Synchronizing a calendar between
Sunbird and Google Calendar is
a less painful process than what
Outlook users experience (as you’ll
learn below). Fire up Sunbird and cre-
ate a new calendar by right-clicking
the Calendar Name box and select-
ing New Calendar. You’ll choose a
calendar that’s “On the Network,” as
you’ll be pulling the information that’s
being relayed to your computer via
GCALDaemon’s synchronizer.
Click Next, then copy and paste the
.ics calendar link from GCALDaemon’s
HTTP Synchronizer screen—the one
you just navigated to in the previous
step—into the Location fi eld. Press
Next again, assign a name and color to
your calendar, and you’re done. Your
calendar should now auto-populate
with all of the entries from your Google
Calendar. Add, edit, or delete an entry
from Sunbird and it’ll be immediately
refl ected in your online calendar. Thesame is true in the opposite direction,
although we’ve found that there’s often
a slight delay when synchronizing from
Google Calendar to Sunbird. If you’re
impatient, you can jam Control+R in
Sunbird, which automatically refreshes
your calendar with the latest informa-
tion it can fi nd.In a perfect world, you’d use the steps
listed above to synchronize a calendar
with Outlook. But Microsoft’s software
doesn’t like the fact that you’re pointing
to a local calendar link, so you’ll have
to get a little creative. And by that we
mean you’re going to have to dabble
with a program you’ll have to pay for.
SyncMyCal Lite allows you to syn-
chronize up to seven days’ worth of
events: from three prior to the current
day to three days after. But we think
it’s worth spending $25 for the unlim-
ited synchronization that comes with
SyncMyCal Pro.Installing the program adds a
toolbar to your Outlook application.
Click the Settings button and select
Sync Operations. Click the Add but-
ton and SyncMyCal’s confi guration
options will pop up. Next, select one
of the synchronization options in the
Operation menu. Choosing the Outlook
preference will overwrite existing
events on the Google Calendar with
any Outlook-based updates, and new
Google events will transfer down to
your Outlook calendar. The Google
preference overwrites existing Outlook
events with Google-updated informa-
tion and picks up any new events cre-
ated on the Outlook side.
Make your choice and select the
Outlook calendar you want to syn-
chronize. Enter your Google Calendar
details in the provided fi elds and press
the Get My Calendars button below
that. Select the Google Calendar you
want to synchronize from and/or to and
hit Save.
If you use the free version of
the app, you’ll have to press the
Synchronize button on the toolbar
every time you want to update your
calendars—the auto-sync option only
comes with SyncMyCal Pro.4 a Two-Way Sync: Sunbird
4 b Two-Way Sync: Outlook
You can synchronize multiple calen-
dars in Mozilla Sunbird. They’ll all
appear in the left-hand menu, nicely
color-coded.Fiddle around with SyncMyCal’s cat-
egory synchronization options if you
want to link specific events with your
online calendar.00 MAXIMUMPC | XXX 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com