Windows Calendar Sync with Google Calendar/Windows Live Calendar with Outlook

We’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 googlecalendarsettingscouple 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.
windowscalendarsubscibe 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.

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