How can I access the internal ICS file generated by Outlook when sending a meeting invitation?
March 25, 2008 11:38 AM
How can I access the internal ICS file generated by Outlook when sending a meeting invitation?
I need to see the ICS attachment that is generated upon sending a meeting invitation (Outlook 2003, Exchange 2007). I know I can go into my own calendar and save an appointment as an ICS file, but I suspect there is a difference between the ICS file that is exported from my own calendar vs. the one that is sent when I invite other attendees.
I deal with ICS/iCAL files from time to time while working with BlackBerry devices. It's easy enough to create an ICS file that a BlackBerry will accept (and is quite neat that an entire month's worth of appointments can be embedded into a single ICS), but many of the problems and glitches we run into involve ICS files that are generated from Outlook, or ICS files that are generated from the BlackBerry itself and sent back to our Exchange server.
Unfortunately we don't use BlackBerry Enterprise Server so I am routinely hacking together solutions involving VCARD and ICS files.
In the past, I could send an invite to say, Yahoo Mail or perhaps even GMail and would be able to open the "meeting.ics" attachment. Now this does not work; GMail seamlessly handles the ICS file rather than letting me muck around with it. Yahoo and Hotmail happily devour it and leave no indication it ever existed.
Perhaps I just need to be made aware of some advanced options I'm not seeing in those webmail products; it'd be nice if there was a webmail site out there that let you really dig into the raw MIME-encoded guts of your email for purposes like this.
I need to see the ICS attachment that is generated upon sending a meeting invitation (Outlook 2003, Exchange 2007). I know I can go into my own calendar and save an appointment as an ICS file, but I suspect there is a difference between the ICS file that is exported from my own calendar vs. the one that is sent when I invite other attendees.
I deal with ICS/iCAL files from time to time while working with BlackBerry devices. It's easy enough to create an ICS file that a BlackBerry will accept (and is quite neat that an entire month's worth of appointments can be embedded into a single ICS), but many of the problems and glitches we run into involve ICS files that are generated from Outlook, or ICS files that are generated from the BlackBerry itself and sent back to our Exchange server.
Unfortunately we don't use BlackBerry Enterprise Server so I am routinely hacking together solutions involving VCARD and ICS files.
In the past, I could send an invite to say, Yahoo Mail or perhaps even GMail and would be able to open the "meeting.ics" attachment. Now this does not work; GMail seamlessly handles the ICS file rather than letting me muck around with it. Yahoo and Hotmail happily devour it and leave no indication it ever existed.
Perhaps I just need to be made aware of some advanced options I'm not seeing in those webmail products; it'd be nice if there was a webmail site out there that let you really dig into the raw MIME-encoded guts of your email for purposes like this.
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posted by nicwolff at 12:57 PM on March 25, 2008