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Show all Google Calendars on iOS and Mac
If you have been trying to get your Google Calendar to sync to your iOS device(s) or your Mac, but can't get all of your Google calendars to show up, I may have the answer: Unless you have a paid Google Apps account, use https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect to select which calendars you want to sync via CalDAV. Within your calendar app (on the Mac or on iOS) you can always choose which calendar(s) to show, but when dealing with Google calendar, your other calendars will only appear if they have been enabled. (If you use Gmail over IMAP you may have gone through the process of choosing which labels appear as IMAP folders. The process of enabling CalDAV support for your calendars is something like that.) The biggest enemy that you will have in getting this to work is previous experience with syncing Google and iOS devices, especially because Google has been fairly sloppy with its instructions, all of which led me on a not-very-fun technological wild goose chase tonight. For more on those details, and what to watch out for, keep reading. (Spoiler alert: I've already given away the ending.) Even Google can't keep the instructions straight For as long as I can remember, Google Calendar on iPad or iPhone/iPod touch devices has had this annoying "quirk" - if you have more than one calendar, you have to go to a web page on Google's site and "enable" each calendars you want to use on each iOS device. "Sync Google Calendar with your iOS device" appears to be Google's most up-to-date instructions for setting this up, although it's hard to tell because there's no "as of" or "last updated" date anywhere on the page. At the top of the page are the basic steps on iOS for creating a new account in iOS 7, but the crucial piece of information comes at the very bottom of the page: "By default, only your primary calendar will be synced with your device. If you have additional calendars you'd like to sync, follow the instructions below." The next section is titled "Sync Multiple Calendars" and is hidden, for some reason, behind a collapsed JavaScript... "thing" that you have to click on to reveal the following: (begin quote) Visit the following page from your device's mobile browser: https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect Google Apps users can go to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/ Select the calendars you'd like to sync, then click Save. The selected calendars will be displayed on your device at the time of the next sync. (end quote) The seemingly superfluous JavaScript and peculiar formatting are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the problems. Problem #1: Although the first line says, "Visit the following page from your device's mobile browser: https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect", you don't need to visit it in your device's mobile browser. In fact, when you go to that page, at the very top it says: "Select calendars to sync to your iPhone/iPad/iCal*" and at the bottom of the page "* or any other CalDAV device." So it doesn't matter which browser you use. The good news is that Google no longer has you set different calendars for different devices, which you might remember if you have used Google Calendar with iOS devices in the past. Problem #2: The second line is more problematic: "Google Apps users can go to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/". First of all, it's not an actual link, in fact, it's actually wrapped in <code> and </code> for some reason. Let's call that "2a". 2b) But let's ignore the URL itself, because my bigger gripe is with the word "can" as in "Google Apps users can go to..." What does it mean they "can" go there? Does it mean that it's optional? They can use that URL or they can use the previous one? (HINT: NO! IT DOESN'T!) 2c) Although it sounds like that URL might be an optional one for Google Apps users, those URLs lead to two very different pages with two very different results. 2d) Remember back in "Problem #1" when Google claimed that you had to visit https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect from your device's mobile browser, but you didn't? Well, turns out that you do have to use your mobile device's browser to see the settings at https://m.google.com/sync/settings/, otherwise it will tell you to go to http://m.google.com/sync which, in turn, leads you to http://www.google.com/sync/index.html. If you do go to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/ with a mobile browser, it will take you to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/welcome which will show you a "Google Sync" page with the header "Manage devices" and a list of iPad and iPhones, showing the date the last sync for each device. There's no information about these devices, no actual device names, and there's no way to remove devices from the list. At the bottom of the page it says: "Bookmark this page so you can easily change your settings" followed by "Trying to manage Google Apps account? Configure your domain at m.google.com". If you have been using Google Calendar with iOS devices for a long time, as I have, you're probably very familiar with that page, and may have even followed Google's advice to bookmark it for future reference. I did. But if you actually do go to http://m.google.com, even on your mobile device's browser, it will actually take you to http://www.google.com/mobile/ios/, which, coincidentally, does not give you any way whatsoever to manage your Google Apps account. Dizzy yet? Confused? Welcome to partial backwards compatibility. Google has no one to blame for this mess except themselves. Most of this mess is a result of Google deciding to kill off Google Sync. Except not really kill it off. Quoting from Google Sync End of Life: "Google Sync was designed to allow access to Gmail, Google Calendar, and