Export calendar data from to
Select data to include
Location

Or enter data directly:

Latitude: 
Longitude: 
Time Zone: 

Instructions

This page creates a comma-separated-values file of events that can be imported into Microsoft Outlook, and probably any calendar program. I created it because I liked Luach for the Palm and was frustrated by the lack of any similar fully-integrated Hebrew calendar for Windows Mobile. Since then, I have discovered Jewish Calendar Program which does many of the things I wanted, but I still like my version.

Enter the range of dates desired in the top input boxes, then select what items you want shown in the "Select data to include" box. Hebrew Dates puts the date in every day; this can make for a large file. Candle lighting times are for the city or location listed in the bottom box. Young Israel Events are taken from the Young Israel of St. Louis calendar.

Microsoft Outlook allows events to have one or more categories, so they can be color-coded, filtered, or deleted en mass. All events here have a category of 'jcal', while the Hebrew Dates have a category of "Hebrew Date", Yomim Tovim have a category of "Yom Tov", Young Israel events have a category of "Young Israel", and candle lighting times have a category of "Candle Lighting".

You can add additional categories (to, say, import candle lighting times for different cities and color them differently) in the Category field. Anything entered there will be added to the categories of all the items listed; separate multiple categories with semicolons (';').

The Hebrew dates and Yomim Tovim are entered as all-day events, designated 'free' so Outlook won't alarm about overlaps. The candle lighting times are inserted as appointments at the appropriate time. The Young Israel events are either all-day or at specific times, depending on how the information was entered in the database.

The format dropdown box controls the form of the output. The default, "Outlook", is in the form that Microsoft Outlook expects. The option "Excel" outputs a table with one line per day and several fields about the day in the other fields (the check boxes above are ignored). This was useful for creating the Young Israel calendar. It includes the correct candlelighting for the location selected (see below) but the "Mincha" field is Young Israel of St. Louis-specific.

Candle lighting times are 18 minutes before sunset (or 42 minutes after, for second day Yom Tov) for the location listed in the bottom box. Select a city from the drop-down menu or fill in the latitude, longitude and time zone (hours offset from GMT). Eastern time zone is -5; Central time zone is -6. If you fill in these fields, the city is ignored. Daylight savings rules for the US are used, so the times may be off for areas outside the US.

To export the data, click "Go" at the bottom and save the resulting file. To import it into Outlook, select Import and Export from the File menu, then select "Import from another program or file" (fifth item in the list) then select "Comma Separated Values" (third item on the list) then Browse to find the file you saved, select the radio button "Replace duplicates with items imported". On the next screen the destination folder should be the Calendar. Click Finish on the next screen and you're done. It sounds more complicated than it is, but that's Microsoft for you.