Sync iPhone Calendar with Google Calendar on Windows for free

Syncing iPhone Calendar with Google Calendar on OS X is easier due to Apple iCal’s integration with Google Calendar. GCALDaemon (free solution) or Spanning Sync ($25/yr. or $65 lifetime) automate bi-directional sync making the process even easier. What does Apple offer Windows users that want to sync to a web calendar? iTunes supports calendar sync only with Outlook on Windows (as of this writing). Contacts can be synced with Outlook Express, which is free, but Outlook Express does not support calendar features. Sunbird, a free iCal-based calendaring application with a Windows version, cannot by synced with iTunes.

Why not use Google Calendar on the web directly? Google offers an optimized Calendar version for mobile phones that makes creating and viewing entries faster (though events can’t be deleted from the mobile version), however the native iPhone calendar application is useful when Wi-Fi or EDGE is not available (in certain buildings or outside EDGE service areas). A native application also offers notifications and integration with other local apps not available from a web application.

RemoteCalendars (open source solution)

RemoteCalendars is an Outlook plug-in that tries to do bi-directional syncing between Outlook (2003 or newer) and Google Calendar. I say try because I was never able to get RemoteCalendars to publish Outlook calendar events to Google Calendar (tested on two Windows machines), but it was able to pull Google Calendar data into Outlook, albeit sluggishly and with occasional errors.

RemoteCalendars is a COM-.NET Add-in for Outlook 2003/2007, written in C#. After installing this plugin, every Outlook user should be able to subscribe, reload and delete a generic remote iCalendar (RFC 2445) from Outlook 2003/2007.

RemoteCalendars has useful options, such as disabling local notifications for remote calendar events, and showing remote calendar events as private on the local calendar (useful for a personal calendar synced with work machine).

I followed Jake Ludington’s detailed installation instructions for RemoteCalendars and was able to install it on two machines. From there I was able to set up my Google Calendar. I recommend creating a new Outlook calendar to use with your Google Calendar, in case you need to delete the Outlook one due to errors or during testing.

The only installation tip I recommend is to check the version of the .NET runtime you have installed, paste this into a command window and look for a folder that starts with v2.0: %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

After several tests on Windows XP SP2 and Outlook 2003 on two machines, I was not able to get RemoteCalendars to post events from Outlook to Google Calendar. Once events were pulled in from Google Calendar however, I had no trouble syncing iPhone with Outlook via iTunes. RemoteCalendars also made Outlook very sluggish and would occasionally freeze it. Documentation, translation, and stability for RemoteCalendars are lacking at this time, though the project is open source and may be a good option to try if you are willing to experiment and deal with some errors.

More RemoteCalendars resources

• Grinn.net installation page for Remote Calendars (updated 2006)
• RemoteCalendars and Google Calendar screencast shows set-up of the tool, though I found it somewhat difficult to follow.

Plaxo toolbar for Outlook and Google Calendar sync (free or paid)

Plaxo tries to solve the problem of contact information being outdated, by allowing users to update their own contact information and easily share it with others. Plaxo will sync with many web sites and local applications for free, including Outlook on Windows via a toolbar download. A paid version ($50/yr.) offers even more features, such as LinkedIn sync and duplicate removal, though this TechCrunch piece states that Plaxo Premium may not be worth the annual fee.

Installation of the 3MB Outlook add-on is easy and a wizard will guide you through the steps to configure which Outlook file types you’d like to sync. Once logged-in to Plaxo, a Google account can be set up to pull in Calendar and contact information, which can be automatically sync’d with the Plaxo Calendar.

Now sync in all directions works as expected. I was able to test creation of an event on iPhone, sync it with Outlook via iTunes, then fire off a sync from Outlook to Plaxo Calendar, and finally fire a Plaxo sync to update my Google Calendar. There are several steps in this process, though fortunately it can all be executed automatically. In addition to the aforementioned benefits of being able to access an up-to-date calendar offline on iPhone, Plaxo Online is a free service with many sync points and a newer feature called Pulse that aggregates public data from many web services.

Recommendation: I’m recommending Plaxo to Windows iPhone users looking to sync with Google Calendar.

More sync options to explore

30Boxes calendar user? Don’t want to create a Plaxo account but willing to spend a few dollars? Sync My Cal offers Outlook or 30Boxes sync on Windows for $25 (individual license).

SpanningSync recommends ScheduleWorld to sync Outlook and Google Calendar on Windows, though I have not tested this.

Finally, this tip should work the same for iPod Classic or iPod Touch (or any device that syncs with Outlook calendar, allowing users to sync and take their calendar on the go.