RealTeams Documentation - Importing and Exporting Events

Calendar can import and export event data using a plain ASCII format. This can be used to get all your event data into a spreadsheet or external database, or to load a calendar with events you've defined elsewhere.

Both the Import and Export screens are reached via the Settings page for each calendar.

Exporting Events and the Format of the Export File
Exporting events is easy. Just specify the date range for which you want event data, choose a field separator (space, comma, or tab), and specify either "Calcium" or "MS Outlook", and "USA" or "European" formats.

• European prints dates as DD/MM/YYYY, times will range from 0:00 - 23:59, days of the week will have Monday = 1, Sunday = 7
• USA prints dates as MM/DD/YYYY, times as 12:00am - 11:59pm, Sunday = 1, Saturday = 7.
• MS Outlook prints events in a format suitable for import into Microsoft Outlook.

Press the button to export the data. A new page with all your data will appear; use your browser to "Save as..." plain text or ASCII.

The exported data will have one line for each event or each occurrence of a repeating event. For MS Outlook format, the first line will describe the fields. The Calcium format will present each line the the following fields in the listed order, separated by the specified separator (space, comma, or tab.)

Calcium Format

Field	Format	Notes
Date	MM/DD/YYYY (USA) or DD/MM/YYYY (European)	Never blank
Event Text	plain text	Never blank
Link or Popup Text		can be blank
Start Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
Start Time AM/PM	'am' or 'pm'	USA Format only! (this field does not exist for European format
End Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
End Time AM/PM	'am' or 'pm'	USA Format only! (this field does not exist for European format
Border?	'1' if there is a border	blank for no border
BG Color	color name or # value	blank for default
FG Color	color name or # value	blank for default
Privacy	one of "public", "private", "nopopup", "unavailable", "outofoffice"
Owner	user that created the event	can be blank
Category	category of the event	can be blank
Included From	calendar the event is included from	can be blank

MS Outlook Format

Field	Format	Notes
Event Text	plain text	Never blank
Date	MM/DD/YYYY (USA) or DD/MM/YYYY (European)	Never blank
Start Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
Date	MM/DD/YYYY (USA) or DD/MM/YYYY (European)	Never blank
End Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
All Day Event	'True' or 'False'	True if there is a Start Time; False otherwise
Link or Popup Text	"Description" field	can be blank

Any field that doesn't have a value will be blank. Unless you are using tabs as the separators, any separators (i.e. spaces or commas) that appear in the text will be preceded by a backslash, and quotes and newlines will also be escaped with a backslash.

Importing Events and the Format of the Import File
You can import events directly from the computer you are browsing from. The first field on the Import screen has a "Browse..." button, which you can use to find the data file on your local disk. Note that it will likely default to look only for ".html" files, but you can import files with any filename extension. (Of course, the contents of the file must be properly formatted!)

You can check your import file for errors before actually loading the events. This is highly recommended! In addition, you can choose to delete all event data from your calendar before importing.

There are three types of data files supported:

• Calcium - USA or European
• Microsoft Outlook - USA or European
• iCal Format - for importing data that was previously exported from Brown Bear Software's iCal program, version 3.x

For iCal and MS Outlook, the files should be ASCII files, in the formats exported by those programs. The Calcium import format is similar to the export format. For import files, you can separate fields using commas, tabs, spaces, or any non-word character (you cannot use quotes; we suggest sticking to commas, tabs, or spaces.) There is no need to specify which field separator you are using; Calcium will figure it out based on your input file. Note: You must use the same separator throughout the file! Also, any separators which occur in the text must be preceded by a backslash, or the entire field value can be surrounded by quotes.

You can also include as many blank lines or comment lines as you like. Any line with '#' as the first character will be ignored as a comment.

Each line in the import files should have the following fields in the listed order. Note that the first part of the line is the same as the Exported Data format above:

Field	Format	Notes
Date	MM/DD/YYYY (USA) or DD/MM/YYYY (European)	Required
Event Text		Required
Link or Popup Text		can be blank
Start Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
Start Time AM/PM	any of 'am','pm','AM','PM'	USA Format only! (this field does not exist for European format
End Time	HH:MM	12 hour for USA format, 24 hour otherwise. Can be blank.
End Time AM/PM	any of 'am','pm','AM','PM'	USA Format only! (this field does not exist for European format
Border?	'1', 'y', 'Y', or 'yes'; anything else or blank means 'no'	blank for no border
BG Color	color name or 6 digit hex value	blank for calendar default
FG Color	color name or 6 digit hex value	blank for calendar default
Privacy	one of "public", "private", "nopopup", "unavailable", "outofoffice"	blank means 'public'
Owner	name of user that the event belongs to	can be blank
Category	category of the event	can be blank
Included From	calendar the event is included from	can be blank
The remaining fields are only for repeating events
End Date	same format as Event Date	use 01/01/2037 to repeat Forever
Period	'day', 'week', 'month', 'year', or a list of days of week (e.g. 1357 for Sun, Tu,Th, Sat)	USA Sunday=1, else Monday=1. Default is "day" if end date is specified and week of month is not.
Frequency	1 for every, 2 for every other, etc.	default is 1 if end date is specified and week of month is not)
Week of Month	1 = first, 2 = second, ... 5 = last, or a list (e.g. 135 = "first, third, and last")	for repeats like "first Tuesday of month". Default null
Month Period	1 = "every", 2 = "every other", 3 = "every third" etc.	with Week of Month, for repeats like "first and third Tuesday every third month". Default null.
Exclusions	list of dates separated by ';', e.g. 10/10/2000;10/11/2000	instances of repeat to exclude. Default null.

Repeating events use EITHER (Period and Frequency), OR ("Week of Month" and "Month Period")

Here are some Examples of input lines:

Using space as a field separator, European format:

15/01/2000 "This is event text" "This is \"popup\" text!" 05:10 14:30 1 green ff00ff private george Meeting
22/01/2000 Hello\ World,\ How\ Are\ You
13/01/2000 Repeating "Every day until end of month" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" 31/01/2000
15/01/2000 Repeat\ 3 "Every third day until end of month" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" 31/01/2000 "" 3
01/01/2000 "Repeat other week" "Every other week until end of month" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" 31/01/2000 week 2
15/01/2000 "This is the 15th" www.cnn.com "" "" 1 yellow red unavailable "" SomeCategory IncludedFrom

Using comma as a field separator, USA format:

01/15/2000,This is event text,This is \"popup\" text!",05:10,am,2:30,pm,1,green,ff00ff,private
01/22/2000,Hello World\, How Are You
01/13/2000 Repeating,"Every day until end of month",,,,,,,,,,,,01/31/2000

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