How to Import Your Google Calendar to Outlook.com

Are you ready to go all in and import your Google Calendar to Outlook.com?

If you’re like me, you may be tired of this Google vs. Microsoft battle and have finally decided to pull the trigger and move your existing Google Calendar to your Outlook.com account. It certainly would make life easier, wouldn’t it?

Here is the good news: Google now allows you to export a copy of your Google Calendar into an ICS file. HURRAY!!! (ICS is just a file type that contains calendar data.) This feature is called Google Takeout and works pretty well for Calendar. [Note: It also has other components, like email export, but they do not work with Outlook.com accounts.]

Here is how you use Google Takeout to create an archive of your calendar:

1. Open calendar.google.com from your browser and login with your account.

2. In a new tab, launch Google takeout: https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/calendar

3. Double-check that only Calendar is checked. And choose which calendars to download – I chose Include all calendars. Then click Create Archive.

4. The archive will kick off. When it is finished it will send you a notification email.

5. Once you receive the notification email, you will have an option to download your ICS file. It will be in a .zip format. Click the Download button.

6. You will be asked to either open or save the .zip file that Google created. Click the down error next to Save button and tell it where to save your life.

7. Navigate to where you saved your zipped archive. Open it up and copy the .ics file out of the zipped folder. [Note: if you had multiple calendars you will have multiple .ics files to choose from. You can import one or all of them, it’s up to you.]

Now you are ready to import your Google calendar to Outlook.com calendar.

• Sign in to your Outlook.com (or live.com) account.

• Make sure you are in Calendar

• Click Import on the top menu bar.

• You have an option to either import to existing calendar or create a new one – I chose to import to existing. Click the Browse.. button and find your ICS file.

• Click Import and the import will begin.

• All you have to do now is to wait for the import to finish and you’re done.

It’s that easy; you can now go to your Outlook.com calendar and see all the imported appointments. I was actually kind of impressed with how well this method worked – surprised me because transferring between Google and Microsoft has not worked very well in the past. Don’t get used to it though, because importing email is not quite so easy. More on that in a later post.

Hope this helps you to import your Google Calendar to Outlook.com.

Happy Importing!

You may also like our posts on How to Move Your Contacts from People App to Outlook.com and the entire Outlook series of posts.

Joanna-