How to sync iCal, Google Calendar, and an iPhone
If you're running Mac OS X 10.5, theory has it that you can get your iCal calendar(s) synced with Google Calendar, because they both support a thing called CalDAV.
I wanted to set this up so that Kate and I could share a calendar while she's at work. I don't have a complicated calendar set-up - in fact, I've made a point of keeping it as simple as possible. I don't want to manage many different calendar files, I just want one.
(In demos, both Apple and Google show calendar apps with multiple calendars on show - one for home, one for work, one for the kids, and so on; I don't see the point of this, so I keep all dates for everything in a single calendar.)
Setting up the sync is OK, and everything seems to work as expected between iCal and Google Calendar.
The problem comes when you add an iPhone to the equation.
The iPhone won't let you add events to a Google-hosted calendar. If the calendar you sync with Google is your only calendar, when you try to add an event on the iPhone, it will create a new local calendar - which ruins everything. This new calendar will get synced to your desktop but not to Google. What a pain in the backside.
There is a solution to this, thanks to Google's support for Exchange Server.
Full instructions are here, but the short explanation is that you can set up your Google Calendar to automagically sync with iCal and the iPhone app.
Google Calendar becomes the central fulcrum around which everything else syncs, taking over that task from iCal.
I shouldn't have to remind you to make backups of your calendar files before attempting to get this working. In iCal, select a calendar, then click File - Export. Simple. Then you can always import from that file if everything goes wrong.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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