Archive for Google Calendar
Import Live Calendar into Google Calendar
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are using Microsoft calendar that comes with Windows 7, or have downloaded and installed Windows Live Calendar (and mail), did you know you can import other iCal standard calendars into your Live calendar or you can put your Live Calendar into your Gmail Calendar?
Live Calendar
Sometimes, it’s nice to have your Live and Google calendars (and mail), in the same place. This article will focus on calendars.
If you have Windows 7, you will have the already installed mail application which has the calendar in it. You can use this desktop application if you’re off-line, which is nice. I’ve noticed, though, that the on-line ‘Live’ mail and calendar have more robust and useful features. To view your Gcal in Live Calendar, you must use the web interface, which we’ll call Live Calendar.
For calendaring, the web version of Live Calendar gives you the option to import an associate or friends live calendar. If you use Gmail, you can also import both your gmail account as well as your calendar into the web Live Mail. Here are the steps on importing a Live Calendar into your Google calendar and how to import your Google calendar into your Live Calendar.
I wish it were an easier process, but there are quite a few steps to follow, just print them out or use a dual monitor to follow them closely.The author doesn’t say, but I would think that once the steps are followed and you’ve imported your calendar into Windows Live calendar, it will update automatically.
If you bring your google calendar into your Live calendar, it’s a 1-way sync. So you’ll have to add appointments from your google calendar and they will eventually show up on the Live Calendar. I don’t know how often it refreshes, but you can click on the Goog Calendar and it’ll take you to a page where you can see when it was last refreshed. I didn’t see how to change the refresh schedule though.
Below is a look into the windows live calendar screenshot with instructions on how to share complete calendar details or just your free/busy times. There is a link for importing an ICS file and RSS feeds.
It’s important to note the differences between subscribing and importing calendars. Here is a great explanation from Microsoft on how it works.
If you import a calendar, you’ve imported data that will not change or update. This is fine if you want to import a German holiday calendar. They don’t change or get updated throughout the year.
If you subscribe to an on-line published calendar, then your calendar will automatically update when the main on-line calendar changes.
Managing calendars is always a challenge – I hope this will help keep you organized.
Here are screenshots of the differences between the Windows Live (web) calendar and the Windows Calendar (desktop client). As I mentioned earlier, the Live Calendar on the web is where you can either subscribe or import calendars.
shot of windows calendar - no share or import options
- shot of Windows Live (web) calendar – more features
Free Google Mail, Calendar & Docs Training
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, we talked about the extensive, free training resources available for learning Microsoft Office. We highlighted the new Ribbon Hero interactive, game-style training.
This week, we’ll focus on Google mail, calendar and docs and where to go to find training for these popular programs.
I signed up for gmail about three years ago and have my mail coming into my Outlook where I prefer to manage it. I’ve also used Google’s flexibility to have it pull email in from some of my POP accounts. It’s great to have the ability to see my mail accounts either while traveling or from the familiarity of Outlook.
Google mail, calendar and contacts are all accessible from your gmail screen. The Google calendar is especially popular and powerful – mainly with people who own smart phones because it’s easy to load to their phones and it can be synced with Outlook, Windows Live, Plaxo and I think with the Mac platform as well (not a Mac person).
After Gmail came Google Docs. A free and very stripped down version of Microsoft Office (in my opinion). Google’s also made it easy to collaborate and share documents rather than email them around. Microsoft similarly has a way to both upload and share documents. You can read my article about it here.
Back to our focus on finding some free training for Google mail and docs. The University of Minnesota evidently uses Gmail campus-wide because they’ve published extensive help resources accessible to anyone.
Their Google learning site contains on-line lessons, instructional videos, downloadable study/instructional guides and a searchable repository that seem very complete.
If you’ve ever been puzzled or curious about all the things you can do with Google Mail, Calendar or Apps, the basics as well as some advanced material is covered. Additionally, Google has an extensive support site as well.
Google Mail and Docs have become quite popular with small businesses, students and people who don’t want to pay for mail and office applications. There is the issue of backup and accessibility of our email, calendar events and documents. There are ways to access mail off-line (not sure about documents). The privacy/security issue seems to pop up as well. If you’re a person who stores credit card numbers, insurance policy numbers, etc. on your local machine, how will you feel about it being in the cloud? Maybe not so secure? Something to think about. Google is free, useful and accessible, but for me, I enjoy the Microsoft familiarity. They are also coming out with cloud apps and the ability to work and compute virtually. We’ll talk more about that with another column.
Google Calendar Sync With Outlook & Plaxo
Posted by: | CommentsMy most popular posts have been about calendar syncing. With so many of us using Google, Yahoo, Outlook, Windows Live and Plaxo and our smart 
phones, it’s complicated keeping everything in sync among our devices and platforms.
New With Google Calendar
- offline access to gain read-only access to your calendar, just go to any page on your calendar and click the ‘offline’ button at the top. You’ll be prompted to download and install Google Gears and then you can configure all or just one of your Google calendars for off-line access.
- Attach documents to Google calendar. This is a nice feature – activate by going to the ‘Labs’ section and enabling and saving. Then open or initiate your meeting/appointment, click ‘Attachment’ and add any Google doc (limited to Google docs only).
