Milo: Putting an "Add to my Outlook Calendar" link to a website

[miloshapiro]

Have looked around a lot on the net and can't find a clear answer to
something I hope is simple. I'm the webmaster (FrontPage 2003) for a small
non-profit. They asked if there were any way to put an "Add to my Outlook
Calendar" link next to new events we post.

I was able to create an .ics (iCalendar) file and add that to the site, but
when I link to it, Firefox just opens it as text and IE just puts it in an
obscure folder (C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Documents\iMacros\Downloads) so neither actually added it to Outlook.

I'm not loyal to doing this via an .ics file if there's a better way...what
I'm seeing out there just keep implying that that's the way to do it...but
without enough follow through for me to get it to work.

Someone on a blog said that it can be done via Outlook Online, which I'd
never heard of before, but I tried logging on to that and couldn't find any
help on it there.

Clearly, there must be a way, since i see it on sites, but this semi-novice
without a ton of technical training is stumped.

Info would be appreciated!!! Thanks so much!

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

It sounds like the web server is not set up with ics as a mime type - in
this case, users may need to right click on the link to open it - open, not
download. Once open, Save and close *should* add it to the calendar,
although it doesn't always work.

This article is old but it is mostly accurate -
http://www.innerjoin.org/iCalendar/calendar-mime-type.html (new versions of
IE are smarter now) - try using webcal:// instead of http:// and if that
doesn't work, ask the web host to add ics as a mime type to the server.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

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