mac OSX Mountain Lion using iCloud for multiple shared calendars with my girlfriend across a good few iOS devices.
The ideal solution
I want to see selected work events in my home calendars.
I would like to input and accept work invites from my Blackberry or from within MS Outlook at work and ideally I would have a filter (perhaps running off my predefined categories) that would sync only specified events with my iCloud calendar and that in turn would share with my girlfriend and iOS devices.
But….
I really only need fixed items like my annual leave and unusual late or early meetings to show up so I don’t need comprehensive syncing like I do with my own calendar but I have just a few too many appointments to want to manually re-enter them.
Possible solutions
Most of these are very simple and might work for you first time.
Share My Calendar
Computer says no. The network is too locked down for this and will only work with internal white-listed email addresses. I suspect a good number of you might stumble into this problem if you just try to share a calendar from a work account.
Publish My Calendar
An outlook account is needed for this one and although the setup seemed quick and easy my calendar refused to show up in my new Microsoft Live account.
This should have worked. Again, the locked down version of Outlook refused to publish and then asked for my password every time I started up Outlook. I had to find the settings for published calendars (under ‘Tools’ if you are looking for it) and remove the calendar from there. I think this will be a great option for most of you. Once published you can then subscribe to the Outlook calendar from within Apple’s Calendar program (found under ‘File’). For non-iCloud Mac users you have your calendar in a Live account to do what you want with.
Next!

Export My Calendar
I spent quite a while on trying to export my appointments but it kept making me send them in a csv file. I finally realised that there is a better way of exporting than heading over to the export menu………..
Save as…
If you select Save as… from the calendar view Outlook allows you to save (export) however much of your calendar that you want in the icalendar format.
It asks for the start and end date, how much detail is included in each event and then dumps it into a file.
But why is this open not under export?
From here it’s as simple as emailing the saved file over to your Mac and then double clicking the attachment. The ‘.ics’ file will open up your Calendar program and ask you which calendar you wish to insert the entries.
iOS (iPhone and iPads) are compatible with ‘.ics’ calendar files but not the ones Outlook produces owing to some problematic header text. Send an ‘.ics’ file from Google calendar to an iPad and you get this by tapping the ‘.ics’ attachment:
Just hit ‘Add All’ straight from within the email and the job is done. But with an Outlook ‘.ics’ tapping the file just doesn’t do much. There are ways to alter the Outlook header text in a text editor but I was looking to make my life simpler rather than adding yet another step.
So I had to open the attachment with my Mac.
Partial success
Now I’m quite happy carrying this out once a month just to update the coming months with static events so I can just about class this as a success. If I needed more regular updates then it would be a major pain and I would be looking at why calendar publishing isn’t working and if there is anything else I can do to fix or hack something together.
I hope you have more luck than I do and remember to head to ‘Save as…’ rather than ‘Export’ in Outlook.
