Ok, so this is my first blog, and my first "How-To", so go easy on me! I was trying to get a one-stop shopping on my iphone calendar, as well as syncing with google calendar for those same calendars. To give you a brief history, I have 3 kids, a girlfriend, her son, and of course myself. Because of confusion, all 6 of us have our own google calendars, so that way when it says "Dentist" for instance, I know who exactly has that appointment. Color coding is of course the idiot-proofing, but different people have access to each of those 6 google calendars.
Ok, so now that the basics are out there, I wanted to make it so that each of my MobileMe calendars (one for each of us) sync'd to the appropriate Google Calendar. Now there's no easy way to do this, since Google and Apple are kind of competitors (can't we all just get along?), so we have to use the infamous man-in-the-middle. Since I'm on windows (i've seen something similar for iCal on the Mac), I've got Outlook on my home computer. So the trick here is to have Outlook do all the heavy lifting. So here's what you need to do first:
1. Setup your MobileMe to sync with Outlook.
- Just head on into the "MobileMe" software (a cloud icon in the lower right) and go into preferences, then Sync. Check "Calendars" and select Outlook.
2. Next you'll need gSyncIt (www.daveswebsite.com Price: $14.99, was 9.99 sale when I got it.)
- There are other programs out there that work also, but this one is great, and it's a good price. It works right with Google Calendar and Outlook. He also provides great support as well as good directions on the site on how to setup your calendar sync. It doesn't do "push" calendar sync, but you can have it check every 5 minutes. But any time there IS a change, MobileMe pushes it to me.com which then pushes it to your phone!
3. So first you need to add a new Calendar (or Rename) to MobileMe. You need to add it to MobileMe first, because MobileMe will make a new Calendar inside Outlook. For my first one, I named it "Todd" since that's me!
4. Next head into outlook and notice your new Calendar (click the plus sign on "Calendar" if you made a new one!)
5. Next go into gSyncIt's settings (you can do this right inside Outlook!).
6. Click the New button to add your new "Calendar Mapping"
7. Input your GOOGLE Username/Password.
8. Look for "Google Calendar (Feed Path)" under the username and password boxes. Hit "Select Calendar". This is how you get those other calendars that you've either created or other's have shared.
9. This is the important part! right underneath is the "Outlook Calendar" section, hit that "Select Calendar". Now you need to remember your calendar that MobileMe added. You should hit "Calendar" if you want your main calendar, or click that + and select the calendar to sync.
10. Now just go ahead and hit that "Ok" button on the bottom. You don't need any other settings! Repeat for multiple calendars!
11. Once you've done all your calendars, go ahead and hit the Sync button for gSyncIt. Now if you've been using seperate MobileMe and gCal calendars, I'd suggest deleting all the info for one of them or you'll have duplicates to sort through. Either way, you should be all set!
Closing:
You no longer need seperate calendars, you can input once, and it's on Outlook, MobileMe, and Google! Just remember that the more often you sync to Google, the more often other's will know of your calendar updates. This is nice because I share my kids' calendars with their grandparents so everyone know about those important things like recitals! If your not a busy person you could update google once per day, or if your the business type you could update every 5 minutes. Hope this helps anyone out there! And with MobileMe syncing in the middle, you don't need to sync your phone to outlook when using itunes!
-Todd
