Thanks for letting me contribute to the PalmAddict discussion. If there is anything I am more addicted to than my Palm, it is NCAA basketball. If my wife complains about anything more than the time I spend working on my Palm-programming hobby its how much time I spend watching college basketball. Now, to the chagrin of my lovely, patient bride, I have found a way to combine these two mistresses.
The other day I came across someone who put every Sweet 16 game into a CSV file. They offered this file so fans like me could import the game times into Outlook in order to sync it to our Palms- far be it for us to ever miss a game. Unfortunately, I don't use Outlook to sync to my palm- I use good-ole Palm Desktop- so this file was useless to me.
There are a couple formats you can use to import calendar data into Palm Desktop: vCal or Date Book Archive. I searched Google for programs that could convert the CSV file I first received into one of these formats. All I could find (unless I would pay for something) is a CSV to iCal converter (darn iPhone format!). Next I found a program that could convert iCal to vCal- which Palm Desktop could use. It worked! And there was much rejoicing!
Now, I know that not everyone who is a PalmAddict is a college-basketball addict, but I offer this to you because there might be a time when you need to preform a similar conversion- for instance sharing calendar events from a wayward friend who uses an iPhone. Here's how it's done:
- Upload the CSV file to the Yahoo/Outlook CSV to iCal Calendar Converter site. Just follow the directions. NOTE: please be cautious when allowing an unknown website to upload data or download data to your site- their site can upload or download other things in the meantime. Although I didn't have any problems with this site, that doesn't mean you won't.
- Upload the ICS file created by the first site to the ical2vcal site by following the directions. NOTE: I already warned you about the potential danger with this practice so be careful and make sure your virus-scan software is up to date and working. This site will generate a web page with the data. Just choose "Save As" from the file menu (in Internet Explorer) and save it as a text file. You will later have to rename this text file to a ".vcs" file for the next step to work. Renaming this file is actually kinda tricky: the best way to rename this file is to open it in a text editor (like Notepad), choose "Save As" from the file menu, change the "Save as type" to "All Files", and name the file (with the dot VCS extension) completely enclosed in quotation marks ("sweet16.vcs", for instance), and hit the "Save" button.
- Open Palm Desktop and "Import" the VCS file (you will find this under the "File" menu). You will find the events in your Calendar. HotSync your Palm and you will have the Sweet 16 in the Palm of your hand.
To really make this work, I had to tweak the original CSV file by converting all the times to military time from "PM" (by adding 12 to the hour under each time and removing the " PM" from the end of each time in my text editor).
Is this worth the extra effort? Wouldn't it have been quicker just to enter the games manually? In this case, you are correct. However, if you ever receive a long file of events that you need to convert for your Palm, this procedure will help you.
Now I don't have to worry about missing any of the Sweet 16 games! My wife is overjoyed too.
Rock Chalk Jayhawk, Go KU!