12.11 iCalendar export

Some people use Org-mode for keeping track of projects, but still prefer a standard calendar application for anniversaries and appointments. In this case it can be useful to show deadlines and other time-stamped items in Org files in the calendar application. Org-mode can export calendar information in the standard iCalendar format. If you also want to have TODO entries included in the export, configure the variable org-icalendar-include-todo. Plain timestamps are exported as VEVENT, and TODO items as VTODO. It will also create events from deadlines that are in non-TODO items. Deadlines and scheduling dates in TODO items will be used to set the start and due dates for the TODO entry¹. As categories, it will use the tags locally defined in the heading, and the file/tree category². See the variable org-icalendar-alarm-time for a way to assign alarms to entries with a time.

The iCalendar standard requires each entry to have a globally unique identifier (UID). Org creates these identifiers during export. If you set the variable org-icalendar-store-UID, the UID will be stored in the :ID: property of the entry and re-used next time you report this entry. Since a single entry can give rise to multiple iCalendar entries (as a timestamp, a deadline, a scheduled item, and as a TODO item), Org adds prefixes to the UID, depending on what triggered the inclusion of the entry. In this way the UID remains unique, but a synchronization program can still figure out from which entry all the different instances originate.

C-c C-e i     (org-export-icalendar-this-file)

Create iCalendar entries for the current file and store them in the same directory, using a file extension .ics.

C-c C-e I     (org-export-icalendar-all-agenda-files)

Like C-c C-e i, but do this for all files in org-agenda-files. For each of these files, a separate iCalendar file will be written.

C-c C-e c     (org-export-icalendar-combine-agenda-files)

Create a single large iCalendar file from all files in org-agenda-files and write it to the file given by org-combined-agenda-icalendar-file.

The export will honor SUMMARY, DESCRIPTION and LOCATION³ properties if the selected entries have them. If not, the summary will be derived from the headline, and the description from the body (limited to org-icalendar-include-body characters).

How this calendar is best read and updated, depends on the application you are using. The FAQ covers this issue.