URGENT-ish - Populating a sharepoint 2010 calendar list FROM outlook .pst file

[BatchFile]

I need a little assistance as I'm having a bit of a panic:o!

 

We have a small-scale sharepoint system created so that the Head and his PA can share a diary. I've got a diary on there too, mainly for testing purposes. It runs in a Virtualbox VM running Server 2008R2 connected straight out onto the internet via a bridged NIC, and they connect to it with Outlook 2010.

 

The host machine, unbeknown to me, has developed a hardware fault which has been causing it to reboot occasionally without warning; as virtualbox was running headless as a service, starting automatically on boot up, it's just been restarting quietly... until half an hour ago when it's mangled its virtual HDD by being "powered off" without shutting down correctly.

 

I've restored the VM to a snapshot taken a while ago, so it works again, and immediately tried "send/recieving" in my outlook, and all my recent entries have dissapeared. Not a problem for me as most of it was test data, but for the Head, it may be as he won't know if he's coming or going! I've suspended the VM so that their calendars don't synchronise and lose the lot!

 

So...

 

How do you *populate* a sharepoint calendar from outlook, rather than synching outlook with it?

(or has anyone got any ideas how to get out of this mess?!)

[BatchFile]

[themightymrp]

I don't use SharePoint calendars myself but does it show up as a calendar within Outlook??

 

And you have a PST file connected to Outlook which has the data in that you need and just wish to copy it across to the SharePoint one? Is that right?

 

If this is correct try the following:

 

1) In Outlook, go to Calendars

2) You should see at least 2 calendars down the left, the live/sharepoint one and the one contained within the PST

3) Select the PST calendar

4) Click on the View menu. At the far left of the bar click on 'Change view' and choose 'List'

5) The whole contents of the calendar should display in a long scroll list.

6) Select the topmost item, hold shift and scroll to the last item and select it - thus highlighting all items.

7) Holding the right mouse button, drag the highlighted list over to the Live calendar. Let go of the mouse button and a small menu appears. Choose copy

8) This may take a little time but it should copy all the events from the PST to the live system

 

 

If sharepoint doesn't work like this then sorry!!

[BatchFile]

You know what, that sort of thing might just work - I've just (partly) given it a go.

I'll copy the events to a blank calendar from the "orphaned" sharepoint one, create a new calendar in Sharepoint and connect to outlook, then copy them over to that:D

[themightymrp]

Did you get it sorted?

[BatchFile]

Yes, that worked fine

Annnnnnnd breathe.

 

In the end, I did the following:

 

Create an empty calendar (called 'temp' or something) in Outlook on the PA's machine

Copy, as described by @themightymrp above, the events from the 'orphaned' sharepoint calendar to it

Reconnect the restored Sharepoint server

Send / Recieve in outlook (at which point, as expected, all the recent entries dissapear from the 'orphaned' calendar)

Copy all the events back from the 'temp' calendar created above, same method

Send / Recieve again to copy all the events back to the server.

Then take a snapshot of the server and sort out some better backup:rolleyes:

 

That's meant that the original sharepoint list is being used, so no need to set anything new up in sharepoint. The only downside to that is that it means that events that were actually in the backup will be duplicated - if that's an issue I guess you could restore to a new list in the same way, but for this it's not a big issue.

Right - let's get the coffee on!

Edited November 8, 2013 by BatchFile

[themightymrp]

Glad that got you sorted at least! I had to do something fairly similar with a calendar back in September which is where I got the method from.

 

Coffee is a great idea actually.......