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Almost True Google Calendar and Outlook Sync

Last week I wrote about how Google had released a tool to sync your Outlook and Google calendars. I had some concerns:

1. It only syncs Outlook events I schedule, so all the meetings that people set up that I need to attend I still have to manually sync.
2. It only syncs the primary Google calendar.

Well it looks like issue number one no longer exists. I am not really clear if this an update or just a case of poor documentation, but looking around today I found out how to make this work. Item number two on this page explains it in detail but the short is this:

1. You must first associate your Outlook email address (this is my corporate address) with your Google account.
2. When setting up the syncing program on your Windows machine, enter this address as the one to sync AND NOT your Google Gmail address as you would think.
3. Run sync. This will add all of your Outlook appointments that you either organized or are a guest on to your Google Calendar. It will also pull down all your appointments on your Google Calendar primary calendar and place them in your Outlook calendar.

While still lacking in the ability to sync multiple calendars from Google to Outlook or to add to Google those meetings set up on a distribution group, this is much closer to the holy grail and accomplishes what I was trying to do. I now have the ability to automatically sync my work calendar (in Outlook) to Google which I then use the iCal subscription URL to import to my Mac’s calendar and sync to my iPhone. Now I have my complete calendar (with a few minor exceptions) on my phone (my true goal) and accessible via the web if I don’t have my phone (Google Calendar).

Google Calendar and Outlook Synchronization from Google

Google launched a synchronization tool this week that allows one-way and two-way syncing with Outlook on Windows machines (where is the Mac version for Entourage or iCal?). This looked to be the holy grail of my synchronization…but alas it is nothing more than a gilded goblet.
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