Calendar - from GoogleSync to Native Sync

Seems to be some flurry with the announcement that Google is discontinuing support for their GoogleSync app. I was rather distressed with this as the native syncing only brings in the primary calendar, not any secondary calendars that you also have in Google. My primary calendar is "Work" and I have a secondary "Personal" calendar. GoogleSync has given me a regular stream of minor problems over the years, primarily it has always dropped the Personal calendar and when I notice that things are missing, I have to go in and re-check that calendar. So I decided to figure out how to do everything with the new, recommended way of adding the GMail account and syncing the calendars through BIS. The solution I went with was to split my secondary calendar into a different GMail account. Not a tough process:

1) Delete GoogleSync - go to downloads, pull up icon menu, select delete, reboot.

2) Delete all calendar events - in the Agenda-view, go to a way-future date (the year 2022 for example). Highlight one of the days, press Blackberry button, and select "Delete Prior...". Calendar should then be blank.

3) In primary Google account, go into the secondary calendar's settings and using the private iCal link, download your calendar to your computer. (This is my Personal calendar). Delete the Personal calendar in this GMail account (you don't have to... just keeping it clean).

4) In a different GMail account, create your new, blank calendar (the primary/only calendar). Go to calendar settings and copy the private XML address at the bottom.

5) In Lightning, add a new calendar using Google Provider and the XML address from (4).

6) In Lightning, import the .ics file from (3) into the new Personal calendar from (5).

7) On the Blackberry, go to Email Setup and add the original GMail account. Tell BB to sync the calendar. Then add the new GMail from (4) and also have it sync the calendar.

End result: both my Work and Personal calendars are now fully synced with my BB calendar. People have said that anything added to your Google calendar will not show up in your BB for 4 hours, but for me that's happening in just a few minutes. Any items added in the BB calendar show up in the Google calendar immediately.

Advantages: firstly, the calendars are now distinct and therefore have their own colours in the BB calendar. Using Googlesync, you only got one colour for both calendars connected to your default email. Secondly, because the calendars are distinct, I can add to either my Work calendar or my Personal calendar from my BB. With GoogleSync, everything added went into the primary (Work) calendar then I'd have to change Personal items over using Lightning. Thirdly, there's one less application running on my phone :)

Disadvantages: none for me. Potentially if it's true that other users have to wait 4 hours for an update from Google that could be an annoyance, but it 100% isn't true for me. If you have 10 different calendars then you won't have enough email slots on your BIS account to add all those calendars. You're also too busy and need to slow down! Some people are also saying that BIS will only sync 4 weeks; again, this is not my experience - all items in my Google Calendar have been synced with my BB (for years to come).

Overall, I'm a happy camper and actually prefer it this way. Goodbye and good riddance GoogleSync!

What this can't do though, is sync a secondary calendar that's linked to an ical

For example, I use TVRage to populate an always updating calendar of my TV shows to a secondary google calendar (i.e. I don't own or update the calendar -- I'm updating from a remote source into my google calendar). There is no way to set this as primary calendar, so the only way to sync is to use the google application.

Good post. You've obviously put a lot of thought into a solution.

Cracurt this is an excellent solution, thankyou.

You've been very helpful using a step by step guide ..... thank you again!! :D :D :D

Originally Posted by joesworld

What this can't do though, is sync a secondary calendar that's linked to an ical

For example, I use TVRage to populate an always updating calendar of my TV shows to a secondary google calendar (i.e. I don't own or update the calendar -- I'm updating from a remote source into my google calendar). There is no way to set this as primary calendar, so the only way to sync is to use the google application.

Hi Joe

Try post #5 on this thread - it contains a very useful link for this sort of thing:-

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...google-700675/

It worked for me to get two calendars from one gmail account into my PlayBook, no problem at all.

I discover something just this morning about google sync. I was having problem with my contacts and wanted to get a good solid copy. I deleted all contacts in gmail and turned all syncing. Took my BB and got all the contacts fixed just the way I wanted. I then told google sync to sync now. Holy cow this is what happened. I ended up with no contacts on my BB and none on gmail. Google sync must have thought I wanted to sync my gmail to my BB instead of the other way around causing it to delete all my contacts on my BB. So now I'm sitting here with no contacts anywhere. I just happen to think I had a .csv file on my pc for contacts that I had exported in the past sometime. I imported them to gmail and made any corrections I could from memory and ran google sync again from the BB and got my contacts back. I don't know if this happens all the time or not. I mean what if I modify a contact on my BB and expect it to go to gmail? Will gmail be updated or will my BB revert back to the old gmail info????

Any thoughts

Originally Posted by Barljo

Hi Joe

Try post #5 on this thread - it contains a very useful link for this sort of thing:-

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...google-700675/

It worked for me to get two calendars from one gmail account into my PlayBook, no problem at all.

Yes, works great on my Playbook but unfortunately the BIS sync doesn't allow this to work. Only the main calendar is ever synced no matter what (which is why the google sync app is critical for me). Oh well, maybe someone will write an app that can sync ical calendars directly on the device!

Ach, sorry - I thought it would work for all devices, and my torch isn't BIS'd at the moment to test. Apologies.

Hi
Thanks for this. What if the secondary calendar is not one that you have set up yourself, and which you have no control over it? I have one like that, which I can just view on Google Calendar, but it doesn't sync with my BB 9900 Calendar app, now that Google Sync for BB is no more! Very annoying.
Ian