(The short story is: if you want to convert Google Calendar iCal v2 files to vCal v1 files for import into your Palm Desktop, use this web application I made last night. Please leave a comment on this posting if you use it!
If you’re interested in recent changes to the application, see the dynamic changelog on Google Code.)
It’s amazing how just when you really do need to put all your time into some deadline, you find the perfect WAB, better known as Work Avoidance Behaviour.
In any case, last night I was planning to work on two proposals with rapidly approaching deadlines, instead I somehow was convinced that it should be easy to import some of those neat iCal v2 files available on the web (for example as exported from Google Calendar) into my trusty Palm Desktop 4.1, which I use on my laptop to manage my life and synchronise with my Palm Tungsten C.
It turns out that this is far more complicated than necessary. Google Calendar only outputs iCal version 2, Palm Desktop, even the latest version, only imports vCalendar version 1. There are a number of websites that state that simply renaming the .ics file to .vcs, and changing the version tag to 1.0 does the trick. WRONG. Google Calendar iCal files actually use iCal version 2.0 features, so this idiot workaround does not, well, work around.
By now it was almost time for bed, and I’d tried Sunbird (exports ical v2), Evolution (the windows version is the worst POS software I’ve ever come across) and bunches of other things. No go. Finally I stumbled on vcal.py by Mark Bucciarelli. This almost worked, except for a few bugs (empty field handling, a.o.) which I fixed, and the fact that it doesn’t handle RRULEs at all. After reading the vcal standard, I implemented a really ugly RRULE transformation that seems to do the trick, mostly.
I’ve packaged all of this ugliness in a simple CGI that you can now use to convert Google Calendar iCal version 2.0 files to vCal version 1.0 files for consumption by your Palm Desktop. Use this entirely at your own risk of course, but let me know in a comment on this post (see below) if it works, or if it doesn’t.
(if you’re interested in the patch source, go to the ical2vcal site on googlecode.)
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Worked fine. Thanks. The failure of palm to deal with ics files is pain. You did a good job.
This worked quite well. Repeating events didn’t seem to translate. Saved me a lot of time.
I had high hopes, but I’m forced to keep looking. I get a bunch of invalid recurrence errors and none of the events load. I’m trying to get my google calendar synced with my Samsung phone through Samsung PC Studio.
Ditto. This is a real bummer.
I needed a way to combine my iphone calander and my palm. worked great. Thanks
It worked great. Many thanks.
Unfortunately, it’s don’t work correctly with russian language calendar files. (code page – CP1251). Could you please improve this?
Hi from Spain. It works fine. Thanks. Now I have my 3 calendars into my Palm.
Worked great! I used it to transport my Sunbird calendar into Palm Desktop. Now I can sync that with my Blackberry. Thanks for all of your work on this.
I just used this to convert the .ics file from http://www.qlubb.com to .vcs and import into my Treo 755P running DateBk5. It went without errors, but the event description in Qlubb became the event name in DateBk5, and the original event name didn’t come across. In fact, the event name wasn’t in the .vcs file at all. The same .ics file imported into Google Calendar worked fine.
Strike the comment about the event not being in the .vcs file. I found it labeled “summary”, which makes sense. I just imported it with the native Palm Calendar app, and it worked much better. I did find another problem: the end time is the same as the start time.
Didn’t work on import into C-Organizer.
Got a message saying ” is not a valid integer.
Any thoughts?
Exported Google ICS and saved to drive. Entered file into web conversion page. Converted ICS to VCAL, and saved back to drive. Imported VCAL into Palm Desktop Manager and Hotsyncd to update calendar to my Palm Centro.
Thank you, quick and easy! Got everything but the recurring appointments. Simple enough to copy those individually before exporting from Google. Thanks again!
Finaly: the simple solution for importing Google calendar to Palm OS I have been searching for hours! Easy, painless and free. Synchronizing by hand works fine for me now. Thanks a lot!
Great little converter. Thanks a bunch. My previous search for a converter turned up a $30 commercial software product that promised to inter-convert a variety of calendar formats. Google itself offers a converter for importing to Microsoft Outlook, which you could then use to upload to the Palm, but it doesn’t work with the old version (Outlook XP) I have. Thanks for making this available.
I’ll try the script when back home, but it promises a good job let’s hope. I’ll let you know tomorrow…great job!
Worked well, but I had the one day off strange time issue (Southwest Airline generated ical file into my Treo 680).
Thanks a MILLION!!!!
DFSNapa
Worked great for me. Thanks a lot!!
Worked perfectly for my Palm Centro. Many thanks!!!
Thanks for taking the time and doing something Palm should have done a long time ago.
Thank you for this utility. I used it to convert several symphony concert dates, which download in ICS format, to VCS for import into Palm Desktop (Mac), which I continue to count on despite the passage of time. The concerts imported to the correct dates, and concert descriptions entered correctly as attached notes. The only problem was that they imported as no-time events (I assume the original ICS files had the start time; using CanOpener to look at the text of the files, I could see that the duration was clearly given, in seconds) so I still had to put in the start and end times by hand, but this was not a big deal. It’s possible too that the original ICS files were defective in this respect. Thank you again.
