4. Uploading events from your local calendar
If you have previously used iCal to keep an electronic calendar on your computer, it is likely that it contains events you might like to transfer to the calendar on the Exchange server, ie Nexus. You may be using iCal with several calendars within it, perhaps one for home and one for work. In fact it may make sense for you to transfer all of your local calendars onto the server so that you can access them wherever you are.
To transfer the contents of any local calendar onto the Nexus server you will need to export each of your local calendars and then import them into your Nexus account. The good news is that you can perform all of these tasks from within iCal.
The first step is to export the local calendar. In iCal select the name of the calendar that you wish
to export from the Calendars section in the left hand pane. In this example we will
export the local Work calendar:
Once you have selected the correct calendar go to the iCal menu and select [File], then
[Export...], followed by [Export].
This will bring up a window that allows you to specify where the export file will be saved and what
it will be called. You should save the file to a location that you will be able to find easily for
the next step. We have saved the file on the Desktop and we have accepted the suggested filename of
Work which matches the original name of the local calendar.
Once you have specified the filename and location click the Export button to perform
the export. In this example the exported file appears on the Desktop as Work.ics.
Now we have to import that file into a calendar within your Nexus account. It is possible to create
more than one calendar within your Nexus account but it is only the main Exchange calendar that is
used to reflect availability and updated invitations and invitee responses. So, in this example we
will import the local Work calendar into our main Exchange calendar. (Of course you
may wish to import a local Home calendar into a calendar on Nexus that is separate
from the main calendar as availability and invitations may not be relevant to this calendar. In this
case you will need to create the new destination calendar under your Nexus account before going
through the Import process below.)
Select your main Exchange calendar for the import by selecting Calendar within your
Nexus account where it appears in the left hand pane.
Once you have selected the correct calendar go to the iCal menu and select [File], then
[Import...], followed by [Import..].
The next window to appear is the "iCal: Import" window and this allows you to browse for the file to
import. In our example we saved our exported calendar file to the Desktop so use the browser to
locate the correct file and click the Import button to start the import.
The import process will pop up an "Add events" window that prompts you to select the destination calendar from a drop down menu. To import the events into your main Exchange calendar make sure you select Calendar from the list, if you want to import into a different calendar as discussed previously you will need to select the name of the calendar that you have already created to receive the events from your exported local calendar.
Click the OK button to import the events into the selected destination calendar.
Once the process is complete you will see the new events appear in your Nexus calendar.
If you wish to import events from more than one local calendar you will need to perform the export and then import process for each of your local calendars in turn.
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