Word into ical?

Where did he export the file from?

He should re-export from the calendar he was using as a .ics or vcal file format.

iCal includes a menu item to import industry-standard .ics calendar files, as well as feature to import from Microsoft Entourage. Check with your calendar application's publisher to see if it works with the iCalendar specification.

I have the same question, but will go into detail a bit more to explain why the answer above is very insufficient for my needs.

In college, we get a billion syllabuses. These days, everything is electronic and online, but syllabuses always come in PDF or word.

So, I have 5 or 6 files that have every detail for the entire semester, but I'm stuck entering into my written calendar or into iCal all manually. Is there any conversion?

There is no conversion. A calendar in Word can be in any format - a table, text, Mayan symbols, well, you get the idea. For a conversion utility to work well, format must be constrained. So, for example, going from Outlook's or Thunderbird's Calendar to iCal is doable. Going from Word, a free-form text editor, to iCal offers no standard. A pdf has the same issue.

If you want an idea of what I mean, select a calendar in iCal and choose File menu > Export. Then, secondary-click the resulting .ics file and open it in Word (or TextEdit). That's a standard format. You may not be able to read it easily, but calendering software can.

Basically, you're stuck manually entering the information in to iCal.

You could always ask your professors to provide .ics files with the data. For example, my wife (a professor) distributes a Word document schedule for the lectures. But, she could export the class calendar from iCal and distribute that, if anyone asked.

When I say word, I mean the strict calendar information, which is almost always in a table format, and not anything else within the calendar (like, delete any info that is not calendar related).

I realize there is no direct conversion, but I am wondering if through a few actions and/or third party software if one can eventually get a conversion out of it.

I'll look into asking professors to post icalendar files.

Thanks