Browse Web Calendar Events in Your Desktop Calendar (Google Calendar, Hotmail Calendar)

Beginning with version 7.4, Screen Calendar supports iCalendar format. What does that mean? That allows data exchange between your desktop calendar and calendars in iCal format. That gives you wide possibilities to manage your events. Let’s give concrete expression to these statements. For example, there are popular online calendars – Google Calendar and Homail Calendar (Windows Live Calendar). They let you to schedule, manage and share events online. The big question hesitant users have about web-based applications like Google Calendar or Hotmail Calendar is: "How can I get my data when I'm offline?" With the new iCal compatible Screen Calendar , bi-directional syncing between your desktop calendar and web calendars becomes extremely easy. Let’s learn how to sync records between Screen Calendar and Google Calendar or Hotmail Calendar in a few clicks.

If you want to import events from a web calendar to Screen Calendar, the first thing you have to do is to get URL - the address to your web calendar. To get URL in Google Calendar, open Calendar settings and click ICAL in Private Address box. Copy the address which will appear after clicking.

Copy the address of your Google Calendar

To get URL in Hotmail Calendar, click Share just above the calendar and select the calendar you want to see on your desktop. You'll see sharing settings for this calendar. Please select Send people a view-only link and go to Get your calendar links.

Now you will see the list of links - select ICS link and copy file address from popup window.

Getting ICS file link in Hotmail Calendar

Then open Dates | iCalendar in Screen Calendar, choose iCalendar event source – URL, and paste the address of your calendar.

Paste the address of your web calendar to the events source editor of Screen Calendar 7.4

Now you have two possibilities to deal with this address. The first is to subscribe to the event source. That will enable you to update events list with given frequency. Click Subscribe button and name of the event source will appear in a list of subscribed event sources, as you can see in the picture above. Or click Import button to upload events from selected source. You can use this option if you need to add events from your web calendar to Screen Calendar only one time and don’t need to update events list any more. You will see a message box with the number of imported events.

That’s all, the events you have in a web calendar are added to your desktop calendar. Now they are available even when you’re offline. You can edit them as any other record in Screen Calendar.

Also, you can export events from Screen Calendar to a web calendar. To do that, choose iCalendar event source – Local File, select any .ics (iCal) file and click Export button. Your events will be exported to this file and you’ll see a message box with the number of exported events.

Export events to a local file for further export to a web calendar

Using this file, you can easily export your events to a web-calendar. If you want to export events to Google Calendar, use Add | Import calendar, browse the file which contains events exported from Screen Calendar and click Import button.

Google Calendar imports events from your .ics file

If you want to export events to Hotmail Calendar, click Subscribe above the calendar. In Import/Subscribe window, select Import from an ICS file and choose the file you've saved from Screen Calendar. 

Hotmail Calendar imports events from your .ics file

So, your events are exported to Google Calendar or Hotmail Calendar with some clicks and in no time.

As you can see, Screen Calendar 7.4 gives you possibility to sync records with web calendar or iCalendar easily and quickly.

Read more about Screen Calendar features