Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.
For a long time I have been looking for a rock solid calendaring system. I’ve gotten too used to working for companies who have Microsoft Exchange (or, God forbid, Scalix) installed which allow me to edit and update a calendar from multiple locations and even sync it with my Mobile Phone. When I first heard of Google Calendar I hoped that I would be able to enjoy such benefits again, but I am not a great fan of web-apps, and prefer a nice, solid desktop client to do my email / organisation from.
Queue Lightning, the calendaring extension for Thunderbird which brings the desktop email app one step closer to becoming a viable alternative to Microsoft Outlook. Installation can be a little bit confusing and you must remember that this add-on is still in the 0.x stages, so may be a tad unstable at times (but that’s ok, we love this shit!)
Open up Thunderbird (I am using the 2.0 rc1 release) and on the Top Menu, go to:
Tools -> Add-ons
When the Add-ons window opens, click on the Install button on the bottom left and paste in the following URL to install the latest release of Lightning (Windows Only, Linux / Mac users will need to get this link by copying the XPI download path from the Mozilla Add-on repository, located here.
Win32 Lightning Add-On XPI Download Link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/downloads/file/8816/lightning-0.3.1-tb-windows.xpi
If you get a warning similar to “Lightning could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox” then you are trying to install the XPI directly into Firefox. Instead, you need to either “open” the link from inside the Thunderbird Add-Ons Install Window, or save the XPI to your desktop and then drag it into the Thunderbird Add-Ons Window.
Once you have installed the Lightning Extension, Thunderbird will ask you to restart. Upon restarting you will be greeted with a new Sidebar:
This is all well and good and provides us with an easy to use local calendar, but that’s not much use if you wanted to update it at work, or on the road / mobile device. This is where the Provider Add-on comes in to play.
Provider allows bidirectional syncing between the Lightning Calendaring Extension in Thunderbird and Google’s GCal Service. This is possible because Google, being the lovely chaps that they are, decided to opt for the iCalendar standard in GCal, well done chaps :)
Installation of Provider is pretty similar to that of Lightning. Again, go to the Add-ons Window (Tools -> Add-Ons) and Install the XPI available for download from Provider’s Page in the Mozilla Add-on repository. Provider uses a slightly different licence (MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-licence) to most Mozilla Add-ons and therefore the first link on the page above takes you to a EULA that you need to agree to.
Win32 Provider Add-On XPI Download Link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/downloads/file/14381/provider_for_google_calendar-0.1.1-tb+sb.xpi
Again, once installed, Thunderbird will have to be restarted.
Now, the last piece of the Pie is to tie our Google Calendar into our Lightning Calendar. First of all, you will need to log into your Google Calendar account. Once you are at the main page, click on “Settings” from the Top Right Menu:
Once on the settings page, you need to drill down into the “Calendars Settings” screen and then click on your Calendar from the list (I only had a single calendar.)
Now, finally, you need to copy the URL of your Private Address XML Feed into the clipboard.
You’re done in Google Calendar for now and we can head back to Thunderbird to finally wrap this tutorial up ;). Once you are back in Thunderbird, you need to create a new calendar in Lightning. You can do this by clicking on the Calendar Tab and then clicking the New Button. If you have previously closed or hidden the Lightning window, you can make it re-appear by hovering the mouse at the bottom of your “mailbox view” (bottom left hand corner of the Thunderbird window). The cursor will now change to the Resize Arrow which you can drag North.
Upon clicking the New button, another window will appear. The first option is the location of your Calendar - select “On the Network” and click Next.
The next option allows you to specify the Format of the Calendar, slect the “Google Calendar” radio button (if you don’t have a Google Calendar radio button, make sure your Provider Extension is installed correctly). In the location input box, paste in your Google Calendar Private Address XML Feed that we extracted above, and click Next.
The next window asks you to give your new Calendar a Name and a Colour, I will leave these entirely up to you ;)
Finally (yes, at last) you will have a “Google Calendar Login” window which will ask for your Google Account login. It will have automagically extracted your username from the XML feed you just specified, so just key in your password.
Well done, you can now enjoy the many benefits of being able to view and update your Google Calendar directly from Thunderbird - nice work ;)
Further Reading
53 Comments so far
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I will be trying this out as soon as I get home. I have been wanting to use GCal more and this may be just the thing I have been looking for. Thanks for the info.
Works like a charm.. excellent, thanks.
Ummm, what’s wrong with Sunbird?
There’s nothing wrong with Sunbird, infact Lightning is based on the Sunbird code. Myself, I just prefer to have my Email, Contacts and Scheduling all rolled into one app, ala Outlook! - btw: DIGG!
