Google has just taken a big step in making the lives of both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar users easier. For someone who used both, maybe one for work and the other for home, keeping the calendars up to date and in sync with each other was no easy process until now. Google has just released a new syncing utility so that people are able to sync events between their Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar.
At this point it only works with your primary Google Calendar and not your secondary ones. What’s nice though is that you have control over how often the events are synchronized (every 10 minutes is the minimum time interval) as well as the direction of the synchronization. Your options include a 2-way sync where both calendars are synchronized with each other, as well as one-way options to sync only your Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook Calendar with the other.
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To get started, you’ll need to download Google Calendar Sync, and the link and directions for installation are found here. Once installed, it will load when you turn on your computer and then sit in your system tray for easy access. The icon in your system tray will also serve as a way to know when your events are currently syncing. One icon appears during the sync process and another appears when events aren’t actively syncing.
In the future it would be nice to see the option to sync secondary calendars because many people do have multiple calendars. It’s a great start though, and now there is room to improve and make the utility even better. I think Google made a lot of people extremely happy today…
Thanks for the tip Change!
That’s an awesome change! I have to use Outlook for work, now to be able to sync the two is great. Now finally I think Google Calendar may be useful. As it is I have stuck with Outlook since I could sync it with my Palm TX, now I have more options and more is always better. Thanks Ashley.
It would be nice if we could all get away with just using one calendar for work and home, but since that’s not always possible, more options is definitely better.
Google calender has gained quite a following, this will definitely help expand that.
Woohoo my first tip
Unfortunately I cannot yet use this app because I really need it to be able to sync multiple calendars (work work, home home, home birthdays etc.). Looking forward to always having the most recent version of the calender I need to see with me.
I actually can’t believe that it took Google this long to create that, and I’m sure there are quite a few companies who are not pleased with Google releasing this… the first one that comes to mind is Calgoo.
Plaxo is another one. Been using it, but it seems to create duplicates very often.
I’ve been using it just for the past few days and it seems to lock up my Outlook. Maybe my calendar is too big. I’m only doing Google to Outlook syncing, not two way.
I expect that they will have some fine tuning to do, but would have guessed that they would have tried it with rather large calendars to ensure that it worked.
I don’t know anyone who has only one google primary calendar – they need to allow secondary syncing ASAP; without it, I’m still in the same situation as before.
Anyone know an easy way to sync them all together via a different app?
to reply to dans post, if you can do with just viewing multiple Google Calendars + an Outlook calendar (without sync) check out WinCalendar. It alows you to merge multiple Google Calendars + Outlook Calendar onto a editable calendar in MS Word or Excel in a variety of layouts. See WinCalendar.com for more info.
I’m with Dan (I don’t know anyone who has only one Google calendar). Aside from increased bandwidth issues, what’s the rationale behind synchronizing a single calendar? Maybe I’m forgetting something here, but hasn’t Google offered multiple calendars from Day One (right after lasers at 8 o’clock)?