Used again. Worked smoothly and quickly, saved me lots of typing.
Thanks again.
Thanks again.
Didn’t work for me, it imports the file flawlessly, but when I check my calendar, no events are loaded. Im guessing it’s either an empty file or my samsung star is simply not in the mood today.
Try nr 4. Failed. Onto program / script nr 5 !
Thank you
I used it to convert Thunderbird/Lightning generated ics files to vcs and it works perfectly.
Sweet. Except no use to me as it doesn’t handle time-zones (assumes all events are in local time-zone). Would it be difficult to apply the time-zone offset?
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I was in a pinch and thought I would have to retype an entire school year’s worth of dates into our student handbook. Your converter was a godsend! Worked perfectly. Can’t thank you enough…
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Brilliant! This has saved me a huge amount of time and tedious retyping.
Thanks so much!
Fabulous. What a blessing. Well done! And many thanks of course. Why couldn’t Palm have done this?
Thanks very much! No shortcomings that I can’t live with, so it’s extremely useful.
works well for me, thanks
thank yoou! I only have a lame sony clie sj22 and while i pine away for an ipad or iphone, i am soooo glad your cal program worked for my ancient clie.
Hi,
It seems to be missing some of my recurring items! Quite odd. Gets some, misses some. If I think of anything unusual about the ones it’s missing, I’ll let you know.
Thanks!
This job is perfect !!!
Thank you for all
Eric
Hello Mr. Botha
Almost all works fine. But there is a problem with german language “Umlaute” as ä, ü etc.
May it be possible to change Charset?
thanks.
Giulio
@Giulio:
Could you add your request to the issue tracker at http://code.google.com/p/ical2vcal/issues/list ? I don’t have time right this instant, but at least this way I won’t forget. :)
Hi,
Tried it once (tb lightning–> palm desktop), worked perfect. Tried it a second time, all appointments doubled. Is there a solution to that as well?
ical2vcal is simply translating what you’re giving it. If you translate the same source twice and import it into palm desktop twice, it’s up to palm desktop to make sure that no duplicates get created.
I don’t know which deduping solutions, or settings within palm desktop, exist, but I haven’t really looked recently.
Good luck!
Thanks! that was a very quick reply. Found out how to delete the entire datebook. Imported again, job done (I use google calendar and thunderbird lightning as a main source and just wanted these dates to be shown on my palm. hotsync takes a lot of time now, hopefully the calendar in the palm does not show all dates twice..
If you still need to dedupe, DbFixIt v2 claims to be able to do this. I’ve used it to fix minor corruption and it seems to work well. Haven’t needed to dedupe however so can’t speak for that.
Thanks, just found this when looking for a way to import an ical output from http://www.sfsymphony.org
to a Treo 680.
Downloaded an entire series of 7 in one file, and it seemed to convert well except that the description field wasn’t copied from ics to vcs — changed to “Reminder” instead. [Duration set to zero also but it was in the .ics as well, oops to them.]
Anyway, a big help and thanks again.
Thanks for a really useful facility.
I’m importing into a Palm TX from Google calendars. Worked OK except for weekly repeats. The code generates “RRULE:WP1 +” followed by stuff which causes the whole event to be silently ignored by Palm desktop. Any chance of a fix please to generate “RRULE:W1″ instead? Thanks.
Finally, a solution. Worked great. Thanks!
Worked like a charm. Sweet!
I need the inverse process.
I have a relatively big vcs calendar file from my phone and i would like to export to google calndar.
Any information?
Thanks.
The *very* first hit I get searching google is this:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=1cd218d86a70ff9f&hl=en
Have you tried just renaming VCS to ICS and importing?
Renaming was fine. Thanks!
Thanks for this – converted 10 events – very helpful.
I used it to convert a MLB iCal to a .vcs file that I could import into my Palm PDA. Your program ran so fast, I thought it was broken! The only enhancement would be to cleanup what shows up under the Notes section for the calendar entries.
Thanks for sharing!
It worked great. After losing my Blackberry, I’m temporarily using my old Treo 650 until T-Mobile starts selling their new Pyramid HTC high-end smartphone. Now at least I can carry around with me my Calendar and Contacts. It’s a tedious process, to have to convert each time from Outlook/Google Contacts/Calendar into Palm Desktop 6.2.2. by Access. Your .vcs converter from Google Calendar is one step. The other is using Outlook 2010 to convert .csv. GoogleSync handles automatically keeping Mr Gates and Mr Schmidt talking. Hopefully, in a few months this manual labor will all be but a bad dream.
this is works?
Great converter for Google calendar to Palm!
Tried to convert my the google agenda into samsung PC studio (vcs). Did not work. File was read but gave errors and no data shown..Thnx anyway .
Thank you very much for this tool!