View Your Google Calendar in Outlook 2007
Google Calendar is a phenomenal web application for managing your calendars, but so many of us are still forced to use Outlook at work. The good thing is you can have the best of both worlds by subscribing to your Google Calendar from Outlook.
The first thing you’ll have to do is get your Google Calendar iCal link. Just open your Google Calendar and go to Settings \ Calendar.
Pick the calendar you want to sync with Outlook. Now in the Private Address field click on the ICAL button. This will show you your private Calendar address. Copy this address to the clipboard.
Now open Outlook and go to Tools \ Account Settings.
In Account Settings choose the Internet Calendars tab, click on New… and Paste the URL you just copied from Google into the location and click Add.
You then get to the subscriptions screen. Give the calendar a name and description and click OK.
You can now see the calendar in the list in the Outlook sidebar panel.
That is all there is to it! Now I can view my Google Calendar side by side with my personal or work calendar!
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Someone’s gotta add this feature to OL2003
((
I tried it, but Outlook 2007 tells me that it “cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar” address or add it to Outlook.
The tab in Account Settings takes the URL and everything but doesnt update, and doesnt give me any “Other Folder” in the list.
Of all the complicated stuff Outlook 2007 does so well, how did they manage to screw THIS up?
HA! I thought M$ finally did something right. Nope. This feature would be great if it would just work. I have the same issue as the fellow above me.
Make sure you choose the Private Address in google calendar and not the Calendar Address.
How do I find the private URL? I can only find the public one and don’t see the “Private address” option.
You have to be logged in as the user to the “Private Address” option. If you’re looking at someone else’s calendar you’ll only see the Calendar Address option.
Becky,
Thanks for the suggestion, but it seems like it was something else:
Using the admin control panel, I had set the highest level of sharing to “Do not share”. This makes the “Private address” section disapear.
So, to fix this: go to “https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/MYVERYCOOLDOMAIN/Dashboard” and log in as an admin, Service settings -> Calendar -> Sharing options.
Save the changes and we have lift off!
Cheers!
Stephan Dekker
(Filed under: “Missing private address section”, “Private ical not showing up”)
The steps above worked for me and i see the goggle calendar in outlook. But whenever I update the calendar in google will it automatically show my the updated google calendar when I view it in outlook?
Worked great and easy for me. It updates everytime I hit “send/ receive” (F9). Too Easy!
One slight problem I have noticed is that the google calendar is a read only calendar. I would like to be able to write to my google calendar from within Outlook. As of now, the only way to do that is to invite my google address as an invitee to my event on my default calendar in outlook. I hope that makes sense. Write back with any questions.
Does anyone have the answer to the issue of “cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar” address or add it to Outlook?”
Are you sure you are getting the right link from GMail. I don’t recall if it is iCal or XML that you need, butI think you might have selected the wrong one.
Hi,
I found the way to get around the “cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar” problem (for Google calendars, at least) was to:
1. paste the private URL for the ICS file into your browser (Firefox, in my case) location bar
2. change the http:// prefix to webcal://
3. hit enter
4. the browser should then offer to launch the external application (Outlook 2007) for you to handle this URL.
5. Follow the Outlook 2007 prompts and it should subscribe to the calendar
YMMV
Thanks man works great…
Daniel,
That did not work for me
I still get the “cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar” even that way.
Does this have something to do with the URL encoding of the “@” sign in the username part of the URL?
Thanks Daniel. That worked like a charm.
Daniel Pauly,
I tried what you said and it worked… except for the fact that by doing so, you are basically skipping the Internet Calendar subscription process. My shared Google calendar is not added to Outlook’s Internet Calendar list, and thus is not updated. It’s more like adding a snapshot than subscribing to an Internet Calendar.
Has anyone found a way of avoiding the “cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar” problem? I imagine this problem is due to the fact that we are using POP3 emails, and as such are not logged into a a “domain”.
Fernando
This makes sense …. it seems Excel basically does just take a screenshot of ht URL … We need to investigate how to add a live feed to Excel. Also … how to verify results are in “real time”.
Dude, you need to update this post and talk about google’s tool for synching your google calendar with outlook…
http://dl.google.com/googlecal.....taller.exe
Awesome tip! Works like a charm!