Contacts via the Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® protocol. With the recent launch of CardDAV, Google now offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV, making it possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols." Or, to paraphrase: "Look, we had to pay Microsoft to license Exchange ActiveSync, and we were doing it mostly for customers who weren't paying us anything. Well, turns out that paying for something that other people aren't paying you for, is, like, a total bummer, according to our accountants. So we did that for long enough to make sure that people were used to using our stuff, but now there's another way to do this that doesn't cost anything, and so we're going to use that instead, because open! And, also, you know, because paying Microsoft is a downer. But, don't worry, the new version is just as good as what we've always had. Oh, except for push. Yeah, that doesn't work with the free option. But it's totally free! And we don't have to pay Microsoft anymore. Did we mention that part?" Google tried to make this transition as seamless as possible: devices which were already setup to use ActiveSync could continue to use it, but no new devices would be able to use it. (At one point it was suggested that if you restored a new device from an old device you would be able to use it on the new device, but I have not tried that.) Also, people who pay for a Google Apps account could continue to use it. However, free Google Apps users (such as some educational users, non-profits, or personal domains which were grandfathered in before Google shuttered that program) could not, despite being "Google Apps" users. What we are left with is a confusing mix of outdated information (if you just search the web for information about setting up Google calendar on your iOS device), incorrect information (including some from Google itself), or just downright confusing information. This became a lot less theoretical for me when I tried to share my Google calendar with my wife. She could see it on her iPad, but not on her iPhone. When I went to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/welcome while logged into her account, it showed an iPad has in sync as of today, but the most recent entry for her iPhone was over a year ago. I spent quite a long time time trying to figure out why the iPhone wouldn't sync properly, and, in fact, wouldn't even show the correct calendars. I was frustrated by the fact that https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/welcome does not show any device information besides the generic name (iPad or iPhone) and there is no way to delete a device from that list. I could add events to other calendars, even Google calendars, but my calendar stubbornly refused to even appear in the list. I even pulled up the mobile version of Google calendar in Mobile Safari on her iPhone and added an event through it, thinking that might somehow communicate to Google.com that this device was syncing. I could see my calendar in her account through Mobile Safari, but it would still not show up in her list of calendars. I even deleted the account from her iPhone, quit the calendar app, added the account back in, and tried again. Still no sync. Having reached the limit of my ideas, I went to see who else had dealt with this problem, and limiting my search results to only show me relatively recent search results, I came across a forum post which explained: "when you switch from using 'Exchange' sync on the iPhone to configuring a 'Gmail' account (which uses CalDAV), there are ramifications that Google doesn't do a great job of explaining." It then went on to suggest using https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect or https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect or https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/YOUR.DOMAIN.HERE/iphoneselect instead. (In my experience, all three of those seem to lead to the same page.) That's when it (finally!) occurred to me that although I am using a "Google Apps" account, I am not using a paid Google Apps account, as I have one of the 'grandfathered' accounts. Remember way back up to "Problem #2b" above, where the page said: "Google Apps users can go to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/"? Yup, that's what threw me off, because that's (apparently) only true for paid Google Apps users who are still using the ActiveSync method of syncing their calendars. Paying for Google Apps gets you an extra email and calendar feature, but paying for a Gmail account does not. One last area of confusion I have seen is over "paid Gmail accounts." First of all, technically there aren't "paid Gmail accounts." You can pay for extra storage for your Google account which will be shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+. These plans have changed drastically from back when you could get 20 GB for $5/year. But when it comes to "Google accounts" those are different from "Google Apps" accounts, and (as far as I can see) there is no way to pay for ActiveSync with a regular Gmail account, even if you pay for extra storage.
PSA: Windows Phones to lose Google Sync activation on August 1st
Windows Phone users who want to use Google Sync for contact and calendar integration had better act quickly: today is the last day that they can link their handsets to the service before Google pulls the plug. From August 1st onwards, Google Sync will only work on a given Windows Phone if it's already configured. The GDR 2 upgrade keeps syncing alive through CalDAV and CardDAV support, although many users could go without that support for some time -- to date, Americans can only see the OS refresh on the HTC 8XT, Lumia 520, Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020. If you're not in that group and miss the Google Sync deadline, you'll just have to sit tight while Microsoft finishes rolling out the GDR 2 update this summer.
