Sync iCal with Google Calendar

How nice would it be to have your calendars with you wherever you go? The iPhone and iPod Touch help out with that a lot, but sometimes you just want to work with your schedule on a real computer. Say you’re at your friend’s house and you need to check what time your appointment is tomorrow, but you don’t have your computer with you? If you use Apple’s built in iCal you have no reason to not sync with Google Calendar!

Things you’ll need:
• OS X 10.5
• iCal calendars
• a Google account
• Google Collaboration sync tool for iCal

Okay, first things first. You probably have calendars already in your iCal, so we need to export those and import them to Google Calendars. To do this select the calendar you would like to export (you have to export and import one calendar at a time unfortunately...) then go to File and “Export...”

Save each calendar to the desktop then head on over to Google Calendar. First thing we need to do is make the same number of calendars in Google Calendars as you want to import. To do this click “Create” on the left side:

Then once, you’ve made your new empty calendars, you’re ready to import. On the bottom of your current calendars you will see a link to “Add” the select “Import Calendar.”

Select each calendar individually and import them to the corresponding calendar you just made.

Now just go back to your Google Calendar page to see all of your calendars imported to Google! Now that the hardest part is over, lets get the syncing part set up! Download the Google Collaboration sync tool for iCal. Just open the application and plug in your Google name and password and select “Add to iCal.”

Just delete your original Calendars so you don’t have doubles of all your events, and you’re all done!

Now whenever you edit, add or delete anything on your calendars they will automatically update both on your computer and on Google Calendars. If you’re in a place with no available internet, no worries, the next time your computer sees a connection it will update!

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