Using Google Calendar, Thunderbird and Lighting to full effect

[cwhisperer]

I am running ubuntu 9.10 with Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 Lightning 0.9 and Provider for Google 0.5.1. The menu item New Calendar is grayed out, so I can't click on it and I can't add a new calendar. Any help would be appreciated.

[cygnis1]

Try installing libstdc++5 . It helped me.

[cwhisperer]

Try installing libstdc++5 . It helped me.

I have libstdc++6 installed... but nothing changed... still not working

[johnh10000]

Great article, this helped me immensely!! Thank you!!

Yeah helped me too. now, as you seem to know about these things, on the "gadget" for a real website, how do i make show a private calendar?

Any ideas?

[confused_user]

oki', getting an error while trying to add the calender url

[Exception... "[xpconnect wrapped nsIURI]" nsresult: "0x804b000a (NS_ERROR_MALFORMED_URI)" and then the link i provided which i have not included.

what are arwe you supposed to use as the address of the google calender?

[vlke]

oki', getting an error while trying to add the calender url

[Exception... "[xpconnect wrapped nsIURI]" nsresult: "0x804b000a (NS_ERROR_MALFORMED_URI)" and then the link i provided which i have not included.

what are arwe you supposed to use as the address of the google calender?

I don't know about your error message, but I use "private address" XML.

[piggyslasher]

There's a much more up to date guide here, complete with how to integrate it your desktop like Evolution.

Replace Evolution with Thunderbird completely in Ubuntu

[foxmajik]

[/INDENT]Sync the PDA

The next step is to sync the Calendar with the PDA, this is done using the GMobileSync app for Windows Mobile or Smartphones. it requires .NET CF 2.0 which is available for download from the site, and provides not only read access to they Google Calendar, it also provides write access. This means as well as having PDA based access to your existing schedule, you can provide updates from your PDA to your calendar too. The application requires your login ID and password for the Google Calendar site. and works as far as i’m aware over both Wifi and GPRS networks, however i will confess, with UK prices as they are for Data over GPRS i’ve only tried Wifi. The Sync is a manual operation, and not automatic (yet)

Final Thoughts?

So what do we have? quite simply a free, Open source based Mail and personal schedulling system, which can be accessed, over muliple platforms, Windows Mobile, Windows and Linux (not sure about OSX). Providing access to multiple mail accounts, using POP or IMAP. Read/Write Calendar access on Desktop, Laptop or PDA.. There is also ToDo list functionality available. and all this can be accessed via a Web Interface. Now thats value for money.. Now if i could get this working with Open Xchange as well… bye bye M$ Exchange..

Sorry for the necropost, I just wanted to let you all know that the above link has been hijacked and replaced with a malware page, so don't open the link.

[astrobob.tk]

The Email Client

The software I use is Thunderbird, Its my preferred Mail client, as i use both POP and IMAP based mail accounts, this mail client doesn’t however come with any built in calendar function, which is a reason, so many people berate it, and state that “calendar functionality is required before this app can move forward”. One of Thunderbirds strengths however, is, like its cousin Firefox, it works on a plugin system. That is, people have written third party modules, which can be used to enhance the functionality of Thunderbird. And I use 2 of these pluginfrom has an old version, Try downloading Lightening from

Lightning Plugin for Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/
Google Calendar Provider: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631



Quite simply, Lightning provides a calendar interface for Thunderbird, its part of the Mozilla Sunbird project, and helps provide the Schedule interface which standalone Thunderbird is missing.

Setup The Plugins

The magic here, however is the Provider for Google Calendar plugin, which, unlike just adding the necessary links to Thunderbird, to access Google Calendard, not only provides read access, it provides write access as well..
Install both plugins, and restart Thunderbird, you will then be shown, a Calendar in the left pane, this calendar has 3 tabs Agenda, Todo and Calendars. To setup Google Calendar, click on the Calendar tab.
Click on the New Button, in the Calendar Tab, and you will be given a choice, you need to select, On the Network. Click on Next, there is an option for Google Calendar, select this.
In the Text bar under the Google Calendar you will need to enter the Link URL which allows you to write to your Account, you can find this, buy logging into the Google Calendar account you created earlier.

Create a new Calendar, or if you already have a celedar created, click on the down arrow next to the calendar. And click on Share this Calendar.
You will be taken to a new page, where you will need to click on Calendar Details on the top of this page.

Then Select the XML button, next to the Private Address, this will allow you the read/write access to the calendar, if you need read only access, or wish to share calendards with read only access, use the XML button next to the Public Tab.

When you click on the XML button a URL will be displayed (i’ve edited the whole strin below for security reasons) Copy this URL , and paste it into the Thunderbird Text box, then click on Next.

Give the Calendar a name which you will use in Thunderbird to identify this calendar, and choose a colour, this is the colour which will identify your Google Calendar, if you are using multiple calendars. Then CLick on Next and then Finish.
You will then see your calendar listed as available. you should now be able to add an event in either Thunderbird, or the wEb Interface, and both will update to show the events. You can set reminders, repeat events, and all the usual type of Schedule details.

Thanks for this helpful thread. I was already using Thunderbird for my gmail account & it is great. I recently installed Lightning & Provider for Google Calendar as described by your thread & it also works great.

I have one little problem though, which I hope to be a solvable little problem.
I have several google calendars some of which are calendars shared from another account. All calendars seem to work but there's one particular one (sometimes others though not all) that doesn't seem to load. It gives a small sign next to the calendar & when the curser hovers over it, it says "The calendar (name) is momentarily not available". Sometimes all calendars don't display anything.

Moreover, the other imp thing I want to ask about is, shouldn't the google calendars be available offline with the Provider addon ? If so, its not the case with me.
I just tried thunderbird in offline mode & only one calendar displays in Lightning while others either don't display anything or state the same sign i mentioned above.

Why exactly is this going on & how can it be solved?

thanks

[crazy ivan]

I just tried thunderbird in offline mode & only one calendar displays in Lightning while others either don't display anything or state the same sign i mentioned above.

Why exactly is this going on & how can it be solved?
thanks

Hi, this feature, which is such a necessity, in fact seems to be missing. Usually in such a situation I use my android, since Gapps fully provides such synchronization functionality.

A different option is to use the local Calendar and then change the event's "Calendar" property on restored connection.. Unfortunately so far there is no evident way to
* do this automatically (the local events "calendar-data/local.sqlite" are stored in SQlite, any ideas to connect that to google?)
* do this for more than one event at a time (lightning does not allow to change properties for selected events...).

Are there other calendar clients, that offer offline-editing + syncing with Gcalendar?