Can iCal be synced with the calendar in Outlook? I work in a small office and of course I'm the only Mac user. We are typical in that they use outlook and I would love to sync my calendar with the rest of the office. Also I would love to have their outlook calendars show up in iCal as well. Sync should always work in both directions with the newest data having priority. to sync address book would be steller as well. Maight this be upcoming in Leopard?
I am having the same sort of issue. If I create an time event in ical and I open the event in outlook the time of the event in outlook is off by 8 hours in the future even though the body of the message that outlook sees has the right time. For some reason ical is adding on 8 hours, I have checked the time preferences in ical and its set to use time zones. I am running the latest 10.4.7 software.
The latest versions of Entourage—the rough Outlook equivalent for Mac OS X users—are Sync Services compatible. This means that you can synchronize Entourage data with iCal, and exchange it with Outlook users using and Exchange Server.
Here is a link to an overview of Entourage and Sync Services:
I have a solution to this which works effectively for me. I use Google Calendars. These are compatible with both ical and outlook, and import and export both kinds of file. I have to use Windows XP at work (no choice) but want my outlook work calendar on my ical so I can transfer it readily to my mobile phone, ipod, and have it published by ical for online checking. Here's what I do:
1. At the end of every week I export my outlook calendar to a csv file.
2. I open up my Google calendar and import the file.
3. I then get google calendar to export the freshly created calendar as an ical file, and stick it straight in my idisk documents folder.
4. I get home and get the file out of my idisk. I delete my work caledar on ical and replace it by importing the ical file from google (this is the closest I get to synching - the new file will have the changes from the week). Next week I'l delete this ical calendar and replace it with the latest (If I import the new outlook file into hte extant ical calendar, I'd get duplicate events).
Hope this works for you
This doesn't take much time, and does the trick just fine. I've had no trouble with event conversions, but those who use some of the finer attributes of outlook may find this inapproriate.
IF your company don't have an exchange server.
Just to get XC Connect. It can be installed on the PC of your company or your mac even on an linux PC. and mac user, outlook user, linux user can sync contact and calendar much more cheap than a exchange server.