Importing Calendar from Palm into iCal

Fcescgb, I can only address a tangential piece of the equation, and not your real problem. Palm devices work sync reliably with iCal, Addressbook, and a number of other Apple apps including iTunes when using the syncing program "The Missing Sync for Palm" from Mark/Space. I've used it for years syncing a Tungsten E, T/X, and Treo 700p. [Check here|http://www.markspace.com/missingsync_palmos.php] for more information from the company, and do a search for it in Discussions, you'll find a bunch of people using and talking about it. ~jeremy

Try this... I just checked out the following but with only one calendar event:

1. Open up your Palm Desktop.
2. Go to File -> Export
3. Choose Date Book, All Datebook Items and format to be vCal
4. give it a name and choose a convenient place to export the file to.
5. Open up iCal
6. In iCal, Go to File -> import and you will have a radio button choice to import the vCal file you just created from the Palm Desktop.

Should work...

A small omission on my part: these instructions are for Palm Desktop on a Mac. Hope they are the same on a PC but I am pretty sure that you should be able to export your Palm calendar as a vCal file on the PC anyway.

I tried to export from Palm Desktop (vCal) and the import to iCal.
All meetings are put on top of each other for the same date.
I have used Palm since 1997 so I got a lot of scheduled meeting that I already attended since 1997! 1997 looks OK but 1998 shows both 1997 and 1998 and so on!!!!!
Help!

Did you ever solve the problem of multiple entries.

I am trying to export calendar events from Palm desktop via vcal on MacBookPro and import into iCal on PowerBook G4. I was using Palm 4.2.2 and iCal 2.05.

When I import the vcal file, the events were repeated into many, many months after they originally occurred. As a test, I exported in Tab & Return format and successfully imported into Excel. There was only one entry for each event.

Thank you! This worked well and I didn't have to purchase software to do it!

Finally, my Centro info is uploaded to my MBP.

heidi

Has anyone been able to import ICal data to Entourage? Please get back to me if you can. I have data in ICal that i want to put in Entourage. Can this be done?

Hi numacusr!

I used Ben's instructions above to get my Palm calendar (DateBook) entries into iCal. And I tried exporting into Entourage from iCal in a similar way and it worked for me, too. Here's what I did:

1. Open iCal
2. Select File -> Export (if you get an option select "vCard" -- the first one I tried gave me this option and then it just defaulted to this format)
3. Name the export and put it in an easy-to-find location
4. Open iCal and select "File" -> "import"

This worked for me -- hope it works for you, too.

heidi

Hi Jeremy:

The "Missing Sync for Palm" application sounds great, because sometimes I struggle with iSync and Palm desktop. I am thinking of getting a Palm Centro because I dropped and broke my Zire 71 and decided to go to a smartphone. My work computer is a PC and runs Windows XP. The palm software syncs with outlook, but will duplicate data when my previous sync is on my iMac. If I switch and use the Missing Sync, how does that act when I will be syncing with my work PC? (it's a total pain but I need my work calendar!)

Thanks.

I'm struggling with the same issue as fcescgb - trying to abandon ship on Palm, just as they have abandoned ship on Mac users. But wow, is it tough.

Unfortunately, a simple Palm Desktop for Mac (v 4.2.1) export to vCal format, followed by an import into iCal, dumps every datebook item into whatever "calendar" (or "category") as Palm calls them - is active in iCal at the time. Not so great if your datebook contains thousands of items spread across 15 (the max allowed by Palm) categories. I've tried exporting into every format Palm makes available (Tab/Return, vCal, Palm, etc); "washing" the Palm database through every program I can think of - FileMaker Pro, NOW Up-to-date; importing into Yahoo, then Google, then iCal as one poster suggested - even opening up the database in MS-Word and doing find/replace to try and clean the data.

No luck - suggestions welcome.

I have tried everything I could think of using undupe 3rd party software for iCal as well as Palm, attempted editing data files and on an on an on. I've just tried something new that seems to have helped. I had a gazillion duplicates as a result of importing palm data files over each other, so I have not eliminated all of them.
So, if you are at your wits end, you might try this. It seems to have solved a lot of the dupes for me.

Mac OS 10.4.11
Palm TX
Palm Desktop 4.2.1

1. BACKUP: Open Palm Desktop and export your Calendar data as Palm data and save it. Copy it to be safe.

2. Export your Calendar again as Palm data, but select the Columns option and click "Custom." If all the boxes are checked, uncheck the two category columns and the "Private" column. Export.

3. Open Palm Desktop and create a new user. (This is simply for safety. You can go ahead an import into your regular user id if you feel like taking a chance.) Import the Palm data file created in step 2.

4. Still in Palm Desktop, export the calendar as a vCal.

5. Open iCal. If you have important stuff in it already, create a backup.

6. Create a new iCal calendar. Import the new vCal file.

7. Uncheck all other calendars in iCal. Any better?

pammyam -

thank you for the suggestion - the steps you suggested might be helpful for "washing" multiple entries out of a Palm database, but they don't solve my stated problem (and I did give it a whirl) - that when datebook items are exported from a Palm database into iCal, they lose their category setting. The technique you described accomplishes this from within the Palm application itself - the moment one un-checks the two "category" columns:

I end up with iCal chock-filled with every event I've ever recorded (and we're talking time-tracking by the hour or 1/2 hour going back to 2004!) all brought in under "Home" or "Work" - or whatever "calendar" is active iCal at the moment of import.

But I do appreciate the effort - thank you.

Jeff