Furry muff… If GMail supported IMAP I’d be using a GUI (probably TB, but it’s been a while - I used Evolution for a while…). But - it’s too much hassel for me having to sync email between 2+ machines, so webmail it is…
Unless I get bored and setup a proper mailserver on omicron.
If GMail supported IMAP I think the world would be a much happier place and I would certainly sack off the USD $12 which I pay a year to fastmail. I have toyed with the idea of getting a virtual server to handle my mail but in the long run it’s going to cost me a lot more than $12 a year…
The Lightning addon displays dates using US format, so e.g. 9th April is shown as 4/9 which translates to 4th September in European format. How do I change this?
Hi Klaus,
I think this is covered in the Provider wiki entry. I believe this problem happens when you don’t have your Location set correctly in the Lightning Preferences (Tools -> Options -> Lightning). or your own Google Calendar Settings - be sure to check both! :)
Is 2.0 a stable release? Mozilla.org only has version 1.5 as the latest.
I tried this and although I can see and edit gcal whilst connected to the internet it doesn’t let me see or edit when I am offline. Am I missing the point or have I missed a step?
Hi Gordon, No, unfortunately you are correct on this one and I jumped the gun by presuming it would cache the calendar data for offline use, which it does not (damn). Maybe this would be an interesting bit of code contribution (if I had them time / skill). I have removed the mention of Offline capability from the article - sorry for getting your hopes up :(
You stated that you are used to using synced calendars with your Mobile Phone as well.
As this is clearly a desktop only solution, what about your mobile phone?
Do you know of a solution for iCalendar calendars for Windows Mobile devices?
Hi Jeff, Google Calendar is already sync-able with Mobile devices which support Java (my N70, for example). You can grab a GCalSync here. As for Windows Mobile, I would recommend you look into GMobileSync.
Thank you Jonny. Great howto!
I’m already using it, and have lots of friends installing the add-ons right now
;)
That’s great! I’m doing this when I get home!
I just switched from thunderbird to outlook because I wanted to have my calendar integrated with my e-mail. This is definitely one step towards getting me back on thunderbird, BUT, I still need a way of syncing my Blackberry Pearl with thunderbird - any ideas?
Did it. Works great!!! Thank you!!!
Wooo - we’re on the Digg homepage!
This will work to an extent on Thunderbird 1.5, you have to edit the install.rdf in the provider_for_google_calendar.xpi to get it to install. But there seems to be a problem after you enter one event the calendar defaults to read-only, then you can’t enter anything else. The only way to get it back is to restart Thunderbird. Also all the events do not retain their titles, it just defaults to New Event on the Google Calendar. So it can work with 1.5, but it’s got some bugs yet.
lol, digg homepage = server down :)
After u posted this you got me wanting my google calendar in sync with a nokia s60 phone calendar over the air waves. Scheduleworld.com is a useful way of doing it. It is pretty buggy, and make sure you back up your calendars before trying to use this, but if you get it working its very satisfying having your google calendar on your phone and able to add events while taking a dump/down the pub :)
Yeah - we got digged hard… should be all good now though. I’ll post explaining what happened in detail later today…
Took a while, my problem. Wonderful. Thanks
Jonny, any chance you can share what is the windows theme used on the prints above? It seems really nice. Tnxs.
@Curious - sure, its “GUI.Relax” by the ever talented b0se.
Fantastic help. Just what I was looking for.
Thanks!!!
Unfortunately the Provider extension won’t install on my thunderbird under Ubuntu.
It complains that my thunderbird version is too old (I’m using v. 1.5.0.10, which is absolutely the latest and greatest), and that it needs a thunderbird release that is between 2.0.a.1 and 3.0.a.1!!
It seems that my events that I create in Lighting don’t get published to Google Calendar unless I logout/login from Google Calendar. Is that hoe is supposed to work?
glauco:
From the Provider wiki …
You’ll have to upgrade to TB 2.0 beta in order to use the extensions.
Hi guys,
for some reason I was not able to create the new remote calendar. The final dialog box tells me the calendar was created successfully, but unluckily it does not show up in the list of calendars…
Anyone knows how to resolve this issue? Any help would be highly appreciated - thanks a lot!
This rocks. Just got through setting it up, all the bits went together flawlessly. I’ve been looking for something like this for some time, where I can have everything in one program. Thanks for sharing!
whr do i find TB 2.0 and above. I followed the links but led me to a download of .mar files…am confused…
Nevah mind..found it..thnx
…and still none of it, gcal, lightning or sunbird can easily sync with a palm.
Thank you!
Delicious, trying it right now
Thank u
I’m having troubles scheduling recursive events thriugh Lightning + GCal Provider. I’m trying to schedule a yearly event (such as a birthday/aniversary event) but the “recursive part” of the event doesn’t appear on GCal.
