Ultra easy vCalendar exporting

When it comes to accomplishing things within FileMaker Pro, some of the most sublime techniques are also the most empowering.

This particular technique, while focused on exporting calendar events, showcases some of my most favorite power-user methods for manipulating data. In my personal scenario, I was provided with a standard spreadsheet formatted to show a calendar of events broken down month-by-month.

The spreadsheet was formatted to be easily used and viewed by humans. It was not, however, formatted to easily flow into an online calendar like the wonderfully shareable and embeddable Google calendars.

So, once again, FileMaker to the rescue.

Being able to manipulate and then push and pull data is one of FileMaker’s great strengths. The utility of it’s various features make light work of converting a spreadsheet full of dates and times and pushing that data into a format easily used by Google Calendar.

Whether you’re working with calendar events or not, this video will provide you with a wealth of information about how easy it is to format data into standardized formats.

AttachmentSize
UltraEasyVcalendarExporting.zip275.55 KB

Comments

Aside from adding events, we may need to update and event or delete an event. Is there a format to perform those other functions? Also, what if we want to push the event to the calendar? I know that Google has some kind of Web services, so you don't have to manually import an event. Is there a quick way to do that? If there isn't a quick way, that would make a good followup video. Importing is okay, but a true calendar solution would have to be pushed in some way. Even automating Google's import would be helpful.

I had a few, "ah ha!" Moments. Great video. The techniques shown are useful in so many other ways!