Recently we have been working with a Mac based client who has chosen Microsoft Exchange for email, calendaring and team collaboration.

Prior to hiring WIGITAL to unify their mail services on Exchange, the company’s users managed their email services (on a variety of POP platforms) and kept their own appointments in iCal. Since the entire environment is dispersed on individual Macs and MacBooks, individual users have “multiple iCal calendars” in which they have organized and color coded their own appointments.

To help our client transition from separate individual Personal Information Management solutions onto a team platform, the use of Microsoft Entourage 2008 (part of Office for Mac) has been chosen for the users. This means WIGITAL also has the job of transitioning each “individual” users data from Apple’s Address Book, iCal and MacMail applications onto Microsoft Exchange where it is then available to “all of the users” through Entourage.

This article is dedicated to the Calendar portion of the data transition.

Migrating Calendar Data – the challenge:

Because Entourage does not implicitly provide an import tool for iCal (.ics) calendars, the client needs a work around to transfer their multiple iCal Calendars into Entourage. The goal is to retain the organization of appointments while avoiding a lot of manual click-click-click work for the users. Each user wants to keep their current separation of appointments by type and color coding.

Here is how to import “multiple” Calendars from iCal into Entourage while assigning Categories and Colors to the Calendars “in-bulk” and retaining the seperation as it previously existed in iCal.

Verify Sync Settings are enabled in Entourage

• open Entourage
• go to the menu bar above, click Entourage | click Preferences
• under General Preferences | click Sync Services
• check the box Synchronize events and tasks with iCal and .mac
• confirm that iCal maps to your Calendar in Entourage (in our case it must be the “Exchange account” calendar)
• click OK
• a node for Entourage should now appear in iCal in the form of a Calendar named “Entourage”

Export Calendars from iCal and import back into the iCal Entourage sync’d calendar

• open iCal
• go to menu bar above, click View | confirm Show Calendar List is enabled
  • This enables the entire list of Calendars to show on the left side of iCal (it may already be enabled)
• in iCal – clear all check boxes from individual Calendars “except the specific one you want to work with” (we’re going to export the last remaining “checked” Calendar)
• click on the Calendar you want to export (example – click the “Work” calendar… it highlights in BLUE)
• go to the menu bar above: click File | click Export
  • you can export the entire Calendar (in our example the highlighted “Work” calendar) to a file location (Desktop, Finder, etc…)
  • in the Save As: name the Calendar
  • click the Export button
• once that specific Calendar has been exported, return to iCal
• in iCal, click and highlight the “Entourage” calendar (remember Sync Services must be “enabled” to view Entourage in iCal – see above)
• in the menu bar above, click File | click Import
  • the Import window will pop up
• select import an iCal file and click the Import button
• select the “Work” iCal calendar you previously exported to a file location
• click the Import button

* This “Work” calendar has now been imported back into iCal (but this time, into the Entourage sync’d calendar inside iCal that is synchronizing with Entourage). The data will now appear in both iCal and Entourage.

Assigning the iCal calendar items to Entourage Categories after import

If you are new to Entourage, the Entourage equivalent of separating Appointments, Events and Tasks into identifiable groupings is to use Categories in Entourage.

Click here for a video on how to create and edit Categories in Entourage

The fundamental principal here in exporting/importing iCal calendars is to create and then assign an Entourage Category for each set of iCal Calendar appointments that exist and are being imported into the Entourage sync’d calendar node in iCal. Exporting/importing a single calendar at a time gives us the opportunity to assign one Category at a time after each import.

To explain: for the multiple Calendars in iCal ( such as “work, personal, training, meetings” ), we are creating a Category in Entourage to represent each of these divisions. If a “Calendar” exists in iCal for “work”, we will create a corresponding “Category” in Entourage for “work”.

The key to discerning which Appointments and Events already existed and which ones are newly imported is to “only import one Calendar at a time”. By switching to Entourage immediately after each import from iCal, we have the ability to assign the newest items to a Category. Once imported items are assigned to a Category, they take on the “name and color” of the Category and can then be easily distinguished from the next set of imports (which by default have the category of “None” and use “no color at all”).

To see all calendar items (and Categories) “at once” we use the Views feature of Entourage. This method of viewing and sorting Entourage Calendar information is simple and allows to see every appointment at once. Using the All Events view also enables us to assign multiple items to a Category. This is accomplished through simple keyboard concepts like “holding down the Shift key when selecting multiple items”. Here is how it works:

• use the iCal method above to export/import a single Calendar
  • Observe the “name” and “color” of each calender you are exporting/importing
• Now open Entourage
• click the Calendar toolbar in Entourage
  • NOTE: the toolbar is the row of buttons directly above the Folder List
  • NOTE: toolbar buttons are named Mail, Address Book, Calendar, Notes, Task, Project Center
  • clicking the Calendar button provides a “different view” of the Folder List
• expand the Calendar View (i.e. click the triangle – Calendar toolbar must be active to see Calendar View)
• select All Events from the Calendar View
  • Note: all the Calendar items appear in the All Events View
    
  • Note: items assigned to a category appear in different colors
  • COLUMN HEADERS appear at the top of the rows of data
• look for the Column Header named Categories
• CLICK on the Column Header named Categories – this “sorts the Categories” by name thereby grouping similarly named Categories together
  • Note: unassigned Categories are named “None” and have “no color“
  • Note: the “None” category will now be grouped together in the list
  • “IF” you have imported only one iCal calendar into Entourage at a time, these “newest” items are in the Category of “None”.
• To assign the newest imports to the category of your choice -  Hold down the Shift key, click the first item and then the last item with the Category of “None”
  • Holding down the shift key selects all list items between the first and last item you choose.
  • All selected items can then be assigned “in-bulk” to a Category
• with items highlighted, click the Categories “button” in the toolbar above
• assign your Category from the list
  • each Calendar item will turn the “color” of the Category you have selected
    
  • remember “if” multiple Categories are assigned to a Calendar item, the item reflects the “color” of the last Category to be assigned to it
    
• You are done…!
• Return to iCal and repeat this procedure
• Assign all the “None” items after each import into a Category.
  • With each new import, newly imported items always appear under the Category of “None“
• Repeat this process as many times as needed to re-assign imported iCal Calendar items to Entourage Categories
• 

Once imported, Appointments and Events appear in Microsoft Entourage as well as the Entourage sync’d calendar in iCal. Categories however will only appear in Entourage.

SUGGESTIONS

• using the same “colors” in Entourage your Users previously used in iCal may help keep things familiar and make it easier to find things
• using the same “names” for Entourage Categories that your Users previously chose to name the Calendars in iCal may also help keep things familiar
• remind your users to no longer use the multiple Calendars in iCal and that if they insist on using iCal, entries must be made to iCals sync’d Entourage calendar if they want them to appear in Entourage
• Entourage Help and Learning Tools are available online

Happy Thanksgiving,

Mark Raborn
WIGITAL