Thanks.
Sweet!
Whats wrong with Scalix? I got some customers how love it and I thought of starting using it thats why I wonder .) (Not that this ain’t a cool idea I love it :)
OFF TOPIC: I’m interested to know what window-decoration theme is pictured in the article’s screen-shots. It’s rather smart looking. Does anyone recognize it?
There is a perfect way to connect to Google Calendar and still being able to make changes in offline mode.
It doesn’t use the mentioned GCal Provider but instead does the syncing via .ics file.
The Programm is called GCAL Daemon - website:
http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/
And there is a setup guide for mozilla lightning/sunbird amongst others….
@ Jimmy Riddle: scroll up the list of comments, Jonny posted a link to the theme.
“(or, God forbid, Scalix)”
Jonny, just wondering what’s wrong about Scalix… I was just about to suggest going with it for our 25 employee company after a short trial.
How to delete all cookies in Firefox on closing, EXCEPT for those from selected domains - also very useful!
http://mungobah.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-delete-all-cookies-in-firefox-on.html
Mungo you God damn comment whore, you put me to Shame! :)
@Tigerdoux and Johan: To be honest this topic would require an entire post to itself, which I should have written at the time…
Last summer I was working at a small - mid sized business that was looking to become independent from Microsoft. I was brough onboard to evaluate and test the alternative solutions out there. I wrote a report comparing Zimbra (over priced), Open Xchange (utter wank) and Scalix. The initial testing of Scalix went great - sure, things were a little fiddly and required using 100’s of poorly documented (and no, a man entry written by the programmers does not count as “fully documented”!), but we are are l337 ninja linux hax0rs here, aren’t we?
Well, the rollout was rushed by the powers that be, and before I knew it, 50 licences had been purchased and I was converting the CTO’s Exhchange mailbox to Scalix. The real problems hit hard and fast - Exchange conversions were messy loosing attachments, appointments, formatting, etc at random for no apparent reason (and I was informed the “offical” migration tool was flawed as wel!). Scalix Outlook Extender (the MAPI interface) had problems over WAN connections (huge timeouts, Outlook lockups, etc). Users who had massive mailboxes (Eg: 1000+ items in Sent Items) would utterly destroy Outlook bringing it to its knees. Shit blackberry support and a bizzare, seemingly insolvable problem with Sendmail put the final nails in the coffin .
If I can dig up my report I will post it on my blog in the next few days and pop a link here.
@Jonny,
We run Scalix in a rather large company (500+) and yes, it isn’t as good as Outlook, and yes, it did have some hiccups. But it is now in place and functioning just as well as Exchange, without any of the artificial limitations in place, and a much more appropriate price. Plus, webmail only users are free, which cut out a large bulk of our email licenses.
Also, with the recent upgrade to Scalix 11, it has become a lot more user-friendly. Please don’t bad mouth something that *you* put in the “too-hard” basket.
Hmmm, don’t cuss Jonny for the mistakes his employers made.
This is very cool, however I wanted to be able to view the public calendars in gmail within lightning, since I cannot log into the gmail account for a public calendar, and there does not appear to be any easy way to copy a public calendar into my gmail calendar, i am a little stuck. Anyone got any thoughts on how this could be done?
I guess this is why we should think a little harder before we blog… after posting my last comment, i found gmail does offer an ical link, simply creating a new calendar, then selecting the iCalendar(ICS), and copying the ICAL link in the public calendar settings in gmail give us the public calendar in lightning.
Got it working thanks. How often does thunderbird sync with calendar with gcal? I set up an event in gcal and it didnt show up in thunderbird but when I restarted thunderbitd it did so I know its working. I leave thunderbird open all the time so is there a way to set it to sync with gcal at specified intervals?
@Jonny,
Many thanks for the very interesting reply.
I can understand the difficulties you went through, even though we come from a very different background: we’re currently using UW-IMAP on Solaris, not Exchange. Data migration is the step I fear most and sure hope we won’t get into too many problems whatever product we end up choosing.
The next item that bugs me most with Scalix is performance, but it’s still better than Zimbra IMHO. Zimbra’s interface is dazzling, but it’s a scary beast!
Anyway, the most promising product for the people out there wanting out of Exchange seems to be Postpath, claiming 5x the performance, drop-in compatibility and $ savings… The only reason we’re not there yet is that we don’t even have the Windows domain infrastructure required.
check setup guide for mozilla lightning/sunbird amongst others
Thanks! I have started using this combo, thanks for your how-to…
hello
thanks a lot for this guide : I just have posted a link to it on the discussions related to this extension on AMO, answering a question there for more instructions ;)