Calendar export: how to export from Google, Apple, and Outlook, and what gets lost

To export a calendar, open the calendar app on a computer and save its events to an .ics file. In Google Calendar, go to Settings > Import & export > Export for every calendar at once, or Settings and sharing > Export calendar for a single one. In Apple Calendar on a Mac, select the calendar and choose File > Export > Export. In classic Outlook, select the calendar and choose File > Save Calendar. The resulting file can be imported into almost any other calendar app.

What the menus do not say is that the file is a snapshot, and that some parts of each event are left behind on the way in. This guide gives the exact steps for each app as their official help pages describe them on October 18, 2026, then covers what survives the move, what does not, and when a live calendar link is the better tool.

Export from Google Calendar

Google's export help page sets three conditions before the steps. Export only works on a computer, not in the Google Calendar phone app. The account needs the Make changes and manage sharing permission on the calendar. And for work or school accounts, an administrator can restrict export entirely.

All calendars at once

1. Open Google Calendar on a computer.
2. Click Settings at the top right, then Settings.
3. On the left, click Import & export.
4. Under Export, click Export.

A .zip file downloads. Inside it is one .ics file per calendar. The zip itself cannot be imported back into Google. Google's help notes that the files have to be taken out of the .zip and imported one at a time.

A single calendar

1. On the left, under My calendars, point to the calendar name.
2. Click More, then Settings and sharing.
3. Under Calendar settings, click Export calendar.

This downloads a single .ics file, which is the more practical choice when moving one calendar into another account or app.

The feed processing error

Google's help page lists one known export problem. If the Public address in iCal format link returns a "Feed processing error", use the Secret address in iCal format instead. If no secret address is shown, the calendar cannot be exported that way, which usually means an administrator has turned the option off.

Export from Apple Calendar on a Mac

Apple's guide, Import or export calendars on Mac, describes two different exports, and they produce two different file types.

One calendar to an .ics file

1. Open the Calendar app.
2. Click the calendar's name in the calendar list. If the list is hidden, choose View > Show Calendar List.
3. Choose File > Export > Export.
4. Choose a location and click Export.

Everything to a calendar archive

1. Choose File > Export > Calendar Archive.
2. Choose a location and click Save.

The archive is an .icbu file, and it is meant for Apple Calendar only. It is a backup format, not an exchange format. Google Calendar and Outlook expect .ics, so use the per calendar export when the destination is another app.

Apple's page adds two warnings worth knowing before anything is restored. Importing an .ics file removes the events' previous custom color. Importing a calendar archive replaces all current calendar information and data, which makes it a restore tool, not a merge tool. Apple also points out that calendars in iCloud or Exchange accounts are already stored on the provider's servers, so for those accounts, export is mostly for sharing or for moving to another service, not for backup.

Export from Outlook

Microsoft's article Export an Outlook calendar to Google Calendar gives the steps for classic Outlook:

1. Open the Calendar and select the calendar to export.
2. Click File > Save Calendar.
3. Keep the default name or type a new one.
4. Check the summary next to More Options. It shows the calendar name, date range, and detail level.
5. To change them, click More Options, choose a Date Range or Specify dates, and choose the Detail level.
6. Click OK, then Save.

Two settings here are easy to miss. The date range shown in the summary is the only range that gets saved, so a quick export without checking it may leave out older or far future events. Choosing Whole calendar fixes that but, as Microsoft notes, can create a large file that takes a while to generate. The Detail setting decides how much of each event is written into the file. If it is set to anything less than full details, the import on the other side can show time blocks with missing titles or notes, which looks like a broken import but is exactly what the file contains. Microsoft also notes that if the calendar is empty, Outlook offers to cancel saving the file.

Microsoft states the key limitation directly: the export is a snapshot, and changes made later in Outlook are not reflected in the destination calendar.

What survives the move, and what does not

An .ics file follows the iCalendar format defined in RFC 5545. It holds each event's title, start and end, time zone, location, description, and repeat rule. That covers most of what people care about. The losses are in the details around the event.

