Sync outlook.com calendar with Lightning in Thunderbird

Anonymous

Hi.

I am looking to sync the calendar in Outlook.com with that available in Lightning, a calendar add-on available for Thunderbird.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

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Anonymous

Hi JeffRusk,

first of all: I think we all hear you but MS doesn't seem to hear us. In today's TechWorld it just must be clear that the chances of someone having a Windows Phone while having a Mac at home and a Windows PC at work are not that slim. Still no one agrees on any standard and just keeps doing their own stuff.

But the initial question for this thread was how to get the Outlook.com calendar into Thunderbird's Lightning add-on.

I'm not quite sure that's what you're trying to figure out here.

However I hear you: I used Outlook 2010 with shared calendars.

So maybe I can give you some more insight.

First of all: saving an ics-File and importing it is NEVER any solution when you're trying to share calendars that you want to sync.

The ics file is just one file that contains all your calendar entries from the moment you created that file. The file only updates when you manually create a new file and import it again.

So the way to go is definitely the "link" option. This way your program or interface connects automatically to the file on the Outlook servers were the file is kept up to date.

As I've written before: out of 3 attempts, 2 worked when I pasted the link from the "Get a link" page on Outlook.com and substituted the webcals-prefix with https. The second time I faced the same problem as you: for no reason it just wouldn't work until my Thunderbird erased all account information and I tried again.

And still, there's always the issue of not being able to write data to the calendar if it's shared. It's always read-only.

But when you're using Outlook 2010 or 2013 there shouldn't be any problem with viewing and modifying your own Outlook.com calendar. In 2010 you must download the Hotmail Connector from

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/microsoft-office-outlook-hotmail-connector-overview-HA010222518.aspx

From what you're writing I assume you use a not synchronized, offline, profile-based Outlook 2010 calendar. You should then definitely switch to using the Outlook.com one in Outlook 2010 with the above mentioned tool since from what you write MS seems to have canceled the feature that would allow you to share internal calendars (publish option).

The connector tool adds full Hotmail/Outlook.com support to Outlook 2010. I just upgraded my Outlook to 2013 so I'm not sure about specifics but in my opinion full support is included in 2013 without the need for the addon.

As for your colleagues I'm sorry but I have no other idea than trying that ics-LINK thing.

Good luck to you..

Andy

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55 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-06-06T22:12:47+00:00

Will MS ever allow non-MS product writes to a calendar? I would honestly rather use Thunderbird than Outlook if possible especially considering that I can pretty much keep Thunderbird across multiple platforms vs MS and its Windows Only approach (although they do have apps for the mobile platforms).

If this never happens then hopefully the Ubuntu phone isn't vaporware and I can swap off the MS eco-system to something a bit easier to decentralize from MS. I do like MS products but these sorts of things can drive you up the wall. I went MS in a big way but I also use Linux based workstations a lot and would rather use clients than browsers on non-supported platforms. At home I use nearly all Linux for my laptops and desktops (with a Surface RT around here somewhere).

I can understand MS' desire to keep everything in-house but this seriously does alienate a huge base who simply want to connect a client and do their own thing instead of being spoon fed.

Other than little niche issues like this tho MS has done a decent job. I'm just hoping they at the very least allow mozilla to use some sort of outlook.com connector. Right now I'm finding myself preparing my own at home server to get off these larger services just because of these types of issues in hopes that the Ubuntu phone pans out. Even if it doesn't I think i'll just find a way to do it anyways if I can find the right mobile device.

Guess we all know why MS, Apple, and Google went in so big on that mobile market huh? ;)
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Anonymous

2014-05-29T01:47:31+00:00

I did get it to work. I wish that I could add items to Thunderbird and have them upload to Outlook.com, but at least this way I can "download" my calendar and actually print the items. I have an aversion to Google, so I'm glad I got this to work, thanks to your very understandable instructions.
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Anonymous

2014-04-19T00:01:48+00:00

This was very helpful. Thanks!
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Anonymous

2014-04-10T15:28:55+00:00

This has happened sporadically in the past, but now I am unable to share my calendar with my co-workers. Evidently MS has discontinued their Publish Calendars option, even though you can still see it on Outlook 2010 (but it's grayed out).

I got a popup from MS saying I now have to use Outlook.com. Okay, I follow all the instructions about saving the .ics file and importing into my Outlook.com account. My calendar shows up in my Outlook.com. But anything I add in Outlook does not update in Outlook.com.

I select Share in Outlook.com. Choose the "Get a Link" option. Select "Show Event Details". Then fill in the email address. In addition to my co-workers, I also send the Invite to myself. So now I see my own calendar (using a different name for the calendar) in my Outlook, Other Calendars. It has everything in there from when I "Saved" my calendar as an .ics file at the beginning. If I add anything to either the Outlook calendar or the Outlook.com calendar, neither updates. I have been trying for this for five days, with no sync update to either calendar.

Why can't I get the two calendars to sync, even on my own computer? The real goal is to be able to again "Share" my calendar with my co-workers as I was able to do before.

I constantly get the "Task 'Internet Calendar Subscription' reported error (OxA8E72EFD): Cannot verify or add the calendar to Outlook. Make sure the following link is a valid calendar link: webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/......" when performing Send/Receive or each time I start Outlook. I've tried changing webcal to webcals, substituting with http and https as has been suggested in other threads I've read relating to this problem. Entered the webcal string attempts into my address bar with no success.

Nothing works. I have spent literally days trying every combination of every suggestion or instruction on different MS web pages. I keep reading "This is a known problem and there is no estimate on when it will be fixed" all over this forum. I keep seeing people politely asking about this and then getting more and more frustrated with the canned responses of multiple moderators. I read about this has been going on for more than a year now with no fix.

Microsoft, tell me what I need to do to successfully share my calendars, including updates. It worked before (at least sporadically). Why would you take away the Publish Calendar Online option without making sure the Outlook.com method worked?

Thank you.
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