Syncing Calendars from Multiple Google Accounts

Several users have asked how to use Spanning Sync to sync iCal with multiple Google accounts, for instance a work-related account and a personal account. Here's how:

Let's say you're syncing iCal to your personal Google Calendar account and want to add calendars from your Work account. First you need to share the calendars from your work account with your personal Google account. To do this, log into Google Calendar (using your work account), select "Settings", then "Calendars", then "Share this calendar" for each calendar you want to share. Under "Add a new person", add the email address associated with your personal Google account and select "Make changes to events" for the permissions.

Once you've done that, you can to log into Google Calendar using your personal account and see both your work and personal calendars. Now refresh Spanning Sync by quitting System Preferences and reopening the Spanning Sync preference pane. You'll see both your work and personal Google calendars listed and be able to sync with all of them.

Note that this works with both traditional Google Accounts and Google Apps for Your Domain accounts.

Comments

[Bent]

Thank you so much for this tip -- extremely useful, and cost-effective too. :)

[Fredrik Wännman]

Just tried it for the first time. Have several google accounts and tried syncing them with ical. Earlier events in google calendars I share with others (where others can make changes) didn't appear in ical. New events appear and old events if I make changes to them. Known issue?

[Charlie Wood]

Fredrik,

Please create a problem report (by opening Spanning Sync, clicking "Reset..." and "Create report") and email it to us at support@spanningsync.com along with a detailed description of the problem, including the titles of any affected calendars and events. That will help us track down the issue.

Thanks,
Charlie

[jean]

When I sync between ical and google calendar the sync just goes on forever until I force quit. All my permissions are correct. Thoughts?

[Charlie Wood]

Jean,

We'd be happy to find and fix the problem for you, but we need a little more information. Please create a problem report (by opening Spanning Sync, clicking "Reset..." and "Create report") and email it to us at support@spanningsync.com along with a detailed description of the problem, including the titles of any affected calendars and events. That will help us track down the issue.

Thanks,
Charlie

[Giuseppe]

I would like to know if on $65 "perpetual fee" upgrades are included, or should I go for the $25/year.
Thank you.

[Charlie Wood]

Giuseppe-

Yes, both plans include all updates for the term of the subscription, so the $65 one-time payment gets you all upgrades for the lifetime of the service.

Regards,
Charlie

[alieber]

I bought spanningsync service and was using it on my personal gmail account. i've now signed up for the google apps account so I have my own domain name. When I switched the login information in spanningsync to my new account, it says I have to buy again. Is this true?

[Charlie Wood]

alieber-

We can transfer your Spanning Sync license to your new Google account. Just send a request including both your old and new email addresses to support@spanningsync.com and we'll get it taken care of.

Regards,
Charlie

[leeschneider]

I have multiple calendars (my personal, my work, and full access to my fiance's personal calendar). When I sync, my personal calendars are all correct, however, my fiance's calendar (when on google calendar, not in ical), has a question mark next to every entry asking if she'll be attending the event. These are events that she has created. Not ones that she's been invited to. Has anyone heard of this problem before? If so, how can I fix this? I certainly don't want to have to go in and accept every event that is in her calendar in order to get rid of the question mark.

[Charlie Wood]

Lee,

You're seeing the artifact of a bug Google recently introduced into the Google Calendar API. For more info, please see this blog post:

http://blog.spanningsync.com/2007/09/google-acknowle.html

Fortunately, Google has acknowledged the problem and has said that a fix should be in place this week.

Regards,
Charlie

[michael gs]

Hi,
First let me say I'm excited to have found something that'll do what spanning sync does.
I've just started syncing to multiple google calendars and wanted to do something it won't allow. I just wonder if anyone else has struck it - or if there's a work around.
I want to connect multiple google calendars to one ical calendar. I see multiple google calendars from family members, friends, clubs and so on. For my ical purposes (and to keep things uncluttered) I'd prefer to gather them all up into, for example, Friends, Family, Industry. spanningsync seems to allow me only a one-to-one relationship between ical calendars and google calendars.
best wishes

[rodkar]

Hi,

I just purchased a permanent license yesterday. So far I am happy with what I have performed with the program, i.e. synching my Google Calendar with my iCal. However, I just ran into problems setting up "sharing" of the calendar of one of my Google Apps domains. I know this is probably more of a problem for Google Apps rather than SpanningSync, but I might just as well try my luck at this particular thread. I couldn't set the permission settings to "Make changes to events" to the person field where I have entered my google email that had been registered with SpanningSync. I was only allowed to set "See only free/busy (hide details)". I just wonder has anyone experienced this problem? I have "checked" both "Share this calendar with others" and "Share this calendar with everyone in the domain ..."

Regards,

Roderick

[Charlie Wood]

Roderick-

Your Google Apps administrator needs to change your domain's settings to allow you to share calendars outside your domain. The default sharing option is "Only free/busy information", but to do what you want it needs to be set to "Share all information, and outsiders can change calendars".

Please let me know if you have any questions or run into any problems.

(You'll get much better service by emailing this kind of question to support@spanningsync.com, but I'm happy to answer it here too. I've cc'ed you via email.)

Regards,
Charlie

[TravelerTC]

Any plans to have Spanning Sync support multiple Google Accounts natively like Macness gSync (http://www.macness.com)?

[Charlie Wood]

TravelerTC-

No, we don't have any immediate plans to add direct support for multiple Google accounts, but most people with such a requirement have been able to use Google Calendar's sharing capability to effectively do the same thing.

Thanks,
Charlie