Multiple Calendars on Blackberry 8100

1. Multiple Calendars don’t physically exist in the Blackberry.
2. You can sync multiple calendars from your PC Outlook to your single calendar on the Blackberry. This can include ICAL Google Calendars that have been added/registered in your Outlook.

I have already updated to the latest Desktop Software and upgraded my OS (see the BB upgrade post). I am now interested in syncing my 5 internet folders from Google and my work Outlook calendar. I have already added my Internet Calendars (how to add ICALs in Outlook is not described here) and are registered in my Outlook account.

It is expected that this is a one-way feature, meaning I can’t add something to my Blackberry and expect it to upload all the way to the Google Calendar (ICAL) because I don’t believe the Blackberry knows the difference between the ICAL and Outlook mappings. But I am going to try changing an ICAL event on the Blackberry to see how it’s handled when syncing back to the registered ICAL in Outlook.

The steps to sync between registered ICALs and my Blackberry device are:

1. Open the Blackberry Desktop Manager
2. Click on Synchronize link
3. Choose the Configuration tab
4. Click the Configure sync… button
5. Select the Calendar application
   
6. Click the Advanced… button
7. Select the calendar mapping (should right now be 1 folder mapped)
8. Click on the Map Folder… button
   
9. Expand the Internet Calendars node
10. Find the calendar to sync, selected it and click the Add button
11. You will now see 2 folders mapped in the calendar mapping list
    
12. Click OK all the way down the dialogs until you get back to the Configuration tab
13. Choose the Synchronize tab
14. Click the Synchronize button
15. A new sync dialog will appear asking to apply X amount of items to the device, click Accept

The sync will finish and you should now see on your device all the calendar items from the Internet Calendar(s) you added. It is true that there is only one calendar on the BB, but the items are marked (I don’t know how yet) belonging to the mapped calendar.

Removing ICAL from Sync

I took the first ICAL I added out of the mapping, and added second ICAL. While syncing, a dialog like before told me it was going to delete the entries from the first ICAL and then also add the entries from the second ICAL. Now that it’s synced, everything on the BB looks like I expect.

Duplicates from Outlook and ICAL

Another test is to remove one of the duplicates on my Blackberry because it existed in my Outlook and the Google Calendar, obviously because I needed it on my Blackberry and the Google Calendars hadn’t synced successfully yet. I went in to Outlook and deleted my Outlook recurring event. I resynced and it told me I was going to delete the event as expected, and now there’s only one event in my Blackberry. The Google Calender event on my Blackberry is even recognized as a series (recurring) event. Cool.

Changing the ICAL event on the BlackBerry

I want to see what happens now when I change the already synced event (from Google -> Outlook Registered ICAL -> Mapped Sync on Blackberry) to time 15 minutes later than originally scheduled and see how the return sync behaves. The sync dialog indicates one change.

I checked the event in Outlook and it did not updated. Hmm. OK. Well, it doesn’t go back to there. I’ll have to try a delete also to see what happens. I’m going to update the ICAL event now to the new time. Can’t make changes to the Read only folder.

Summary

Once I get the folder synced, it doesn’t go back the other way at all. That’s ok for now. I’ll have to see if other applications offer updating. At least for now, I can sync to the Blackberry so everything is there without messing up my company Outlook calendar. =)

Multiple ICAL Mappings

If you want to add a second, third, or fourth ICAL mapping from your Google account, follow the same steps above and it will sync. Mind you that any changes on your Blackberry will not carry back to Outlook, nor Google.