I recently bought Microsoft Office 2013 Professional for use at home, while I am not a fan of the hefty price tag associated with Microsoft Office I got a really good deal on it through the company I work for. I am quite a fan of Microsoft Outlook and despite looking there is no free alternative which matches it (sorry Mozilla Thunderbird fans but having my calendar integrated is important to me), which is the main reason for me purchasing it.
While I am a fan of Microsoft Outlook I am an Android user and like having my calendar events in Google Calendar so that it is all sync’d in one location. So what I wanted to be able to do is to view the events from my Google Calendar within Microsoft Outlook. While Outlook has the capability to sync up with your GMail account it doesn’t sync up with Google Calendar as easily, so I thought I would share the steps that you need to take in order to view your Google Calendar events from Outlook.
Get your Google Calendar ICAL location
The iCalendar format (not to be confused with Apple iCal) is designed to allow for users to share event details or event entire calendars through .ics files, sounds like what we need doesn’t it. So we need to go to Google Calendar and into our settings;
Within the Google Calendar settings we need to switch to the ‘Calendars’ page.
Select the calendar that you want to get the iCal for, most people will only have one calendar so it’s an obvious choice which one to click.
When you have selected the calendar that you wish to view within Microsoft Outlook if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will be displayed with a Calendar Address and a Private address, Google describes them in the following way;
- Calendar Address – “The Calendar Address is the public address for your calendar. With this address, others can subscribe to your public calendar, view your events via feed readers, and view a read-only version of your calendar directly in their browser.”
- Private Address – “Your calendar’s Private Address is designed for your use only. All of your calendar information is available via your private links, so don’t share this address with others.”
As I wanted to be able to get information about all the events within my calendar I chose the Private Address.
By clicking on the ICAL green button you will be presented with a box containing the private address for your ICAL, you will need to copy this as we will need it.
Adding the iCal to Microsoft Outlook
Within Microsoft Outlook switch to calendar view and on your ‘My Calendars’ list right click to add a new Internet calendar.
This is where you need to paste in the link to the iCal file that you got from Google in the steps above.
You will then be asked to confirm that you want to add the Internet calendar to Microsoft Outlook.
Once you have confirmed that you want to have the iCal added to Outlook it will take a second or two to process and once it is finished you will have a new entry in your ‘My Calendars’ list.
Personally at this point I unticked the local calendar as I didn’t want to see it but you may wish to use both. One thing to note is that this is only a one way sync so you will not be able to add events to your Google Calendar from within Outlook, this isn’t the most convenient but it is better than not having the calendar in Outlook IMHO.
