Windows Calendar Sync with Google Calendar/Windows Live Calendar with Outlook
ByWe’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.
This article was useful Lynn
I have Google Calendar, and I understand the first segment of this article relates to “subscribing”.
But is there a way to, using your lingo, “connect” to the Google Calendar via Windows Calendar or the calendar function of Windows Live Mail program?
note: I infrequently check extremevirtualsupport (no offense intended), so it’d be great if you email to advise of a reply.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for reading the article. Calendar syncing is lacking in some areas.
Are you wanting your Google calendar in WL or your WL calendar in Google? You can put the Google calendar in WL using the instructions I gave in the post. It will be just a 1-way sync though – from Google to Live. You can add events on your google calendar from WL, but they won’t show up or sync to the google calendar.
Google supports XML, ICAL, HTML calendars. Unfortunately, WL uses the ICS format, but Google Calendar can import event information in iCal or CSV (MS Outlook) format.
If you want the WL calendar in Google, it doesn’t look like there’s a way. Maybe someone else out there has figured a work-around…anybody?
Regards, Lynn
Hi.
I have actually found a way to syn WL to Google Calendar. It’s a bit messy. I use Mash Ical (http://www.mashical.com) to create a proxy calendar. So, you go into Mash Ical. You can log in with your Gmail, Facebook or OpenID account etc. It’s just to give you an ID. Then you can create a new “folder” to contain calendars. In my case I only include one WL calendar in each “folder” (or calendar) in Mash Ical. When the “folder” or calendar has been created in Mash ical, you can copy its Ical address and subscribe it in Google Calendar. Just make sure you uncheck the “Private” checkbox in WL Calendar events, or every event will turn up as private in Google Calendar.
If you want to use Mash Ical in WL it’s a bit more messy. Because the URL syntaxt of Mash Ical is http://www.mashical.com/cal.ics?id=your calendars id], WL won’t accept it. To import a calendar in WL, it HAS to end with .ics. What I did to work around this, was to create a simple .php file which I saved as an ics file. The only command I used was readfile() which refers to my Mash Ical calendar. Then you create an .htaccess file where you make your webserver compile ics files as a php file. Then in WL Calendar you simply subscribe to your ics file (which really is just a php file mirroring the ics file from Mash Ical).
Hope that can help. It helped me at least.
Benjamin
Benjamin – thanks for going into such detail about this. I have an associate who has an iPhone who will want to know about this!
Lynn
benjamin that is definately useful! I really need google calendar to connect to all my live calendars so i can view them on my mobile (why there is no windows live mobile amazes me!)
I think google calendar does accept ics but if you try and subscribe to WL it complains about robots.txt not allowing it
However, mash ical doesn’t seem to be working properly at the moment with Google cal so here’s hoping they sort the issue soon!
Benjamin can you give a bit more on the .htaccessfile? Are you saying you manged to get this in to Windows Live and syncing from mashical?
Thanks
I read this from another persons post. I found this to be quite helpful however, I am at the beginning stages. I further read that the sync will go thru, however it will take some hours for the feed to update from WL to Google Cal.
If you’re importing a CSV, it needs to be formatted as per reference. However, the method I suggest for importing from Windows Live is to use the ICS feed:-
1. In Windows Live calendar select “Share” and select your calendar then mark “Share this calendar” and tick “Make your calendar public” (temporarily)
2. You will see option to get the ICS link that says “ICS:Import into another calendar application” – click that and copy the feed URL that begins “webcal://cid-….”
3. In Google Calendar click “Add by URL” from the “Add” on the left hand side, paste in the URL you copied in step 3 and make sure you tick “Make the calendar publicly accessible?” You now have now have the calendar fed into Gcal but not yet imported.
4. Go into the fed Calendar’s settings under Settings>Calendars (click on calendar name) and click on the green ICAL button and open the link in your browser and copy all (Ctrl-A>Ctrl-C) the ics code/text you see and paste into a text editor like notepad and save as an ics e.g. mycal.ics
5. Go to Import Calendars in Gcal (Settings>Calendars>Import Calendars) and import the new file you just made to your preferred calendar most likely your primary and all being well your import is complete.
6. Unsubscribe the fed calendar in Gcal and return to Windows Live and uncheck your calendar as Public to complete the process
References:
[1] About CSV files – Google Calendar Help(Web)
http://www.google.com
Query used: google csv calendar
In step 4. when I open the link in firefox or Chrome, I get nothing. In Opera, I get the following:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:webcal://cid-437be92db313bc6c.calendar.live.com/calendar/My+Ca
lendar/calendar.ics
X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
END:VCALENDAR
But it doesn’t import to Google calendar. Am I doing something wrong?
When I add my Google Calendar’s ICAL address and subscribe to it in Windows Live Calendar no entries appear.
I tried to make my calendar public and used the puclic ICAL URL and stil no entries appear.
I don’t know what’s wrong.
Okay. Problem solved.
It just takes some time until the Windows Live Calendar fetches the data.
Glad to hear it and thanks for posting.
Lynn
I can’t find the subscribe button in Windows Live Mail!
Can’t I sync my google calender in the WL Mail programme? And will it be updated?
My husband uses google calender, but I’m using WL mail as a programme.
Help! Thanks
Thanks for writing. Since I wrote this, a new release of Windows Live, called ‘wave 4′ has been released. You’ll know you have it (and you probably should by now), if your mail view has more features to it, like ‘sweep, mark as, move to’. If you have that, then you have wave 4.
Moving over to the calendar, I see there is still a subscribe button, but it’s not like the picture I have in the article. It’s near the top at the left with some other menu items, such as ‘new, delete, subscribe, share’. So look for a click on the subscribe button and the rest of the process looks the same. Let me know if it works or not.
Lynn