Google reverses course, makes CalDAV and CardDAV APIs open to all developers
Though Google chucked open API access to CalDAV back in March, it appears the company's had a change of heart. Up until today, only a select few whitelisted developers could make use of Google's calendar open standard; a decision it made based on actual usage data. But given the amount of feedback it's received from blocked devs in the time since, Google's decided to re-instate access to CalDAV APIs, in addition to those for CardDAV -- a first -- its open standard for contacts. The news won't make much difference for Windows Phone 8 users (CalDAV and CardDAV support was already promised), but at least your third-party apps can now continue to play nice with your social calendar.
Despite 'spring cleaning,' Google CalDAV support still coming to Windows Phone
Still hurting from Google's "spring cleaning" announcement yesterday? Google Reader fans may be out of luck, but Windows Phone users can take heart in knowing that Microsoft made the whitelist for the CalDAV sync interface, which is now shelved to all but developers who get Mountain View's green light. Early this year, Google announced it would extend support for Exchange ActiveSync on Windows Phone through July 31st, with the implication being that Redmond would build support for CalDAV in the meantime. Luckily Microsoft's work was not for nothing, though -- and this is a big though -- the Windows team won't be adding CalDAV or CarDAV support for users trying to connect a Google account via Mail, Calendar or People apps after January 30th, 2013.
Google to continue offering Exchange ActiveSync support on Windows Phones through July 31st
Today is the day that Google has been planning to shut off its support for Exchange ActiveSync, but it appears that the company has had a slight change of heart. Google has confirmed that it will allow Windows Phones to access Google Sync services for an additional six months, ending on July 31st. This move will allow Microsoft a little extra breathing room, giving the company more time to determine how to best resolve the concern that will affect countless Gmail fans that currently use Windows Phone as their primary driver; according to a blog post (linked below), Microsoft has indeed confirmed that it's working on building CalDAV and CardDAV support into Windows Phone. We reached out to Google and received this confirmation: "As announced last year, our plan is to end support for new device connections using Google Sync starting January 30, 2013. With the launch of CardDAV, it's now possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols (IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV) for Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts. We'll start rolling out this change as planned across all platforms but will continue to support Google Sync for Windows Phone until July 31, 2013."
Add tasks to productivity apps using Siri and CalDAV
Last month, Remember the Milk published a quick tutorial showing their customers how to use Siri's voice control with the Reminders app and CalDAV to send tasks to RTM. A slightly different Siri workaround can be used by iOS owners to send their tasks to other third-party to-do apps. All you need is an app that syncs with iCal and an iPhone 4S with an active iCloud account. This method requires you to sync your to-do list with your reminders list in iCal. These iCal lists are then synced with iCloud which shares them with your iOS device. It's bi-directional so any task you create using Siri will be sent to the Reminders app then to iCloud, iCal and finally your to-do app. Pretty handy, isn't it? It works with Things and The Hit List says Oliver Collet who posted this little trick after his friend Antoine mentioned it on Twitter. It will likely work with other to-do apps like OmniFocus that also sync with iCal. If you get it to work with other To-Do apps, let us know in the comments. [Via Daring Fireball]
Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1
Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft's website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built-in support for Apple's Sync Services which allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software (like iCal and BusyCal) and devices (like the iPhone and iPad) through iTunes. The update also includes the usual fixes for "critical issues" and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn't showing in Office's AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246 MB package here. [via MacUpdate]
Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility
The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months. Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes. Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements. While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV -- which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term. There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7. The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11; we'll let you know when it drops. Hat tip to The Loop.
Apple's MobileMe iDisk App updated for iPad, redesigned Calendar goes beta
Too lazy to cancel your $99 MobileMe automatic subscription renewal and make the jump to one of the many free alternatives? Don't worry, your lethargy has paid off this morning as Apple introduces its new MobileMe iDisk 1.2 app and a beta version of its new MobileMe Calendar. iDisk is pretty much the same app you know and ignore only now it's optimized for the bigger iPad screen, tweaked to support iOS 4 multitasking, and offers the option to open iDisk documents in compatible apps -- like using iBooks for PDFs for example. The faster loading MobileMe Calendar beta (login to MobileMe to request an invite) features redesigned day, week, and month views; calendar sharing amongst friends, family, and predators (if you like); the ability to publish a calendar to a team or group; and event invitations to anyone holding an email address (me.com or not) with RSVP support and automatic change notifications. Best of all, the Calendar beta uses the CalDAV standard, you know, just like that free Calendar from the company that rhymes with frugal.
