Monday, December 2, 2013

Get Your Full Calendar History on Your Android Device

For a long time, Google only let you get one month of your Google calendar's history on a new device. More recently, they've upped it to a year. Much better, but not when you have FOUR years worth of history to preserve. I've done this several times, so I know it works. I'm just putting it here so I don't have to do a web search for the answer the next time.
  1.  Go to your calendar on your computer. Click on the down arrow to the right of "My calendars." Select "settings."
  2. Click "Export calendars" and unzip the file that you download.
  3. One of the .ics files that is unzipped (assuming that you have more than one calendar) will have your username as part of the file name.
  4. Click "Import calendar" and choose the .ics file from step #3.
  5. Once it's done uploading, your phone/tablet will sync and you will have your full history!
This will NOT create duplicate entries. Essentially it "touches" (if you are familiar with the Linux command of the same name) all of the entries, so that the device thinks they're new and need to be synced. I got an error saying something about that three of my entries failed to sync, but it worked fine.