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Need help in setting up Goggle Calendar in Thunderbird Lightning

RonAKA
Rockstar

I use Thunderbird and Telus has now converted me to GMail. I pretty much have the GMail working but now would like to set up a Google Calendar that syncs with My Lightning Home calendar in Thunderbird. I have tried to follow this procedure from Thunderbird several times with no success:

 

Using Lightning with Google Calendar

 

I make it to Step 7 and then get this blank screen saying "Please select the calendars and task lists you would like to subscribe to" with no Calendar choices to add. My only choice is to go Back or Cancel. 

 

Any thoughts on what is going wrong? I have created a Google Calendar in my Google Account. I see that permissions have been set up for "Provider for Google Calendar".

 

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

RonAKA
Rockstar

Well I think I have come to a resolution to my problem with this forced conversion from Telus mail to Google Mail. I have come to the conclusion there is some incompatibility between Thunderbird/Lightning and the Provider for Google Calendar when you have a Google account that is provided with the Telus G-Suite. I have been able to link a pure test Google Calendar to my Thunderbird with the Provider add on. However, nothing I have tried allows me to connect the Google Calendar in the Telus G-Suite account  to Thunderbird.

 

After considerable research I found there is a new (February 2020) add on called Open Google Calendar. It adds a button to Thunderbird that opens a tab within Thunderbird that is essentially a Google Calendar. It does not use Lightning. It is very simple and unlike the Provider for Google Calendar it actually works with the Telus G-Suite Google Calendar. 

 

I also determined that it is possible to export my existing Lightning calendar in ics format. Just use the Thunderbird, Events and Tasks, Export function. And the next step is to import that ics file to Google Calendar. Essentially in Google Calendar go to the Setting gear icon, Settings, and Import Export. Select the ics file you saved, and import it to the Google Calendar you wish it to be in. Unfortunately this import function did not go off perfectly. I tried twice and each time it said the file failed to import. It was about 1.25 Mb in size and that may have been an issue. BUT, in any case it seemed to have worked. For all the appointments and reminders I have checked so far they seem to have imported into the Google Calendar perfectly. Notice alarms are intact and repetitive tasks look also to be intact. In short until I find issues I am quite happy with the solution. I can now see appointments on my iPhone, make changes, and they instantly appear on my Google Calendar tab in Thunderbird. Or the reverse can be done as well. And kind of like Outlook, you can invite others to meetings. All seems to work well. 

 

I searched a long time on line and asked questions at the Monzilla Thunderbird forum, as well as here and found no answers to this issue. I hope this information may be helpful to others that end up in this jam due to the forced Telus conversion to Google. The final outcome probably is better than what I had with Telus mail and Thunderbird Lightning, but it was painful to get to this point!!!

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

NFtoBC
Community Power User
Community Power User

Can you connect the two Google calendars, then attach the non-Telus calendar to Thunderbird?

Remember the Telus product is G-suite, not at all the same as the free public product.

 

NFtoBC
If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Kudo"

Not sure how to connect two google calendars, but that may be possible. I am now trying a different method of bringing Google Calendar into Thunderbird with an Add On called "Open Google Calendar" which is quite new. Seemed simple to set up and is working. Do you know of any way to export my Thunderbird Lightning Calendar content to Google?

 

On the Provider method do you know if there is a "secret" real Google email account name that potentially could be used instead of the telus email name for the account?

Oh, this is the Open Google Calendar link. 

RonAKA
Rockstar

Well I think I have come to a resolution to my problem with this forced conversion from Telus mail to Google Mail. I have come to the conclusion there is some incompatibility between Thunderbird/Lightning and the Provider for Google Calendar when you have a Google account that is provided with the Telus G-Suite. I have been able to link a pure test Google Calendar to my Thunderbird with the Provider add on. However, nothing I have tried allows me to connect the Google Calendar in the Telus G-Suite account  to Thunderbird.

 

After considerable research I found there is a new (February 2020) add on called Open Google Calendar. It adds a button to Thunderbird that opens a tab within Thunderbird that is essentially a Google Calendar. It does not use Lightning. It is very simple and unlike the Provider for Google Calendar it actually works with the Telus G-Suite Google Calendar. 

 

I also determined that it is possible to export my existing Lightning calendar in ics format. Just use the Thunderbird, Events and Tasks, Export function. And the next step is to import that ics file to Google Calendar. Essentially in Google Calendar go to the Setting gear icon, Settings, and Import Export. Select the ics file you saved, and import it to the Google Calendar you wish it to be in. Unfortunately this import function did not go off perfectly. I tried twice and each time it said the file failed to import. It was about 1.25 Mb in size and that may have been an issue. BUT, in any case it seemed to have worked. For all the appointments and reminders I have checked so far they seem to have imported into the Google Calendar perfectly. Notice alarms are intact and repetitive tasks look also to be intact. In short until I find issues I am quite happy with the solution. I can now see appointments on my iPhone, make changes, and they instantly appear on my Google Calendar tab in Thunderbird. Or the reverse can be done as well. And kind of like Outlook, you can invite others to meetings. All seems to work well. 

 

I searched a long time on line and asked questions at the Monzilla Thunderbird forum, as well as here and found no answers to this issue. I hope this information may be helpful to others that end up in this jam due to the forced Telus conversion to Google. The final outcome probably is better than what I had with Telus mail and Thunderbird Lightning, but it was painful to get to this point!!!