# KOrganizer workshop: Outlook to vCalendar

## Overview

When moving from &Microsoft; Outlook® to using &kde;'s &korganizer; to manage schedules and appointments, you will probably wish to export your scheduling data from Outlook® and import it into &korganizer;. &Microsoft;'s Outlook® program does provide an export option that can save an appointment to the industry standard vCalendar format.

Unfortunately, Outlook® will only export the appointment you have selected, one at a time. This is fine if you only wish to transfer a few appointments, but transferring the 200-300 appointments you may have in your Outlook® folder would not be much fun. Therefore, Randy Pearson created a small application named Outlook2VCal that can scan and export all the appointments to a vCalendar file at one time.

## Installation

The Outlook2VCal program is delivered as a compress ZIP file, which contains a SETUP.EXE application. Merely extract the files using your favorite utility, such as WinZip and run the SETUP.EXE program to install the program on your Windows computer. This should be the same computer where you normally run &Microsoft; Outlook 2000®.

Depending on how up to date your system is, you may or may not be prompted to reboot during the installation.

## Export Usage

After the program is installed, you can run it by accessing Start Programs Outlook2vCal Outlook2vCal. You should see this screen appear:

Outlook2VCal main window

The program automatically attempts to communicate with Outlook® using OLE Automation. If an error is reported, this probably means you do not have Outlook® installed.

You should first decide if you want to include information about holidays in the exported file or not. Normally you will probably not wish to do this, so the Skip Holidays box is checked by default. Next, click the Export button, which will display a standard File Save dialog box. Browse to the desired folder and enter the filename where you wish to create the new vCalendar data file.

Save file dialog

Depending on the security settings in Outlook®, you may see this screen next. If so, be sure to allow access for a minute or two.

Warning message

The program will display progress messages in its main window as it loads, converts and saves your appointments. Here is a final shot of what a successful run looks like:

Progress message

## Import Usage

Now that you have exported Outlook's® appointments, the final step is to load the appointments into &korganizer;. Transfer the file over to the computer running &korganizer; (via network, floppy disk, whatever). Now, run &korganizer;. If desired, you can create a new calendar, or open an existing one.

Importing data #1

Now, select File Merge Calendar from the menu. Browse and/or enter the name of the vCalendar file you just transferred to this computer.

Importing data #2

After you select the OK button, &korganizer; will load the appointments from the file and update its calendar.

Importing data #3

Save your modified calendar and enjoy using &korganizer;!

## Limitations

This program was tested on &Microsoft; Windows 2000 Server® and Professional® running &Microsoft; Outlook 2000®. When attempting to use &Microsoft; Outlook 97®, the program will fail miserably.

After a debugging session, it appears that &Microsoft; Outlook 97® does not export appointments correctly via OLE Automation, even though the documentation states that it will. Instead of providing complete information about an appointment, Outlook 97® only provided the subject however. It did not include start and stop times or any details, therefore this program will probably only work if you have Outlook 2000®.

If anyone has a work around for this problem, feel free to send a note to Randy Pearson (blueboy@bamafolks.com).

## Credits and license

Contributors:

Original author

- Randy Pearson blueboy@bamafolks.com

Additionals texts

- Klaus Stärk staerk@kde.org

Conversion to DocBook

- Eric Bischoff e.bischoff@noos.fr

&underFDL;