FAQs
| FAQs |
|---|
- Why am I getting Outlook security pop-ups?
- OGCS just crashes with a strange error code / COM errors
- Resolving Outlook error messages
- Known Issues
- Is OGCS Free?
- Why isn't it finding any Outlook calendar items?
- Why can't I sync more than 1 year past or future?
- Why the restriction on sync schedule?
- Why is Outlook freezing/becoming unresponsive when OGCS syncs?
- What does the "Merge with existing entries" option do?
- Why am I getting duplicates created?
- Why Am I getting undeliverable notifications from Google for recipients ***@***.ogcs
- Why are my meeting attendees getting notified of updates to Events in Google?!
- Why am I the meeting organiser for all events?
- How do I wipe/reset the configuration?
- Why does OGCS need to run on a PC?
This is normally due to being in a non UK or US timezone which may use a less common date-time format. Try experimenting with different date formats under Settings > Outlook > Regional Date Formats or even custom date formats such as dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm.
📝 Normally including seconds and/or AM/PM make things worse, but worth experimenting with everything!
Then click the Test button to check the expected number of items are now returned. If the test is returning items but the sync is not, check the Outlook category filter to make sure you aren't inadvertently filtering everything out!
If it still doesn't work, check if you have an "Archive" folder configured in Outlook (this happens when you open a .pst file) - it might be that OGCS is syncing with a calendar folder inside here. If so, temporarily close the archive, configure OGCS against the main account calendar and then reopen the archive.
This is often a misunderstanding of what OGCS will sync. If there are recurring appointments that span the date range being synced, then the whole recurring series will be synced. So, for example, a series that started 20 years ago and has no end date would still be synced. The only caveats are that:
- if the recurring series has an exception that falls outside of the synced date range, these will not be included; and
- if the recurring series repeats annually, then the month it occurs must fall within the synced date range
If you are looking to sync years and years of calendar, then more likely a one off manual export to .ics and import is what you're after.
As per the User Guide, scheduled syncs are restricted to a maximum frequency of 15 minutes, or 120 minutes if Push Sync is also enabled. This is to encourage a type of fair usage policy, in which individual users cannot consume a disproportionate amount of the limited quota provided by Google for OGCS.
Given Push Sync triggers an automatic sync within 2 minutes of any calendar change within Outlook, an additional scheduled sync should only be required one or twice a day, if at all.
If you are syncing an Exchange account, the first thing to check is that Outlook is configured to run in cached mode - this is the Microsoft recommendation and default option.
Otherwise, check the date range OGCS is configured to sync - if it contains 100s or 1000s of calendar items, see if reducing the date range helps at all. Remember, if you have very long-running recurring series with lots of exceptions (think a daily meeting that's been running for years and has numerous cancellations or alterations in the time), these are very intensive to process and sync, so it's best practice to avoid such recurring series if at all possible.
Sometimes, there may be a particular calendar item that is problematic, or your Outlook .pst or .ost files might have grown too large. An .ost file can be deleted safely, as it is just an offline cache of your online account and it will automatically rebuild. For a .pst, the Microsoft Inbox Repair tool can be run.
Lastly, you could try increasing the logging level to FINE in OGCS settings and running a sync. By examining the log file entries and their timestamps, it may be possible to identify the calendar item that causes a significant delay; manual deletion of this item is very likely to resolve the issue.
This will preserve calendar events that were not created by this tool, or are not related to the content you are syncing, you can select this option to stop the tool deleting them.
However, it's recommended to sync to a dedicated calendar (contains no other items) if at all possible.
The simplest answer my be that Disable deletions is checked, and the duplicates would have otherwise been deleted. Uncheck Disable deletions and optionally check Confirm deletions to manually confirm each deletion.
Note, if you have Merge with existing entries checked, then only items that you have deleted in the source calendar (e.g. Outlook) will be deleted in the target calendar (e.g. Google).
