Sean Walther's Blog

Google Calendar Sync – Easy Calendar Backup

I run Microsoft Outlook 2007 as my main email / calendar application.  Say what you want, but I love it (I’m always open to suggestions if anyone has them).

The problem that I encountered last week, what happens when your entire calendar / datebook for the next year is lost to a computer crash?

How do you recover?

I introduce, Google Calendar Sync.  Yes, it’s meant to give you access to your calendar online, but a useful secondary feature is that it’s an online backup.

The Situation

My iPhone syncs with my Outlook calendar, my Outlook calendar syncs with my Google Calendar, and all data is shared.

Last week with my computer failure, I had to reinstall everything.  I knew having my email hosted at Google would make it easy to both access it while the computer was down, as well as let me sync up when the computer came back up.

I never realized how easy it would be to re-import all of my calendar information into outlook.  I thought it would be some combination of iPhone syncing (which has my full calendar) and exporting from Google Calendar.

The solution

After getting my empty outlook installed, I went to Install Google Calendar Sync.  It works in Windows 7 64-bit for me, even though Google says it won’t.  

It is an easy install, and seconds later my entire calendar was back in my Outlook!

I don’t have much to write, it’s just so easy.

The Conclusion

You have important data.  It is so convenient to have access to your calendar online, as well as on your computer, or on your iPhone.  It’s also a great way to backup and recover rapidly.

Tags: Calendar Sync, Google Calendar, Google Calendar Sync, iPhone, Microsoft, Outlook

Google Sync: Now for the iPhone!

Go to www.google.com/mobile/default/sync.html

It enables push notifications for contacts and calendars (on both the iPhone and Windows Mobile)!

I’ve been waiting for this one for quite a while.  Currently I used a complex scheme of Outlook, Google Calendar Sync, and still don’t get all the great contact functionality (I could, but it was too annoying to setup — plus I hate all of the useless Gmail contacts).

If you have push notification  enabled on your iPhone, you get push updates.  

This is essentially an extension of the push functionality for Exchange servers.  

Some others have posted on this:

Google Mobile Blog – Google Sync Beta for iPhone, WinMo, and SyncML Phones
Mashable – Finally: Google Sync Comes to iPhone and Windows Mobile

VERY IMPORTANT:

In looking at the instructions, they say that all of your contacts and calendar information will be deleted.  You should backup your data:

PC Instructions
Mac Instructions

Below is a video of how Google Sync works:

Tags: Exchange, Google, Google Sync, iPhone, Mashable, Outlook, Push, Sync, Windows Mobile