Daniel – the problem with your method (either click the .ics link or loading it in a browser window) is Outlook doesn’t SUBSCRIBE to it but rather, it takes a “capture” of the calendar. There will never be any updates to that calendar because it’s a static snapshot.
See details here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en.....51033.aspx
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the feedback, but that hasn’t been my experience. Following the method I described, all my updates to my Google calendars are automatically synced to to my Outlook calendars.
As I said, YMMV.
Happy to help with any specific inquiries.
cheers,
Daniel
Regarding the Outlook 2007 error of the private Google iCal address being an invalid calendar:
I tried Daniel’s approach a while back and it was being static since it was not added to my Internet Calendars (it shows up in Calendar view but not in Tools->Account Settings->Internet Calendars).
Here is what worked for me:
Add the new Internet calendar but modify the prefix from https:// to webcal://
Details:
Tools->Account Settings->Internet Calendars->New
Paste the private Google calendar iCal link
Modify https to webcal
Hope this helps,
Afzal
I also got the Outlook 2007 error: “cannot verify or add the internet calendar to outlook. verify the link is a valid”, until checked the “Make this calendar public” checkbox under the “Share this calendar” tab in google calendar. The https prefix worked fine then.
Hello
It works but I can’t make a new appointments to my google calander bucause i get the msg:
I can’t change the contens of this dir because it is read-only(this msg was translated).
Who does know to solve this problem?
Marc
Part 1 – http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mys.....k-imaging/
Part 2 – http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mys.....reamscene/
Making the calendar public isn’t a particularly great idea since I do not believe you want to share it with the world.
The only solution that worked for me is using the Google calendar Sync utility provided by Google. The only problem I had with that was that it works with a single calendar and sometimes causes Outlook to hang. Not enough for me to get rid of it but enough to notice the issue.
Hope this helps.
Afzal
Hi,
I’ve tried all the tips in these posts. I can’t add my GCal into Outlook 2007, nor can I add any other public iCal feed to my Outlook account. Is is possible to lock out his feature on a business machine?
Thanks
Hi Guys
Is there anyway to get both sets of appointments (the ones’ in my deafault calendar and the ones in my GCal) to display in the startup Outlook Today screen and in the To-Do bar? I only get to see, and be reminded of appointments in the default calendar.
Thanks!
Daniel Pauly you are a star.
I’ve been looking for a solution to this for ages.
Cheers mate
Make sure you share your calendar to be public before you do this, otherwise, outlook 2007 will throw an error message
Thanks Afzar – I was having trouble with the “Cannot Verify or Add…” error. Switching the prefix to Webcal worked, and I don’t have to change my Share settings. I use the Google Sync option for my primary calendar, but if you have created more than one calendar in Google, this doesn’t sync them all. Adding the Private ICAL helps.
Daniel,
Your solution is the only one that actually DOES WORK and it updates nicely. Big thanks for that!
Google Sync tool does not work for me but I’m just one of thousands who have got an issue with that. Google guys always say on the forums that they are ‘working on it’ – whatever it means as it is taking forever.
Hi the above method did not work for me until I tried it a different way.
The Google iCal link starts with http:// Microsoft seems to want webcal:// . At any rate adding the calendar kept failing with the error ” Cannot verify or ad the Internet Calendar in Outlook. Verify the link is a valid calendar lin: ”
until I simply pasted it as a URL in my web browser. As soon as I did that, Outlook grabbed the calendar and we were all set, great !
Yes, but how do you get your subscribed calenderas to show up in the To-Do Bar?
If you have the error “Cannot verify or add the internet calendar to Outlook”, please see the link below for advice which might help if you enforce HTTPS for your Google Calendar service:
http://ryanmaizel.com/2009/07/.....s-and-ssl/
Daniel Pauly, Your tip worked wonderfully for me! Thanks! (I’m using Firefox)
I was getting the same Cannot verify or add the calendar error as you guys. I found the solution to be a two step process. Change the https to webcal like stated above, but also change any @ signs that have been encoded as %40 in the html code back to the @ sign. Wirked great for me and changes I make in google calendar are now syncing to outlook.
This is brilliant, thanks for the help.