I was looking for a way to get Microsoft Office out of my life completely, not that I don’t like office, but I though there are ways get it done for far less money. The only thing I really can’t leave is outlook, only because of the integration between that and active sync (Damn you Microsoft!). I thought though I could at lease use Google Calendar, and try to find a good way to get it synced to my pocket pc. I did find one but there again it requires outlook, so for the time being I’ll keep using it. Upon searching online I finally came upon a forum that recommended a program called ‘Remote Calendar” it’s a free program on sourceforge.net http://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars/.
*Note* before you try to sync your calendar, I would recommend you backup your entire outlook into a pst file. If you have the same info on your Google calendar that you have on your outlook calendar, when you sync it, you’ll probably get a bunch of duplicate entries. I recommend exporting your Outlook calendar to Google then just make a new outlook pst file, import all your backed up emails and contacts and then just sync from Google with your empty calendar in outlook.
There are 3 things you have to install from Microsoft before the program even lets you install it, and they are.
Dot Net Framework 2.0 (you may already have that)
The Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Runtime
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en
The Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en
Now you have those installed you may now begin the install of Remote Calendars.
Once installed Open outlook and fill out the preferences box that first appears. You will notice a new little toolbar in Microsoft outlook. To setup Gcal on outlook click the far left button. Now its going to ask you for an address to your Google calendar, so to find that log on to your Google calendar and click settings / Calendars / then click on the calendar you want to sync. At the very bottom you’ll see 3 types of links, the one you want is under private and it’s the ical button. Click that and copy the link that appears. Now take it back to outlook and paste it in the remote calendar URL box. Give it a name and finish filling out some of the settings. Once you hit ok it should sync the Google calendar to outlook, to sync it in the future you will want to click on the 2nd button from the left on the Remote Calendar toolbar.
Hopefully this makes someone’s life a little easier and more pleasant.