Kerio integrates iPad into the corporate messaging and collaboration world
Kerio Technologies, Inc. is a major player in the enterprise messaging and collaboration software market, and the company's products are well-known in the Apple world. Their primary product, Kerio Connect 7, provides tools for corporate IT departments for email, calendaring, and group contact lists, all using cross-platform server tools that are much less expensive to implement and maintain than their counterparts from Microsoft (Exchange) and Apple. Now, Kerio has announced that Kerio Connect 7 natively supports the Apple iPad. Kerio is spotlighting the integration of Connect 7 and the iPad platform at Interop 2010, which ends today in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kerio Connect 7 allows iPad users to synchronize email, contacts, and a private calendar to the server. Users can also search the Global Address List (GAL) and manage invitations, and admins can easily perform remote wipes. All of this is done through Exchange ActiveSync, one of the many standards supported by Kerio Connect. CalDAV support is also built in, so users can access shared and global calendars. IT managers will appreciate the fact that Kerio Connect comes complete with integrated anti-virus and anti-spam features, as well as automated archiving and backup of email. The server solutions starts at US$450 for a five-user license, and additional users can be added for as little as $24 each. For small or large companies looking at integrating the iPad into their businesses, Kerio Connect is an answer to a lot of questions.
Mac 101: iCal calendar subscriptions
iCal has always been an elegant program. Though it has a "subscribe" function for public calendars, it hasn't always played nicely with other devices and other calendars. This limitation forced many a user to seek greener pastures elsewhere, like Google Calendar. Calendars created in Google's web app permitted a better cross-platform solution for home and mobile use, but made iCal clunky and hard to use, even when you only subscribed to your own Google calendars. Recently, Apple enabled CalDAV subscriptions on the iPhone (which also play well with Google Calendar); that made me dust off my copy of iCal and take a second look. If you're not using iCal at all, you may want to take a moment to learn about what you can do with it. The idea of calendar subscriptions is simple: store a calendar event database somewhere online, and then provide a link in a common format for calendar programs such as iCal to access. The calendar program then imports the calendar data and puts it in your calendar, updating itself at a frequency of your choosing. Online databases of public calendar links abound, and you can add calendars from your local little league schedule to stargazing guides to the galaxy in your area. The format that Apple uses is the "ics" format, and you'll see calendars with that extension all over the web.
Google Calendar CalDAV/iCal syncing now official
Although the plumbing has been in place since the summer, it's always nice to have an official announcement, and now we do: Google has gone on the record with its support for CalDAV syncing from iCal to Google Calendar. You can now gracefully sync your editable Google calendars with your (Leopard-only) iCal, keeping a local copy of those events in the cloud.Granted, both BusySync (which adds Bonjour-based iCal synchronization between Macs) and SpanningSync (which includes Address Book --> Google contact sync) have been handling this task with aplomb for some time, and they offer something Google hasn't -- a nice GUI for picking your sync options. That too has been addressed: Google Code is hosting the Calaboration sync setup tool, a basic checklist of calendars to add to your iCal setup.If you are syncing your iCal and gCal data via Google's support for CalDAV, let us know how it's going.
CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar
I'm a pretty big user of Google Calendar, because I like how I can automatically sync it with my BlackBerry. The problem for me has been that on my desktop, I really prefer iCal's interface. Syncing the two can be cumbersome. We've written about third-party programs that can sync iCal and gCal together in the past, and although those are great -- I have still wanted a native way to sync the two calendars together.Well, fortunately, Google has just quietly introduced CalDAV support to Google Calendar. CalDAV is the protocol that iCal uses to transmit data over the web. Although some other mail and calendar programs support CalDAV, right now Google Calendar is only compatible with iCal. Finally, iCal and Google Calendar can sync without having to use third party programs!After following Google's detailed instructions, you can add your Google calendar account to iCal. Any changes you make in iCal will be transferred over to Google and appear in Google Calendar within about 15 minutes. Likewise, any changes made in gCal will be updated immediately from iCal. If you use a BlackBerry, which also syncs directly with gCal, those changes will be updated on all sides as well.So does this mean that third-party syncing utilities have no place? Well, just based on my initial tests this morning, they are safe for at least a little while. Although sync support works perfectly, you have to create a new calendar account for each individual calendar you want to access. Additionally, if you have a calendar called "Home" on your Mac and a different calendar called "Home" in gCal, you can't just sync those two together. You'll need to either import all your iCal data into Google first, and then sync with the new calendar, or transfer the information over from one calendar to the other within iCal. Programs like BusySync and Spanning Sync allow syncing of designated calendars with one another.Still, this is a huge step in the right direction and I'm just happy that I can import my mobile calendar onto my desktop without having to run a background utility. CalDAV support for Google Calendar requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's version of iCal. The Google Calendar service is free.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.[via Google Operating System]
Mozilla Sunbird 0.8 for Mac OS X
You hate Entourage, and you're not particularly fond of iCal. You've waited endlessly for Nighthawk, Contactizer Pro is too complicated, and you want a native app instead of using Google Calendar or another web calendar. And, since you're saving money for an iPhone 3G, you don't want to spend any money on a calendar app.Maybe it's time to look at Mozilla Sunbird 0.8 for Mac OS X. It's developed by the same people who brought us Firefox and Thunderbird. It's almost identical to the Lightning calendar plugin for Thunderbird, but doesn't require that email app to run. Upon first startup, Sunbird will import events and tasks from your existing calendar application. The UI is plain and simple, probably because this is a multi-platform application (Windows, Linux, and Solaris in addition to Mac OS X) that shares a lot of code between the different flavors. Sunbird can tie into CalDAV servers such as the one in Mac OS X Server 10.5, and can subscribe to any .ics format shared calendars. In limited testing, Sunbird felt responsive in searches and was quite stable for betaware.Sunbird, of course, is free. If you are searching for a new calendar app, give it a try.
Kerio MailServer 6.5 poised to replace Exchange
Kerio Technologies announced version 6.5 of the Kerio MailServer -- 2 years in the making -- yesterday. We talked about version 6 recently, but this is their largest update yet and clearly shows their readiness to take a bite out of the Microsoft Exchange market. With version 6.5, Kerio is providing the groupware platform and tools needed to completely replace Exchange within a collaboration-centric organization. The release is compatible with both server and workstation flavors of OS X with full support for Leopard, in addition to being fully Microsoft certified for Vista and Redhat certified for Linux compatibility. 6.5 also includes enhanced support for Entourage 2008, making full use of message flags and "out of office" messages which are synced on both mobile and workstation clients. The biggest change of interest to Mac users is the addition of CalDAV support. Kerio users can look up information, share and subscribe to calendars and achieve 2-way sync whether they're on a Mac, an iPhone, a Palm or Windows Mobile handheld, a PC ... you get the idea. The server can provide a bridge between open and proprietary standards, making sure that you see the same data everywhere and allowing for smooth cross-platform interoperability. The other major improvement, definitely of interest to users in multi-platform environments, is an upgrade to the Outlook Connector with a complete rewrite of its underlying database structure. It allows for easy data access, online and offline, with current and older versions of Outlook. And its full-text search capabilities search across messages, contacts and calendar events with support for Google Desktop search. Not surprisingly, a release this big resulted in a pricing change. The standard package (10 users) now starts at $499 and adding additional users costs $20 per user. A version with integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for bi-directional scanning of all email starts at $599 and additional users are $24 each. Both versions include anti-spam, user management with authentication against Active Directory and Open Directory. Visit Kerio for more information. Update: The US Apple Store is now carrying a base server (10 user) license and install media for Kerio MailServer with McAfee.
Leopard Watch: iCal with CalDAV
Apple's iCal Leopard page reveals that the upcoming Leopard version of iCal will support a subset of CalDAV, the distributed authoring and versioning calendar protocol. CalDAV allows collaborative creation and maintenance of shared calendars and events. With the new iCal, you won't have to send around a memo saying "give me your open dates in November". Instead, you can use iCal's "Auto Pick" capabilities to select a meeting time when everyone is free using their shared CalDAV calendars. (And, if your office uses an iCal room reservation system, you can even pick the room and block out the time you need it.) Of course, this new technology only works if everyone in the office--including that Jim-guy in the corner office who still refuses to switch from Windows--is in on the calendaring system.