Sync Entourage and iCal?

[ee99ee]

I connect to my largest client's Exchange server over a VPN connection using Entourage. From there, I do all my communications and such with anything related to that client. For all my other clients, I use Mail.app and iCal. I sync my Palm Treo 650 to iCal using iSync.

I would like appointments put on my Entourage calendar to show up in iCal. Mainly so I can sync it to my Treo, but also so I can have one view of my calendar in at least one place... oh, and did I mention Entourage's calendaring sucks? Yeah, that too.

It would be really cool if I could just add the two as "devices" in iSync and have it sync one way... then again, that doesn't make much sense. Is there a way to do this, somehow?

If not, what would be the best manual process to accomplish this, other than typing each appointment by hand into iCal (which I do now)?

-Chris

 

[nadyne]

I connect to my largest client's Exchange server over a VPN connection using Entourage. From there, I do all my communications and such with anything related to that client. For all my other clients, I use Mail.app and iCal. I sync my Palm Treo 650 to iCal using iSync.
I would like appointments put on my Entourage calendar to show up in iCal. Mainly so I can sync it to my Treo, but also so I can have one view of my calendar in at least one place...

If you're running Tiger and Entourage 11.2.3 or later, you can synch with iCal. Open up Entourage's preferences, and then select Sync Services in the left pane. Then choose what you want to synch.

If you're not running Tiger, maybe this is enough to convince you to upgrade. If you're not running a recent update of Entourage, you can download it from Mactopia.

--
Nadyne Mielke | user experience researcher
Microsoft Corporation | Macintosh Business Unit
http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/

 

[ee99ee]

Well, I'm actually not as much interested in pulling my iCal data into Entourage as I am my Entourage data into iCal. I should have been more clear, sorry.

-Chris

 

[nadyne]

Well, I'm actually not as much interested in pulling my iCal data into Entourage as I am my Entourage data into iCal. I should have been more clear, sorry.

That's exactly what this feature does.

Entourage now syncs with OS X Sync Services, which is the central database for everything that syncs in OS X. After you've enabled syncing in Entourage and the data replicates to iCal (it might take a few minutes if you've got a lot of data), you'll have a new calendar in iCal named Entourage. That will have all of your Entourage calendar data. And then everything will sync to your Treo via iSync.

So if you prefer to mainly use iCal, you can create new events in the Entourage calendar in iCal, and they'll sync back to Entourage too. This is useful when you're in an Exchange environment and you care that your free/busy information is correct on the server.

If you're really interested in more details about it, you can check out the Entourage Sync Services and Spotlight FAQ from the Entourage MVPs. They bundled those two features together in their FAQ because the functionality to enable Sync Services and Spotlight was released in the same service pack.

If you have more questions about the ins and outs of this, you might want to check out the Microsoft public newsgroup for Entourage. The folks who wrote the aforementioned FAQ keep a close eye on that newsgroup, and they're immensely helpful.

HTH!

Regards,
Nadyne.

--
Nadyne Mielke | user experience researcher
Microsoft Corporation | Macintosh Business Unit
http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/

 

[ee99ee]

Alright I did that... and wow, that's just cool... thank you!!!!

-Chris

 

[Scottyk9]

Alright I did that... and wow, that's just cool... thank you!!!!

-Chris

Yeah, I can't wait to try it, but I am still waiting for our Exchange server upgrade from 5.5.....

Glad to know that it works

 

[nadyne]

Alright I did that... and wow, that's just cool... thank you!!!!

Glad you like it!

/nm

 

[Scottyk9]

Finally!

So far this has been working extremely well for me (even using iCal primarily). Synchronizing has been accurate and seamless.