Tech-Recipes - Latest Comments in Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

No-email — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:22:00 -0000

Kinda problem is when exporting the callendar form a non-English Outlook (Czech version in my case) and then trying to import it to the Lightning.

Because the exported CSV file has Czech headers which the English Thunderbird cannot cope with.

Will try to translate the headers to English and will see what will happen.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Catalina — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:33:36 -0000

11 months later, Stogey_B's reply is still valid - if your Regional Settings are using a European date format, you have to change it to US. This actually makes Sunbird clunky enough to use to not be useful, because the whole point was to avoid having to install outlook on my netbook. I don't want to have to change my regional settings back and forth every day - it's bad enough having to export and import every day to keep the two in synch. Never mind, it was a nice idea. It would be even nicer if it were fixed to work properly.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Nils — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:09:54 -0000

The reason I downloaded sunbird, was that I didn't want to upgrade my outlook (version 2000).
Is it possible to get my appointments from outlook 2000 into sunbird?
Thanks

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

tuomasvesala — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:21:39 -0000

Are You serious?

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

mute the horse — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:18:23 -0000

If you got as far as editing in XLS file then you may have to ensure the field format is correct. It should look like this and the quotes are important:

"Subject","Start Date","Start Time","End Date","End Time","All day event","Reminder on/off","Reminder Date","Reminder Time","Meeting Organizer","Required Attendees","Optional Attendees","Meeting Resources","Billing Information","Categories","Description","Location","Mileage","Priority","Private","Sensitivity","Show time as"
"Go on Holidays","01/31/2010","10:00:00 AM","02/06/1999","8:00:00 PM","FALSE","FALSE","","","","","","","","","","","","","FALSE","",""
"My Birthday Party","08/17/210","11:00:00 AM","08/17/2010","02:00:00 PM","FALSE","FALSE","","","","","","","","","","","","","FALSE","",""

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

olasava — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:13:26 -0000

Completely agree. have tried all of this, editing in XLS file and chanhing Control Panel options. None of this works.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

tuomasvesala — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:01:18 -0000

Sorry, no success what so ever, the import-function just does not work regardless of the time format. Four hours of b-s is enough for me, let the nerds go down with their calendars.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

surreywoman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:29:35 -0000

Thanks for writing up such a detailed guide - your second method worked perfectly for me.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Stogey_B — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:46:21 -0000

Sunbird has definite ideas about how dates are formatted. So does Outlook. The oft-quoted simple procedure for importing Outlook calendars into Sunbird assumes they are both reading from the same page. WTAFSIH (well there's a flying snowball in hell)

Perhaps it works with date settings "out of the box". I use an ISO format: 09-06-20 14:30:00. Both Sunbird and Outlook give me these formats in lists of appointments. But the import/export rules seem to be a different story.

An Outlook export shows ..,"2009-6-20","14:30:00",.. Looks like my fav but with a four digit year--fair enough.

A Sunbird export shows ..,"06/20/09","02:30:00 PM",.. Where did that come from? But wait, there's more... When this file is re-imported into Sunbird the event doesn't show up in the calendar. But if you force a display of "All Events" there they are. Click on one and the calendar will show it but the heading on the calendar will be "June 8 - July 5, 9". That 9 seems to refer to the year 9 A.D. Does Sunbird import assume a four digit year no matter what?

I solved this by importing the Outlook .csv file into a spreadsheet (O-O Calc, of course) and messing with formats (including adding the double quotes). Saving as a .csv gave me a usable file. But while writing this up an easier method occurred to me.

Go into your Control panel Regional Settings and change your date/time formats. If you're not in a "US" region you'll have to use customize. You need date format as MM/dd/yyyy and time as hh:mm:ss tt. Outlook export will then put out ..,"06/20/2009","02:30:00 PM",.. and Sunbird import will work.

Parting shot: At first it seemed that "Sunbird did nothing" as noted by others. Not true. It read the file, found an invalid date format and then did nothing. Like put out as simple message, "Invalid date format" maybe? Shoddy. Oops, sorry, I shouldn't be snarking like that, I should get involved in the project.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Phil — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:57:50 -0000

Worked great for me. Thanks!

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

fsfs — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:19:51 -0000

Silent failure - come on Mozilla - do better and slam microsoft into the ground

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Don — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:57:25 -0000

Same as Matts, nothing happens, fedup of attempting to do it, back to outlook.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Matt — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:42:48 -0000

The final step does nothing - it just closes the import window without importing anything.

Re: Mozilla Sunbird: Import Your Outlook Calendar Appointments

Fred — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:11:13 -0000

Cool. Thank you!