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HOWTO import a CSV file into Google Calendar

Problem

You want to export your calendar from Microsoft Outlook. You follow the Google HOWTO, which basically says that you have to export your calendar into a comma-separated-value file for Windows (CSV), but when you try to import it to Google Calendar you always get:

Failed to import events:
Failed to upload ical/csv file

Possible Solution

1.) At the time of writing you have to use the English version of Outlook, otherwise the headers in the CSV file will not be accepted by Google Calendar. If you use the French version of Outlook your header will look like this:

"Objet","Début","Début","Fin","Fin","Journée entière","Rappel actif/inactif","Date de rappel","Heure du rappel","Organisateur d'une réunion","Participants obligatoires","Participants facultatifs","Ressources de la réunion","Afficher la disponibilité","Catégories","Critère de diffusion","Description","Emplacement","Informations facturation","Kilométrage","Priorité","Privé"

The English headers that Google Calendar is looking for look like this:

"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"

So you have to change the header by hand, but there is another catch:

2.) Google Calendar expects date and time to be in English (United States) format. So close Outlook, go to "Control Panel", then "Regional and Language Options" and change your "Standards and Formats" to "English (United States)". If you already had this setting then you probably customized this setting. Choose another setting like "German (Germany)" and then switch back to English. After that you can start Outlook and export your calendar.

In detail: Google Calendar wants to have the time in h:mm:ss AM/PM, where h is the 12 h format. Example: 1:30:00 PM would be correct, 13:30:00 with or without PM would be wrong. The date has to come in M/d/yyyy format. So January 31st, 2006 would be 1/31/2006. I don't know if there are any additional settings that might break the import into Google Calendar.

I did not figure this out by myself. Credit goes to this thread in Google Groups