This week my frustrations with the fact that I have two calendars going on non-compatible platforms finally came to an end. The task? I wanted to sync my iCal calendar on OS X Tiger (10.4) with my Outlook 2007 calendar on Windows Vista. Even more importantly, it had to be a two-way sync, with changes to either calendar being reflected on the other. Furthermore, I wanted to be able to sync multiple calendars, not just one. As a bonus, this would all be accessible on the web.

Now, this wouldn’t be too hard if I wanted to spend cold, hard cash on commercial software (or even worse, subscription-based software), but I wanted to do it all for free. I tried to do this last spring, and failed miserably. Thankfully, things have changed now, much thanks to the free availability of Google Calendar with multiple calendar support, and the recent free offering of Calgoo. Here’s the full tutorial, then:

First, set up equivalent calendars in all three locations.

(Google Calendar, iCal (version 2.0.5 on OS X Tiger), Outlook 2007)

1. Set up multiple calendars in Google Calendar
2. Set up multiple calendars in iCal 2.0.5
3. Set up multiple calendars in Outlook 2007

Then, tie them all together.

(Using GCALDaemon, Lingon, and Calgoo Connect)

1. Sync multiple iCal 2.0.5 calendars with Google Calendar
2. Sync multiple Outlook 2007 calendars with Google Calendar

That’s it! You’re done! Sure was easy, wasn’t it? As you can see, all changes everywhere are synchronized through Google Calendar nearly instantaneously: now you can keep all your Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendars in sync for free.