Moving from Outlook 2010 to Google Calendar

Where I work, we use Exchange for calendars, emails, etc. It's great and I've been using it for years in many places I worked at. Over the years, I've created two offline calendars (PSTs) that went with me from place to place. One for events such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and the other for to do items (call XX on a specific day/time).

I realize that to manage to do items there are other tools (including Outlook's tasks) - but calendar is kind of universal and syncs with everything.

I decided that instead of moving these PSTs around all the time, I'll just put them in my Google account (Calendar). I did some Googling and found this. However, the File menu in my case, had the Save As... option disabled. The export option (File -> Options -> Advanced -> Export) can only export to a CSV file which has fundamental problem of not supporting recurring events (a big problem for my Birthdays calendar...).

So, instead of the File option mentioned in above link, I found the following 'Email Calendar' option in the 'Home' tab:

Clicking that will create a new email and open the following window:

Click the 'Show...' button under 'Advanced:' and make sure the two option are checked (if relevant). Click Ok. The new email window is now populated with the the calendar information. What you need is the attachment. Save it somewhere and dismiss the email (you don't need it).

Now go to your Google calendar and optionally create a new calendar to import to. You can also choose to import to an already existing calendar:

To import into the new (or existing calendar), go to settings (button/link to the right of 'Add' calendar) and click 'Import calendar':

Choose the .ics file you exported from Outlook and then the calendar to import events into:

Click 'Import' and you're done !


Syncing with iOS devices
Follow these steps to sync your iOS device with Google. Note that you will be using Exchange and not GMail. If you want to sync multiple calendars, follow these steps as well (they are referenced from the first page as well).