Item	Typical result after export and import
Title, time, location, notes	Carried over
Repeat rules from an .ics file	Carried over as a repeating series
Repeat rules from a .csv file	In Google, become separate one time events
Guests and responses	Not imported into Google Calendar
Video conference links stored as conference data	Not imported into Google Calendar
Custom event colors	Removed on import in Apple Calendar
Attachments	Depend on the app, often left behind
Who can edit or see the calendar	Never carried, sharing starts from zero

The guest and conference lines come from Google's import help, which says that when an event is imported, its guests and conference data are not imported. In practice, an imported team meeting becomes a private event on the importer's own calendar. The other attendees are not on it, they get no updates if it changes, and the Meet link may be missing unless it was also written into the description.

The CSV line also comes from Google: repeat events imported from a .csv file can arrive as a series of one time events. For anyone moving a weekly meeting, that means dozens of separate events that have to be deleted one by one if the series later changes. Use .ics whenever the source app offers it.

Avoiding duplicates

Importing the same file twice creates every event twice. The safest routine is to create a new, empty calendar first, import into that, check the result, and then either keep it or delete the whole calendar and try again. Google lets the destination calendar be chosen on the import screen. Apple prompts for one after File > Import. Importing into the main calendar makes a failed import much harder to undo.

Export for spreadsheets and time reports

Some searches for calendar export are really about getting events into Excel or Google Sheets, for timesheets, client billing, or a report of how many hours went to meetings. An .ics file is plain text, but it is not a table, and opening it in a spreadsheet produces one line per property rather than one row per event.

There are three practical routes:

• A calendar app that writes CSV directly. BusyCal, for example, lists export to a Calendar File (.ics) or a Spreadsheet (.csv) among its features on its product page. Each event becomes a row with columns for title, start, end, and so on.
• Outlook's own export tools on Windows, which can write calendar items to a file for use in Excel. The options differ between classic Outlook and the new Outlook, so check the current Microsoft documentation for the version in use.
• Converting the .ics file with a script or an online converter. This works, but repeat rules have to be expanded into individual dates first, otherwise a weekly meeting shows up as a single row.

Whichever route is used, decide the date range before exporting. A year of events is a manageable spreadsheet. A whole calendar going back a decade is not.

When a live link is better than a file

Export is the right tool for moving house: leaving a job, switching apps, or handing over a project calendar. It is the wrong tool for keeping two calendars in step, because every exported file starts going out of date the moment it is saved.

For ongoing sharing, every major calendar offers a subscription link instead. In Google Calendar, the Secret address in iCal format under a calendar's settings can be added to another app as a subscription. Outlook on the web can publish a calendar as an ICS link. Apple Calendar can subscribe to any such link. The receiving side shows a read only copy that refreshes on its own, although the refresh interval is set by the receiving app and can be slow.

The rule of thumb:

• Moving once, then never touching the old calendar again: export and import.
• Watching someone else's schedule, or a school or sports schedule: subscribe.
• Editing the same calendar from two apps: neither. Add the account itself to both apps, so both read and write the same server.

The third case is where most frustration comes from. People export a work calendar into a personal one to see everything in one place, then find a week later that moved meetings still show in the old slots. Adding the work account directly to the calendar app, rather than copying its events, avoids that entirely.

Getting events in without a file

Many events never existed in a calendar app in the first place. They arrive as a PDF timetable, a conference agenda on a web page, or an email with three proposed dates. There is no file to import, and retyping them is where most errors creep in.

A calendar app for Mac that reads Google Calendar directly can take some of this work. One approach, described under Entering events, is to paste the text of an email or chat and let the app pull out the date, time, place, attendees, and meeting link as a draft event, or to type a plain sentence such as "Thursday 3pm review at the office". Some apps go further and read events in bulk from a document or a web page. For ongoing schedules, overlaying a holiday or sports feed from a single webcal or ICS URL keeps those events live instead of imported. The Features page lists which of these are included without a license.

What to do next

Decide first whether the goal is a one time move or ongoing sharing. For a move, export each calendar as .ics, import into a new empty calendar, and check guests and meeting links by hand. For ongoing sharing, use a subscription link or add the account directly. If the real job is getting events from emails and documents into a Google calendar on a Mac, Caltimate is one desktop calendar built around that.