Exporting calendar to file - completely ridiculous!

[Jason]

All I want to do is export my appointments between a particular date range to a text file. I just need the name (subject) of the appointments, no dates or other details.

I need to count the number of appointments I've had with each client between two dates. I figure once I've exported the appointments as a list into a text file, I can just write a simple program in Python to count up the names and give me a summary.

Here's the problem: most of the appointments are set up to be recurring on my calendar - weekdays only. Yet when Outlook exports them into the text file, it treats those recurring appointments as 7 days a week. So I'm getting 7 appointments in the export when it should be 5. If I delete a single occurrence of a recurring appointment, it doesn't show up in the export (at least it gets that right).

This is the case whether I export them to a text file or an Excel spreadsheet.

I find this to be completely ridiculous and inadequate. For my purposes, it renders the export function completely useless. What's the point of exporting a calendar if it exports non existent appointments? Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

[Jason]

Well I figured something out. If I enter a recurring appointment as "Daily-->Every weekday", then Outlook inserts 7 appointments a week into the export file instead of the correct 5.

However, if I set it up as "weekly" and tick the boxes corresponding to which days of the week I want, it only exports those days, as it should.

I guess it's just another bug.

I just had another problem. I exported a calendar and when I looked at it Outlook had put all of the appointment subjects in quotations. I redid the export exactly the same way and they were gone.

Why can't we just have a program that works, for a change? Sick of all of these dumb little bugs which never allow you to use a program with 100% confidence.

 

[Gordon]

Well I figured something out. If I enter a recurring appointment as
"Daily-->Every weekday", then Outlook inserts 7 appointments a week into
the export file instead of the correct 5.

However, if I set it up as "weekly" and tick the boxes corresponding to
which days of the week I want, it only exports those days, as it should.

I guess it's just another bug.

I just had another problem. I exported a calendar and when I looked at it
Outlook had put all of the appointment subjects in quotations. I redid the
export exactly the same way and they were gone.

Why can't we just have a program that works, for a change? Sick of all of
these dumb little bugs which never allow you to use a program with 100%
confidence.

Assign a Category to the client and do View-Current View- By Category. Then
just count.

 

[rick wintomac]

Well I figured something out. If I enter a recurring appointment as "Daily-->Everyweekday", then Outlook inserts 7 appointments a week into the export file instead of the correct 5.

However, if I set it up as "weekly" and tick the boxes corresponding to which days of the week I want, it only exports those days, as it should.

I guess it's just another bug.

I just had another problem. I exported acalendarand when I looked at it Outlook had put all of the appointment subjects in quotations. I redid the export exactly the same way and they were gone.

Why can't we just have a program that works, for a change? Sick of all of these dumb little bugs which never allow you to use a program with 100% confidence.

Jason,

I noticed that your post is very recent. Did you experience the
weekday problem in the past? I just started noticing the same problem
but am certain that this did not occur, say, one month ago.

Thanks for posting the solution that you found.

 

[Jason]

I had actually not used the export function before now, so I have no idea whether or not it's just started happening recently. Are you sure that you've always been entering recurring items the same way? When I think back I think I've used both methods at one time or another - I have however now settled upon entering them as "weekly" instead of "every weekday", because I'm exporting data now.