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Google Calendar CalDAV/iCal syncing now official

Although the plumbing has been in place since the summer, it's always nice to have an official announcement, and now we do: Google has gone on the record with its support for CalDAV syncing from iCal to Google Calendar. You can now gracefully sync your editable Google calendars with your (Leopard-only) iCal, keeping a local copy of those events in the cloud.

Granted, both BusySync (which adds Bonjour-based iCal synchronization between Macs) and SpanningSync (which includes Address Book --> Google contact sync) have been handling this task with aplomb for some time, and they offer something Google hasn't -- a nice GUI for picking your sync options. That too has been addressed: Google Code is hosting the Calaboration sync setup tool, a basic checklist of calendars to add to your iCal setup.

If you are syncing your iCal and gCal data via Google's support for CalDAV, let us know how it's going.

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Although the plumbing has been in place since the summer, it's always nice to have an official announcement, and now we do: Google has gone...
 

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Kevin

Is anybody else having issues with multiple invite emails being sent when you create a meeting (with invitees) in iCal for one of the Google calendars? Whenever I create a meeting this way -- at least two if not three emails are received by the invitee (and it's from my gmail account).

December 11 2008 at 1:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

I just had a need for google calendar and the sync with iCal works fine, and very quickly.

I do wish the iphone calendar recognized shared/subscribed calendars, that would make life easier.

December 08 2008 at 11:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mike's comment
annarave

I *WANT* this to work. But I really need my calendars to show up on my iPhone. The gcal stuff shows up on my desktop but not on my phone! Ugh.

For now, I set up gCal as a button on my phone, so at least I can see the stuff, because I use my gCal as my primary calendar (it's the one my husband can see).

December 09 2008 at 1:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
madrista4ever

According to my iCal 3.05 "Preferences" -> "Accounts"

Availability:

Availability is not supported on the server for this account.

====

I am not surprised. When Gmail offered free IMAP feature. It took about a week or two for the service to become available to me. Google has an army full of servers around the world that it takes time to update them all.

December 06 2008 at 5:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to madrista4ever's comment
TXLogic

madrista4ever said 5:43AM on 12-06-2008
> According to my iCal 3.05 "Preferences" -> "Accounts"
> Availability:
> Availability is not supported on the server for this account.
>
> ====
>
> I am not surprised. When Gmail offered free IMAP feature. It took
> about a week or two for the service to become available to me. Google
> has an army full of servers around the world that it takes time to
> update them all.

So has the service become available to you? It's been almost four weeks since you posted. I'm getting the same message on 1 Jan 2009.

TXLogic

January 01 2009 at 11:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bengeldreich@gmail.com

The only issue I have is all the headings that appear in iCal after syncing (Google: Main Calendar) etc. I would like to organize them alphabetically but can't seem to find a way to do this. Dragging doesn't work neither does importing them one at a time in the order you would like. Other than that It works like a charm.

December 04 2008 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charlie Wood

Michael-

As it turns out, there are quite a few important differences between Google's CalDAV support and Spanning Sync that you don't cover here. I've written a blog post describing the ones we think will affect the most people::

http://spanningsync.com/caldav-comparison

Comments and questions are welcome.

Thanks,
Charlie
Spanning Sync

December 02 2008 at 10:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bunker

le Big Mac,

To move items to another calendar double click to edit details, from the drop down choose the cal you want to copy to and then delete original.

I've been using it for months. All the family usesit to sync four cals across three macs and also using gcal at work on windows machine. Only one problem when I ended up with duplicates of all the calendars - error by one of the users no doubt.

December 02 2008 at 10:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Allen

I don't know if I'm doing this right.
My iCal automatically adds anything that is added on GoogleCalendar when I open it and it syncs.
If I add something to my Iphone THAT data gets added to iCal but NOT to GCal until I drag and drop it from Ical into the GCal on the left side. It's just one step and sometimes I forget but it's not THAT big a deal.
Am I doing something wrong?

December 02 2008 at 9:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
smellvetica

Also Plaxo did nothing but screw up my whole address book. Seems to work for some but failed more than once for me. Use Google.

December 02 2008 at 8:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
guiltyblade

I went to mobileme just for this reason. To sync my desktop cal with some sort cloud cal. Plus integration to my iphone is key. If google did that and contacts. I would ditch mobileme. Luckily im still under the 60 day trial.

December 02 2008 at 2:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dai Roberts

hey i have been dealing with this and google is still a long way from perfect .

Try using: www.plaxo.com

Great for address book and calender syncing cross platform and free, I dont think they do iphone yet. but it always has worked for me for a year at least.

December 02 2008 at 2:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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