This may be a little off topic, but as it took me some hours to work it out and as I could find very few helpful resources describing the procedure, here is how I converted my archived Lotus Notes calendars to iCal. Mind you, this is specific to my settings and might not work for you. But if you have trouble importing Notes-created .ICS files to iCal, read on.
Caution
The procedure described below may not work with your settings. Be extra careful to backup your system and/or calendars before you apply any changes. I will take no responsibility for any damage that might be caused by following the steps below!
Trouble With Lotus Notes Compatibility
I was using Lotus Notes for Mac 7.0.2 as the last version maintaining my calendars both at work and at home. For home use, I had downloaded a trial version of the Notes client from the IBM website and it never expired (I do not know whether this is still possible with 8.x downloads, though).
After I had decided to completely move to iCal, there was the issue with migrating previous calendar entries. I thought this would not be a big thing as Notes 7 offers an export option for .ICS files (iCal calendar files).
I was wrong: neither iCal nor Firebird nor Google Calendar would read the resulting file.
From the "File" menu, choose "Export" and specifiy the calendar file format you want to have your entries converted to.
I was trying all kinds of tools and online conversion services, but they all struggled with the .ICS file. Only MMI’s iCalMaker would open it, though indicating quite a lot of errors. Unfortunately, the error messages where ambiguous and fixing from within iCalMaker was not at all comfortable.
Validate First
Finally, I came across a validation website that displayed sensible error messages that helped me fix the file: Douglas Day’s iCalendar Validator. In my case, the problem was that the .ICS file contained markup for several calendars – which it must not.
So I opened the .ICS file with a plain text editor and found there was more than one area enclosed with BEGIN:VCALENDAR and END:VCALENDAR lines (each with their own header declarations before the first BEGIN:VEVENT). I removed all the extra headers and left only the first instance. The new file now was bracketed by a single pair of BEGIN:VCALENDAR and END:VCALENDAR lines. (Also, there should be no blank lines anywhere inbetween.)
The result looked something like this:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Lotus Development Corporation//NONSGML Notes 7.0//EN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:W. Europe
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:19501029T020000
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMINUTE=0;BYHOUR=2;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:19500326T020000
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMINUTE=0;BYHOUR=2;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
...
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
...
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDARiCal swallowed the cleaned-up file at the first go.
Safety First
I would strongly advise you to create a new calendar within iCal, into which you import the .ICS content. If anything goes wrong, you can simply delete that new calendar and you’re back to the start.
Also, if you end up with a lot of duplicate entries, run John Maisey’s iCal Dupe Deleter on the new calendar. Again, if anything goes wrong with this, you are on the safe side with an extra calendar.
If you are really sure your new calendar’s entries are alright, you can simply re-assign them to one of your existing calendars.
Tags: Mac, Software, Troubleshooting, Workflow