1/17/09

Publishing from iCal to Google Calendar

I thought that what I want to do should be easy. Straightforward even. I want to publish my iCal calendar to Google Calendars. But in days of “Googling,” I cannot find a straightforward solution. I find others who want to do the same thing and answers that tell them how to use a 3rd party product or intermediary site. I find the question asked—”How do I publish iCal calendars to Google Calendars”—to find answers discussing syncing calendars (how you can, how you cannot, and, again, other products to help).

I posted the following on the Apple Discussion groups:
I want to do something that apparently few others do. I have 6 calendars in iCal. (In iCal use them as other calendars use categories.) So, I have Personal, Birthdays, Meetings, School, etc.

I would like to publish them to Google Calendars. I want to use iCal (and the Calendar in my iPod touch) as my primary calendar. I want it mirrored on Google.

I looked at the “Life Hacker” blog pointed to in http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8360980&#8360980. There was one comment from someone who wanted to do what I want to do. The instructions create 6 (in my case) Google calendars. I don’t want that. I want to publish my iCal calendars to Google.

When I try to just publish Meetings, for example, to Google, I select a Calendar (Meeting) and select publish on a Private Server. I give the URL https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/fred%40avolio.com/user (which is my default calendar on my Google Apps account). I click Publish. The blue progress line goes left to right twice and then…

Publish failed for calendar “Meeting.” Calendar https://fred%40avolio.com@www.google.com/calendar/dav/fred@avolio.com/user/Meeting.ics could not be found.
No answers yet.

I have a few calendars I want to publish so I can see them on Google Maps (and so others can), As I said, I want iCal (and Events on my iPod Touch) to be where I create events. I don’t need to sync calendars (except between my Mac and my iPod).

Now, I thought that I could publish directly to Google Calendars. In the mean time, I am publishing to iCal Exchange, run by a a guy running a free calendar sharing service. Publishing there worked flawlessly.

Then, in Google Calendars, I added each calendar I published to iCal Exchange by selecting Add by URL. It works fine. But, I didn’t think I should need an intermediary site. I believe I should be able to publish directly to my Google Calendars.

I’m waiting for an answer. I got an answer that works. See the comments, below.

4 comments:

theodore said…

has anyone replied to your questions? I am currently having the same issue with you and refuse to pass from an intermediate site….
how did you sort out your cals sync?

thanks for your response

Fred Avolio said…

I was excited to read Alternatives to MobileMe. The writer seemed to describe a way to do what I want to do: to have my iCal events not only synced with my iPod touch, but also with Google Calendar. Recall, I don’t care if it synchronized with Google Calendar; I just wanted my iCal calendar mirrored there. This article seemed to describe how to sync!. So I tried it and it seemed to work.

I took screen shots along the way, because it really did seem like it was working. Basically, I created calendars on Google Calendar to match mine in iCal, I exported all of them from iCal, an imported them into the related Google Calendars. That worked. Then I synced with my iPod. And I found that unlike the iCal-grounded calendars, I could not edit any Google-based calendars on my iPod. (I could in iCal.)

Showstopper and back to the beginning.

Fred Avolio said…

I did get a solution. BusyMac’s BusySync. It is not free, but it is only a one-time $25 purchase to do what I want to do. My iCal calendars easily publish to calendars on Google, and I can share them with my wife (and others).

Anonymous said…

I had luck syncing iCal with Google Calendars both of my own and all the Google Calendars of my staff using NuevaSync http://www.nuevasync.com/. there are a few issues like one calendar that shows up on my iPhone as both "On my Mac" and shared google calendar but I just don't select that and it's fine.