Backing up Google Calendar

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I know this isn’t a Google forum, but I was/am hoping that someone out there uses Google Calendar and can help me out.  I tried the Google forum but somehow am not getting much headway.

“ALL” I want to do is back up my Google calendar daily.  No need for it to be automated, just that it would work.  I cannot seem to get the file(s) in place to accomplish this.

Can/should I import  into Outlook and then just back up the Outlook (365) data file(s)? I could do that I suppose, especially is there is sync between my desktop Outlook and Outlook online.

I tried the export of the Google online calendar, and got no errors, but when I went to import same it said it was empty.

Help/suggestions?

Chuck Billow

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Google Calendar exports in standard .ics format, so there isn’t anything unique or special about it. In your web browser, go to your Google Calendar settings, and click the “Export” button. It should export as a .zip file containing your .ics file.

The .ics file is an ordinary text file, so drag it into a text editor (Windows Notepad will do) and you should be able to examine the contents. Your calendar events will be shown as a series of “VEVENT” entries, such as this example (with PII removed):

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:
X-WR-TIMEZONE:
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:
DTEND:
DTSTAMP:
UID:
CREATED:
LAST-MODIFIED:
SEQUENCE:
STATUS:
SUMMARY:
TRANSP:
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Note: if you have multiple calendars (my Google acct has 5 calendars), you need to export each calendar separately.

Note: if you want to import a calendar, I believe it has to be in .ics format, so don’t try to import the .zip file. Extract the .ics file and import that.

 

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TechTango

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