How to Sync Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar with 2-Way Updates Automatically
Are you keeping track of events in both Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar simultaneously? Or perhaps working with colleagues or clients in one while you prefer the other? Then you’ve come to the right place to make your life simpler with Unito’s automated 2-way integration. We’re going to show you how to automatically sync your Outlook and Google calendars in real-time with live updates. So if someone you work with adds an event in one place, you’ll see it in the other almost instantly.
When you sync events with Unito to build a unified calendar, you’re actually pairing up the details, or fields, in Google Calendar and Outlook that should sync together. So you’ll be telling the platform that a description in Google Calendar should automatically sync with the description in Outlook and so on.
Here’s what a completed integration looks like after connecting Outlook and Google Calendar with Unito:
Contents
Step 1. Connect Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to Unito
Step 2. Set up a 2-way flow between Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar
Step 3. Set rules to filter in -or out- specific events between Gcal and Outlook
Step 4. Choose which details to sync between Google Calendar and Outlook events
Why sync events between Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar?
If you’ve ever had to manually copy-paste or import/export events from one calendar to another, then you know how frustrating it can be to keep those events updated. Staying on top of personal and professional events in both Outlook and Google Calendar can be a hassle as you juggle work and other responsibilities that demand your time. One solution is to set up a unified calendar in your preferred app that syncs both Outlook and Google Calendar events to a single place designed to help you save time and simplify planning.
Unite all your calendars into a single master
A unified calendar gives you visibility over upcoming responsibilities either for your personal life, professional life, or anyone you share calendars with including: staff, teammates, clients, friends or family. Since Unito’s integrations for Outlook and Google Calendar offer comprehensive privacy options, you can customize which details from each calendars to show or hide from the other through your field mappings.
Watch this integration in action:
What do I need to do before logging in to Unito?
- (optional) Log in to Outlook and calendar.google.com/ to set labels or categories in advance to specify which events to sync between calendars so you don’t include all events.
- You can review our integration documentation for Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to get a better understanding of what you can -and can’t– do with this 2-way flow.
- If you plan on syncing guests as well, make sure each contact and their email address exists in both Google and Outlook. Unito uses email addresses to identify contacts in order to sync them between tools.
Step 1. Connect Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to Unito
- Visit the Unito App and select +Create Flow.
- Now, select Start Here to connect Outlook and Google Calendar.
- Specify which account and calendar you wish to sync for each.
Here’s what a completed connection looks like at this stage:
When you’re ready, hit Confirm.
Step 2. Set up a 2-way flow between Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar
In our demo, we chose a 2-way flow direction so that events in Google Calendar create events in Outlook and vice versa. Next, we’ll set rules to decide which events to create and sync between those calendars.
Step 3. Set rules to filter in -or out- specific events between Gcal and Outlook
Here, we’ll set triggers with specific conditions for when and how events should appear in Outlook and/or Google Calendar. If you don’t specify triggers, then all events from one calendar will be created in the other, or both if you chose a 2-way flow direction previously. An easy way to be precise is to sync cards with specific labels, categories, or colors.
When you’re ready, select Add a new trigger to to sync those labeled cards with your specified Microsoft Outlook calendar.
The above example shows our rules for syncing Outlook events to Google Calendar. In this case, any event from our “Red category” will sync over to our selected Google Calendar.
NOTE: Unito will only sync newly created work items by default. If you’d like to change that to sync historical work items, simply click the little garbage can icon next to creation date. This rule is a preset safeguard in case you’d like to test your flow before launching.
Below, you’ll see the rules we’ve chosen for syncing Google Calendar events back to Outlook:
Above, we’ve told Unito to only sync “tomato” colored Google Calendar events into Outlook that took place in the past 6 months, or will take place in the upcoming 12 months.
Find out more about setting rules.
Step 4. Choose which details to sync between Google Calendar and Outlook events
At this stage you’ll map, or pair up, fields between Outlook and Google Calendar events. Fields are the details of your work items: title, description, guest, etc. You can choose mappings from scratch or let Unito do it automatically.
Click + Add mapping to sync a new field, then Select a field for each tool and find the field you wish to map.
You can set individual sync directions here for each of your fields in case you’d like to prevent changes in one app from affecting the other. For example, if you set a one-way sync for descriptions from Outlook to Google Calendar, then changes to the description in Outlook will appear in Google Calendar, but not the other way around.