Thunderbird calendar issues (Google and Outlook)
September 29, 2022 7:52 AM Subscribe
I have multiple emails and two calendars, accessed using Thunderbird (v. 91.11.0 on a laptop running Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS and desktop running CentOS 7).
This question is about the calendars: a Google calendar and an Outlook calendar. The former suddenly behaves badly, the latter has never fully functioned. I can't diagnose the Google problem; I could use suggestions about the Outlook; I ask about both together in case there's a more general solution to my calendar problems.
(I've googled a fair bit and looked at prior AskMes but haven't figured it out.)
Google calendar: this worked fine until recently. I access it from Thunderbird without any extension, using CalDAV, as instructed here. This worked beautifully until about two weeks ago, at which point:
- events created in Thunderbird started failing to appear in Thunderbird, although they would *sometimes* have actually been added to the Google calendar, and appear in Thunderbird next time it synched, and then more recently...
- ...when Thunderbird is opened, the Google calendar is disabled by default and when I enable it, it does not display. Sometimes I get a "The calendar is momentarily unavailable" warning. Occasionally it does appear, but then disappears after the next synching attempt. I have played with settings like the synching interval, but it doesn't seem to help.
- if I log into Google in a browser and create an event, it often fails to appear in Thunderbird, even after several synching intervals.
I tried various things like re-opening Thunderbird with add-ons disabled, and this did not have a noticeable effect. I am never logged into both computers with Thunderbird running simultaneously in both.
Any ideas about what's going on with this Google calendar?
This is the more frustrating of the two questions, since it worked previously, this is my main calendar, and I think there should be a solution, I'm just stuck.
Outlook calendar: More tricky and less important. Possibly unsolvable due to my workplace's IT policy (it's an institutional Microsoft Office365 [I think it's called now] account). They don't like us accessing Outlook from third-party clients but I'm grandfathered in; I can't use the Outlook app on Linux; I hate the browser-based Office365 or whatever interface. I also prefer having all email/calendars in one place.
The way I think I have it set up is that I just exported the ICS file from outlook.com and added it to Thunderbird as a read only calendar. I would now like to have two-way synching of this calendar, so I can create events from Thunderbird. I have not found a working way to do this by searching online, but some evidence that in te recent past there was no good way to do this. So this question is simpler: is there a way (maybe a Thunderbird extension?) to do this?
More generally, does anyone else access (read and write) both a Google calendar and an Outlook calendar from Thunderbird (on Linux, if it matters), and how do you do it? Would also consider alternate email clients, or any other option for accessing all calendars in one (preferably non-web-browser) place.
Google calendar: this worked fine until recently. I access it from Thunderbird without any extension, using CalDAV, as instructed here. This worked beautifully until about two weeks ago, at which point:
- events created in Thunderbird started failing to appear in Thunderbird, although they would *sometimes* have actually been added to the Google calendar, and appear in Thunderbird next time it synched, and then more recently...
- ...when Thunderbird is opened, the Google calendar is disabled by default and when I enable it, it does not display. Sometimes I get a "The calendar is momentarily unavailable" warning. Occasionally it does appear, but then disappears after the next synching attempt. I have played with settings like the synching interval, but it doesn't seem to help.
- if I log into Google in a browser and create an event, it often fails to appear in Thunderbird, even after several synching intervals.
I tried various things like re-opening Thunderbird with add-ons disabled, and this did not have a noticeable effect. I am never logged into both computers with Thunderbird running simultaneously in both.
Any ideas about what's going on with this Google calendar?
This is the more frustrating of the two questions, since it worked previously, this is my main calendar, and I think there should be a solution, I'm just stuck.
Outlook calendar: More tricky and less important. Possibly unsolvable due to my workplace's IT policy (it's an institutional Microsoft Office365 [I think it's called now] account). They don't like us accessing Outlook from third-party clients but I'm grandfathered in; I can't use the Outlook app on Linux; I hate the browser-based Office365 or whatever interface. I also prefer having all email/calendars in one place.
The way I think I have it set up is that I just exported the ICS file from outlook.com and added it to Thunderbird as a read only calendar. I would now like to have two-way synching of this calendar, so I can create events from Thunderbird. I have not found a working way to do this by searching online, but some evidence that in te recent past there was no good way to do this. So this question is simpler: is there a way (maybe a Thunderbird extension?) to do this?
More generally, does anyone else access (read and write) both a Google calendar and an Outlook calendar from Thunderbird (on Linux, if it matters), and how do you do it? Would also consider alternate email clients, or any other option for accessing all calendars in one (preferably non-web-browser) place.
This thread is closed to new comments.
I believe with Outlook, IMAP needs to enabled on the server, which is not the default config since it's Exchange. Without IMAP, I think you are stuck.
posted by COD at 1:53 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]