Appointment Import Problem

[Victor Delta]

At work I have been using Outlook XP (2002) with a relatively large number
of recurring and non-recurring appointments in my calendar.

I have recently changed to a more modern pc - still using Windows XP - but
with Outlook 2003 installed. Consequently, I exported all my old
appointments to a csv file and imported them to the new machine. I did the
same for my tasks.

To my amazement, all the recurring appointments (and tasks) seem to have
arrived as non-recurring appointments (and tasks).

The tasks (15,000+) weren't a problem to clear up as I just deleted most of
them and made one of each recurring again.

However, my calendar is now littered with loads of former recurring
appointments - many of which I want to update and amend. Can anyone tell me
if I have to go through them one by one, deleting or amending them, or is
there a quicker way to, say, delete all appointments and get back to a
virgin calendar - so I can start from scratch again, which will be quicker
overall.

Argggh! Help please.

Thanks,

V

 

[Brian Tillman]

At work I have been using Outlook XP (2002) with a relatively large
number of recurring and non-recurring appointments in my calendar.

I have recently changed to a more modern pc - still using Windows XP
- but with Outlook 2003 installed. Consequently, I exported all my old
appointments to a csv file and imported them to the new machine. I
did the same for my tasks.

BAD, BAD idea. Never use export/import to transfer data between Outlook
instances. You lose data that way.

To my amazement, all the recurring appointments (and tasks) seem to
have arrived as non-recurring appointments (and tasks).

Naturally. CSV files are one-per-line. You'd need an infinite disk in
order to hold all the occurrences of a non-terminating recurrence. In fact,
when you exported, Outlook _told_ you it couldn't export recrrences and gave
you a dialogue to select the range of export.

Why didn't you just transfer the PST you were using (or, if using Exchange,
create one to transfer) and connect it to the new Outlook on the destination
machine? Instructions on how are posted almost daily in this newsgroup. A
fifteen second search could have found the instructions for you.

 

[Victor Delta]

BAD, BAD idea. Never use export/import to transfer data between Outlook
instances. You lose data that way.


Naturally. CSV files are one-per-line. You'd need an infinite disk in
order to hold all the occurrences of a non-terminating recurrence. In
fact, when you exported, Outlook _told_ you it couldn't export recrrences
and gave you a dialogue to select the range of export.

Why didn't you just transfer the PST you were using (or, if using
Exchange, create one to transfer) and connect it to the new Outlook on the
destination machine? Instructions on how are posted almost daily in this
newsgroup. A fifteen second search could have found the instructions for
you.

Thanks for your reply - I consider my wrist well and truly slapped!

The reason I didn't copy the pst file across (which I know how to do) was
that the bulk of the file (c 1GB) was all my old emails which needed to stay
on the old pc (for my successor on that job). Since I only needed my
appointments and tasks, it seemed so sensible to just export them and import
them to the new pc. Obviously a bad mistake! I can see what you mean about
csv files but I had assumed that there would be recurring/non-recurring
field for each entry. Never assume - Doh!

Anyway, now that I have learned my lesson the hard way, can you please
suggest any way to recover the situation by cleaning the calendar without
having to go manually through every day for the next n years... Surely there
must be way to do this?

Regards,

V

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thanks for your reply - I consider my wrist well and truly slapped!

Not my intention, I assure you.

Anyway, now that I have learned my lesson the hard way, can you please
suggest any way to recover the situation by cleaning the calendar
without having to go manually through every day for the next n
years... Surely there must be way to do this?

Create a PST, copy to that PST the two folders you want (Calendar and Tasks)
to that PST. Close the PST and transfer it to the other Outlook. Open it
and you'll have the data available exactly as is was in the original
Outlook.

 

[Victor Delta]

Not my intention, I assure you.


Create a PST, copy to that PST the two folders you want (Calendar and
Tasks) to that PST. Close the PST and transfer it to the other Outlook.
Open it and you'll have the data available exactly as is was in the
original Outlook.

Thanks. But do you know of any way to wipe clean the new calendar?

V

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thanks. But do you know of any way to wipe clean the new calendar?

Display it in a table view like By Category, select all the items in it with
Ctrl-A, then press Delete.