Yahoo Cal to iCal in 7 easy steps
When I first got my Powerbook, I started looking for a way to go from Yahoo! Calendar to iCal and there was just no quick & easy solution at all! As iCalendar (.ics) users know, there's a big push for calendars to start streamlining their data fields for easier synching... and this is totally the problem going from yahoo to ical.Last week Ted & I were IMing about his trying to get his Yahoo! address book into Apple's Address Book - and we took care of that*, but since I'd already searched endlessly for a solution on moving over the Calendar, I pretty much gave him a "sorry, buddy - it's just not possible" type of answer.
*If you have access to Outlook, I think that would also be a possible solution here for moving the Calendar & the Address book, because I think it'll import .txt or .csv & export to .ics or vcal - but anyway, the common mac user won't have access to that - so I had to find a different solution.
Long story short, I got a wild hair to find a solution for Ted, because I was SURE it was possible somehow... and so this is what is documented below.
Keep in mind, this isn't a perfect solution. I found once it was all said & done, iCal has a few blank entries (one of the days in my calendar is full of crazy blanks, which I'd imagine is because I had events with a bunch of notes with commas or something) & for some reason there are a few various events that happened last year that are showing up this year (but seems to be specifically vacation type events where they lasted 4 days & stuff - odd) - alas - if you're desperate, it's a great start!!
- Save out your Yahoo Calendar as a .csv (which is under Options, Export - Export to Outlook)
- Then, open the .csv using Excel (if you don't have it, ask someone with a PC to do it for you - it doesn't take but a second) and change the column names from:
Subject,Start Date,Start Time,End Date,End Time,All day event,Description - to:
Title,Date (Start),Start Time,End Date,End Time,Category 1,Category 2,Private
(come to think of it, this is probably where the All Day Event thing gets wonky & why they're now showing up a year later - stupid Yahoo Calendar not following a good format!)
- Then save it out as a .txt file
- Download/Install Palm Desktop, which is free! I know it sucks to have to install something - but I had to find a calendar program that would import cvs or txt & then export to an .ics or vcal file.
- Once installed - open up Palm Desktop & the datebook should already be open... if not, hit Date Book.
- File / Import your .txt file
It will then prompt you to "Specify Field Order for Input"
Choose Fields: Date Book
Delimiters: Tab & Return
Then you'll see all your dates in there - but keep going....
- Hit File / Export
Module: Date Book
Items: All Datebook Items
Format: vCal
- Open iCal and import the vCal file!! phew!!!
It's neat to see my iCal all full of dates - but personally I'm still set on using Yahoo. :)