Excluding calendar items through Google colour or Outlook category filters can cause unexpected sync behaviour, especially for bi-directional sync where the consequences may not be obvious.
Firstly, if any items have been deleted that should not have been, recover them from the Google "Bin" or Outlook "Deleted Items" folder as required.
To automatically remove duplicate items, the following example is for Outlook being the source "master" calendar and Google having the duplicates due to colour exclusion:-
- Turn off scheduled syncs, to avoid one firing in the middle of re-configuring settings.
- Go to
Settings>How>Sync Intervaland set to0
- Go to
- Set the direction of sync to one-way, selecting the source calendar as the one without duplicates - ie Outlook -> Google.
- If both calendars have duplicates, manually delete them from the source calendar
- Bring the Google items back in scope by removing the colour exclusion the duplicates have (e.g. default calendar colour)
- Ensure
Disable deletionis unchecked and, optionally, uncheckConfirm deletions - Run a sync and see the duplicate Google items get removed
💡 When reinstating two-way sync and excluding colours or categories, it is very likely the correct configuration is to not check "Delete synced items if excluded".
See Why are my meeting attendees getting notified of updates to Events in Google?!
There may situations where you do actually want invites to be sent by Google, for example if Google is your primary calendar and you also want two-way synchronisation of attendees. In this case, turn off email address cloaking and perform a full sync (by holding the Shift key and clicking the Sync button) in order to update any already cloaked Google attendees.
Unfortunately, this is nothing OGCS is doing, but several reports of it have been made. It would appear from several similar postings on Google's forums (here and here), that this was an issue that plagued it's own original calendar sync tool...but was never resolved.
In response to this, v2.6.2 introduced a new setting "Cloak email in Google" that is turned on by default and will append .ogcs to the email address of the meeting attendees. By "cloaking" the real email address in this way, if Google does attempt to send out unsolicited email, it will be undeliverable. The side effect of this is you may notice undeliverable notifications in your Gmail (evidence the cloaking has prevented the email reaching the meeting attendees).
Of course, you could also completely turn off synchronisation of attendees in the settings of OGCS.
📌 If you were syncing attendees prior to v2.6.2 and wish to now cloak them, it is recommended to force this change for all you events by pressing the Shift key whilst clicking the Sync button.
Even though you may not be the organiser in source calendar, you will find you are the meeting organiser in the target calendar. This is a limitation of the Google API - the organiser must be the person who created the event (which is you through OGCS).
If you wish to reset your configuration, so you can start the application as though it's a fresh install:-
- Click the Settings tab, and then Application Behaviour
- Click the
Open Logbutton (this will open Windows Explorer) - Close OGCS
- In the Windows Explorer window, select the
settings.xmlfile and delete or rename it. - Restart OGCS
If OGCS won't start, or to go to the settings folder directly, open Windows Explorer:-
- for installed OGCS, enter
%APPDATA%\Outlook Google Calendar Syncdirectly into Windows Explorer address bar - for portable OGCS, navigate to the folder you deployed the software to
Granted, it would be nice for OGCS not to need installing on a PC that is powered on for it to sync. Everyone wants cloud solutions that "just work" 24/7, so what's the deal with OGCS?
- From its origin, OGCS has been focused on users who are sat behind a corporate firewall connecting to Exchange accounts and want to sync out to Google. A cloud service outside of their company's walled garden (IT services and infrastructure they directly manage) would be very unlikely to be able to successfully connect to the Exchange account...unless of course their company's IT isn't especially worried about security and random third party services connecting in from the internet!
- For this use case, running OGCS on a work computer that is powered on whilst the user is working isn't an issue
- Developing a cloud solution would either
- require considerable technical knowledge from the user to setup up; or
- be a cost for me to host the service - and there are plenty of other players in the market already offering that
- Time. There isn't enough available for me to maintain both OGCS as it is now, plus a cloud hosted equivalent 🙁