Import into your Google Online Calendar, or your Desktop Microsoft Outlook Calendar, synchonrise and use on your Blackberry, Palm or iPaq on the move

FREE to download and use - this software is released as PRAYERWARE - all I ask is that you pray for us at the Parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Elson

Each entry is displayed as an untimed, non-busy event on your calendar, and the body of the event contains details about Saints Days, the readings for Mass, the Liturgical Colour, Divine Office week and other useful or interesting items of Liturgical information. It also includes biographical details and information from the first edition of Exciting Holiness

This data is suitable for importing into any Calendar application which can read the iCalendar or vCalendar format, which includes Microsoft Outlook (Not Outlook Express, as this has no Calendar), Palm Desktop and Lotus Notes on Windows, Apple iCal on the Macintosh and a number of applications on Linux. This is a robust and industry-standard format and avoids locality issues and date format problems which have occasionally arisen with previous versions of this data which used Comma Separated Value (CSV) format data.

The file is supplied as a Zip file (808k) and will need to be extracted onto your desktop before you import. Three files are included in the Zip archive: churchdates2009.ics which is iCalendar format and churchdates2009.vcs which is vCalendar. I have now also added the churchdates2009_outlook_pre_2007.csv file which is to be used by users of Outlook 2003 and older. If you are given the choice, I would use the better-looking iCalendar (.ics) format.

If you decide you don't like it, removal instructions are listed below

Step-by-Step Instructions on how to import

a) Google Calendar

1. At the bottom of your calendar, click the dropdown marked "Add"

2. Select "Import Calendar"

3. Browse to where you unzipped the data to. Select churchdates2009.ics

4. Select the calendar you want to import it to. I always import it to my main calendar, or you can create a separate calendar just for lectionary information and choose to view it as well as your main one. Blackberry will only synch with the main calendar, so I recommend importing it to that.

5. Import and there you are! The data is shown as non-busy all-day events ast the top of each day. Information may be accessed by clicking on each of them.

6. If you have found this data useful, then please drop me an email at simon@rundell.org.uk and let me know

b) Microsoft Outlook

1. Open Outlook

2. Select FILE / IMPORT AND EXPORT

Note that if you have not used this menu item before, it may be hidden, so click on the icon at the bottom of the menu to reveal less-frequently-used menu options.

3. From the Import and Export Wizard, select "IMPORT AN iCALENDAR OR vCALENDAR FILE (.vcs)" If you are using Outlook 2003 or older, select the one below "IMPORT FROM ANOTHER PROGRAM OR FILE"

4. In Outlook 2007, browse through to where you have unzipped the churchdates2009.ics file. The iCalendar file is more suitable for Outlook and uses a later and better specification. If you are using Outlook 2003 or older, browse and find churchdates2009_outlook_pre_2007.csv

Select it and press OK. There will be a few moments pause where your PC appears to be doing nothing. It would have been nice if Microsoft had given us an "Importing..." message, but you just need to be patient. Depending on the speed of your PC this may take up to a minute.

5. You will see that your calendar now contains entries for each day containing the 2006 Liturgical Calendar at the top of each day. To view the Lectionary information, double click on that entry to display the following window.

6. If you have found this data useful, then please drop me an email at simon@rundell.org.uk and let me know

b) Palm Desktop

1. From the FILE Menu, Select IMPORT

2. Change Files of Type to 'vCal File (*.vcs)' and browse to where you unzipped churchdates2009.vcs file.

3. Click on Import and in a few moments, the calendar is imported.

4. You can see an entry at the top of each day

5. Clicking into the event and selecting 'Note' will display the lectionary information

Step-by-Step Instructions on how to Remove the Import from Microsoft Outlook

There may be many reasons why you want to remove this data from Outlook: you may not want to pray for us any more, you may find the data no longer useful, or the import may have messed up and need redoing. As these are calendar events, when the current year is ended, you can just add next year's, as the old year will be archived in time.

There are two ways of removing the data.

Dawn emailed me with this method:

Dear Father Simon,

I am very thankful for your calendar download. It has helped me GREATLY! I had to remove all of your entries, however, because Outlook suddenly marked all of them "Private". After going through and unmarking each individual one, I realized that it would be easier to remove your imported dates and then just reinstall them. I found the directions for removal on your page and would like to suggest another method of removal that I found to be easier. I simply copied and pasted your email address (simon@rundell.org.uk) (which appears in the notes of each and every appointment) in the FIND box and Outlook found all of your entries. Then I just deleted those. Quick and easy!!!!!

Thanks so much for all the time that you have put into this import!!!!

Dawn S-
Killeen, Texas, USA

This method works well as long as you are not one of my close friends or colleagues and don't regularly get email from me. Thank you, Dawn.

The other method is more complex and not really suitable for end-users in everyday circumstances, but here goes...

1. a Messed Import are a series of Events imported all at the same time so the CREATED date of the event is usually close together, this is the date the event was setup, not the date of the event itself, so we will create a custom view showing creation date, sort it by this date and then mark out whole swathes of similarly-timed events on the basis that they were erroneously created. Some legitimate enties may be lost, but they are small in number.

2. You are viewing the calendar in Outlook (I am talking throut Outlook 2003, but older version are similar)

2.1 Select VIEW / ARRANGE BY / CURRENT VIEW / BY CATEGORY

(note that some options may be temporarily hidden if they havn't ever or are seldom used, so click on the double-down-arrow icon showing them)

2.2 You will see a table of events. To show the CREATION TIME field, right click on the table headings, perhaps where it says SUBJECT and select FIELD CHOOSER

2.3 Select ALL APPOINTMENT TYPES from the dropdown and you should see a field marked CREATED (if it isn't already displayed in the table)

2.4 Drag and Drop the CREATED field onto the table, and it will show.

3. Sort by CREATED by left clicking on the header of the CREATED field.

3.1 Identify where you have big blocks of appointments which are duplicated and created within a second or two of each other.

3.2 You can multiply-select these events by clicking on the first one, and shift-clicking on the last, or by multiple ctrl-clicks (holding down the relevent shift or ctrl key whilst left-clicking).

3.3 When highlighted, press Delete.

4. Repeat until satisfied.

Editing the Data before importing

If you are a user of last year's calendar, you might find an overlap of dates. You can either import the file and delete the duplicate entries by hand or do the following:

1. Open the ics or vcs file you intend to import in Wordpad (Right click on the file, select OPEN WITH.. and scroll down to Wordpad which is usually at the bottom).

The file begins with the header details - please leave these alone:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
METHOD:PUBLISH
PRODID:Microsoft CDO for Microsoft Exchange
VERSION:2.0

2. Each day event is marked with a BEGIN and an END. The date for each is shown in the format YYYYMMDD so this event shown below is for the 1st November 2006 (All Saints Day). Simply remove all the date events from 20061101 to 20061130, save the file and then import it. The calendar also extends beyond Advent 2007 to the end of the year, so if you intend to use next years, you might want to delete those as well.

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20060712T000001Z
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20061101
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20061102
SUMMARY:All Saints - Solemnity - * Holy Day of Obligation *
DESCRIPTION:All Saints - Solemnity - * Holy Day of Obligation *\n\nToday is a Solemnity [etc]
UID:55EC41E5E05A49068CAE729F3BAA5476@rundell.org.uk
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:FREE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INSTTYPE:0
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INTENDEDSTATUS:FREE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-ALLDAYEVENT:TRUE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1
END:VEVENT