- Snooze reminders on your desktop. This is a Google Talk download that will put reminders that you can snooze on your desktop.
- Google 1-way (Google to Outlook), 1-way (Outlook to Google), or 2-way (Both calendars synced to the same appointments) sync. This one’s been around for awhile, but it was on the ‘New’ page. This feature is the most popular with Outlook users. There will be a download for this feature as well. I’m not using it now, but I have in the past and it’s a great tool, especially when working with a client. You are able to get web access to their calendar to add events, appointments, etc. and they will sync with the client’s Outlook calendar.
- Sports calendars – add game schedules from your favorite team(s). Find this feature near the top of your calendar page.
Google’s calendar documentation says it will sync with Outlook 2003 or 2007 and with Mozilla’s Sunbird and Apple’s iCal. If you have Windows Live Calendar, you can import an .ics file from Google. It’s a bit convoluted, but you first go to your Google calendar, export your calendar as an .ics file, extract it and then import the file with the .ics extension into your Windows Live calendar.
If you don’t want to use the sync program from Google, you could export your calendar events from Outlook to a .csv file and import them into Google. To do this, have Outlook open and go to File>import/export>export to file>comma separated values (Windows) and then you’ll choose your calendar to export. Then it’s simple to go to Google and get to your Calendar Settings page and click on the import button, find your file and bring it in. You will be able to select a date range during this process.
You can perform the reverse as well – export your Google Calendar and bring those appointments into Outlook.
If you’re wondering about contacts syncing between Outlook and Google, this is available from Google in their premium ‘Google Apps’ product. You can still import your contacts. You can still import and export contacts between Google and Outlook, they just won’t be synced.
Plaxo Calendar Changes
I wrote awhile back about Plaxo’s features and benefits. Since then, some changes have been made. They are now requiring a ‘premium subscription’ at $60/year for something they used to do for free. 
That is the syncing of appointments and contacts between Outlook and Plaxo calendars. 
The premium feature also includes syncing of tasks and finding and eliminating duplicate contacts.
Plaxo still offers their ‘Sync Points’ for the below apps for free. To get to Sync Points, sign in to Plaxo and to either your calendar or address book and look for the Sync Points at the bottom of your screen. Click the radio button and follow the instructions.
I really don’t hear about a whole lot of people signing up for Plaxo accounts anymore and I rarely get invitations. It seems that people with an account keep them open, but really don’t do a lot with them. With Ping.fm and other aggregators around, it’s easy to keep Plaxo in our circle of social networking.
Google Apps is $50/year and seems to be a better deal of the two paid services as Google is always coming out with new things, most of which are free.
What do you use to keep your contacts and appointments organized? Please leave a comment.
Windows Calendar Sync with Google Calendar/Windows Live Calendar with Outlook
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve talked several times about calendar syncing and what works with what. We are all looking for the holy grail of calendar syncing and we all have our unique needs and situations.
Today, we’ll talk about two other calendar syncing tools: a 1-way Google to Windows Calendar Sync and 2-way Windows Live Calendar to Outlook 2007 Calendar Sync (includes mail as well).
1-way Google to Windows Calendar Sync
First, let’s define and make clear what I mean by Windows Calendar. Windows Calendar is shipped with the Vista OS, not XP, so if you are an XP user, you can skip this—or read what you’re missing! Windows Calendar is part of a built-in Vista suite of products that replaced the sorry (IMHO) Outlook Express program. There is a calendar and a mail client that can be used if you don’t buy Outlook.
Lots of us already have and use the wildly popular Google calendar, so why not quickly connect your Google calendar with your Windows Calendar – just takes a 
couple of minutes. Here’s how:
1. Go to your Google calendar, click on ‘settings’, ‘calendar’, then click on your name. Scroll down to ‘Google calendar settings. You’ll want to click the ‘ical’ green button and it will open and show some code for your calendar. Copy this text.
2. Next, go back to your Windows Calendar, click on ‘subscribe’ and a box will open like the one below.
Go ahead and paste the code into the box and click on the next button. It will take a few seconds to get it all connected. Choose how frequently you want google to update the Windows calendar and you’re done!
Keep in mind that this will be a 1-way sync only from Google Calendar to Windows Calendar. For example, if I put an appointment on my Google calendar, it will sync to my Windows Calendar. But if I add something to my Windows Calendar, it will never show up on my Google Calendar.
Next, we’ll look at software that will connect your Outlook calendar and mail to your Windows Live Calendar and Mail.
2-way Windows Live Calendar to Outlook 2007 Calendar Sync
The sync here does not include the Outlook 2007 calendar with the Windows Calendar. I could not find that Microsoft has this functionality. Perhaps they don’t because they feel if you have the Outlook calendar, you won’t need to use the built-in Windows Calendar.
So this section deals with bringing your Outlook calendar together with your Windows Live Calendar. I actually blogged about this a couple of months ago. So the instructions are in that post.
All you need to complete this sync is a windows live ID. A live ID is required before setting up a live or hotmail account. So if you’ve been a live or hotmail user for awhile and also have Outlook, this is a nice tie-in to get both mail streams in one place. You will also need to download Outlook Connector (covered in my previous blog posting).
Microsoft has made giant steps in improving what I like to call, your ‘cloud’ experience in the past six months. We’ll be looking at some of these in this new year.
