The Holy Grail of Calendaring: sync’ing Exchange and Gcal using your Macintosh
Update February 2012: if you have Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) or later, check out Tungle. It is now possible to put your Exchange appointments and google appointments on the same calendar! Hooray! Using their connector and activating Outlook 2011′s Syncing services are the keys to getting this to work.
——
Update: this post applies to Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Exchange 2007. This post still gets a lot of traffic. If you’re looking to connect Snow Leopard to Exchange, try this post on The Apple Blog.
The short answer: it ain’t happening. But if you’re a Mac user, you’re used to pretty things in pretty packages that “just work” …except when they don’t. Then, if you’re like me, you spend hours casting about for work-around or magical solutions that will kludge things together just right, then blame Bill Gates when it doesn’t work. (Because we won’t blame The Steve.)
My goals are to get out of running Outlook (and thus Windows) and to have one calendar that contains my work appointments (Exchange) and my personal appointments, which are currently kept in Google calendar. Here is a list of things I’ve tried and discarded:
- Outlook 2007 running under Windows XP, using the Parallels Desktop emulator. This application, while elegant, is a processor and memory hog unless you have 2 GB of RAM. If you have 2 gigs of RAM and don’t mind jumping through this many Microsoft hoops, this solution is for you. One word of advice, though: once you get a windows virtual machine created with Office and your favorite AntiVirus software installed, create a clone of it and store that clone somewhere other than your hard drive. You will need gSyncIt to copy appointments from Outlook to a single Google calendar and vice versa.
- GroupCal is a program that syncs between Exchange 2000 or 2003 and iCal. It does not work with Exchange 2007 or under Leopard.
- SpanningSync is a program that syncs between iCal and Google calendar, which is great, but it leaves Exchange out of the equation.
- Entourage 2004 is a bloated piece of Very Broken Microsoft Crap that I would wish on no one. Entourage 2008 is its slightly slicker package that I will still not tolerate, as it makes my system beachball at random and inconvenient intervals, often falling behind on simple tasks like opening or typing an email. (Also: I know this is coincidence, but over the last month, I’ve installed Office 2008 twice, on two different Macs, and both hard drives died within a few days of installation. My IT advises against using Office 2008; I’m sticking to that for now.)
- Plaxo Online, with its rather Facebooky interface, purports to sync Outlook and Gcal to itself. Unfortunately, Outlook sync’ing requires, well, Outlook.
- Publish my work calendar on the web using Office Online, then do some iCal-fu to import to iCal and Gcal. This seemed like too much work, not to mention that it requires Outlook.
My current solution: use the gmail interface for work email and have a second tab in my web browser to my Exchange calendar. Even if there were a way to sync Exchange appointments with Google Calendar, I would probably have to continue working this way in order to create, accept, and decline appointments. I don’t like the stranglehold that Microsoft has on my calendar data; either I’m missing something or they just do not play well with others.
this sounds like getting in a fight in high school – you come out of it with a bunch of bruises and breaks having gained nothing – maybe those watching now know what to avoid …
Well, in this case, it is Microsoft’s fault. There are internet standards for everything that you want to do, and Apple conforms to those stands (ical isn’t just the name of a product, it’s also the name of a data format).
But, if this is Microsoft’s fault, then Overdrive is also (half) right when it says that it is Apple’s fault that Overdrive audiobooks won’t play on iPods. In that marketplace, Apple is doing exactly what Microsoft is doing with Outlook: defining the rules and telling people, “Our player, our rules.” Of course, this is also caused by the fact that Overdrive (and the publishers) have been requiring DRM.
What bugs me most about Overdrive is the fact that they keep talking about MP3s, when what they really are are WMVs.
Well, Exchange 2007 is supposedly iCal-compliant, so I have been waiting for all kinds of new Exchange/Thunderbird/GoogleCal goodness, and it just hasn’t happened. Did Exchange become iCal compliant too late?
I’ve been battling the same thing, and thought you’d be interested in this – http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955
Google Calendar recently came out with their own sync to and from outlook. And it seems to work!
SO – since I use Outlook calendar, Gcal, iCal and the iphone calendar… (yikes, way too many!), I have made Google Calendar the main one. Now outlook and gcal sync up fine, so all I have to do is make sure to turn on my Mac once in awhile and open up the calendar… and it seems to be working.
Something to try, anyway!
I, too, was excited to see the announcement about Outlook and Gcal sync, but it requires Windows and Outlook. Still hoping for a solution that doesn’t require Windows. Entourage 2008 and Exchange 2007 server-side rules might be something to look at next, but Entourage is so slow that I can’t see using it other than to sync occasionally.
Groupcal actually does work with Exchange 2007, or at least it was for me…until I upgraded to Leopard. They say on their website that an update will be forthcoming in the first quarter of 2008. Well…
I just keep all my appts in iCal and manually transfer any I need to.
Just a couple more ideas for the pot…
I use the ‘subscribe’ option in iCalendar to have my GCal information displayed with my iCalendar information. Unfortunately this is a read only view – I have to go into GCal to make changes
I previously used ‘ScheduleWorld’ to synchronise between several calendars as described at http://internetducttape.com/2006/08/11/the-holy-grail-of-synchronization-how-to-synchronize-microsoft-outlook-multiple-locations-google-calendar-gmail-ipod-and-mobile-phone-with-funambol-scheduleworld/ – although I’ve never tried this with iCalendar, it looks like it might work. I found it worked very well for GCal to Outlook sync (before Google released their own sync tool)
I just picked up the Exchange Server 2007 Web Services book, which makes it appear that someone could build an open-source web calendar that would sync with Exchange. Has anyone done it yet?
Still the best I found, and use, is NemusSync (jailbreak required). I configured my iPhone to use Microsoft Exchange Calender for my business calendar, and added Google Calendar for my private calendar(s). Works like a charm: can update any calendar on my iPhone and get it synced (using activesync or nemussync), and work in Outlook (Web Access) or just Google Calendar site, and vice versa.
It’s a pitty that development of NemusSync stopped since 2009-02-11, because Google Mobile Sync got released. Although the last release of NemusSync worked fine for me, I now fear the upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0. Unfortunately Google Mobile Sync is no substitute for me, because the iPhone (OS 2.x) only supports one single Exchange ActiveSync account: my business (Microsoft Exchange Calendar) account or my personal (Google Calendar) account.
Anyone know of (new) apps / services that (a) require no additional system or subscription, yet (b) enable to connect my iPhone’s calendar to multiple calendar sources, and keep these synchronized?
Update: just found out that iPhone OS 3.0 supports CalDAV! Enabling me to use my business Microsoft Exchange Calendar with Exchange ActiveSync, and to use my private Google Calendar(s) with CalDAV. More details at http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/06/17/subscribe-internet-calendars-iphone-30. Enjoy!