Import Events From Microsoft Excel

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Overview

VueMinder can import events from Microsoft Excel 2003 or later, provided the spreadsheet satisfies these requirements:

• The data needs to be on the first worksheet.
• The first row needs to be a header, defining the column names of the data in the following rows. See below for a list of valid column names.
• After the header row, each row defines one event. As soon as a blank row is detected, the import will stop.

Selecting a File to Import

To import from an Excel spreadsheet, click the "Import Events" command on the File menu. Excel spreadsheets can also be dragged-and-dropped into the main window to initiate importing. To pick an Excel spreadsheet to import, select "Microsoft Excel" as the import source and then click the Next button. A window will appear where an Excel spreadsheet can be selected. After selecting the file, click the Open button to continue importing.

Settings

After selecting the spreadsheet to import, the window will update to enable specification of the desired destination calendar and settings.

• Events will be imported into the specified destination calendar. You can select an existing calendar from the drop-down list or type in the name of a new calendar. Note, if the "Calendar" field is present in the header row, events will be imported into the calendar names specified in the Calendar column, not the calendar specified in the Import window. When importing into an existing calendar, any existing events will be updated instead of duplicated.
• The spreadsheet file may include columns to specify event reminders (see the field definitions below for details). If you want to import reminder settings, check the box labeled "Import reminders, if present". This will have no effect if reminder columns aren't detected in the spreadsheet.
• You can chose to apply the destination calendar's default event settings to any new events that are imported. Note, to prevent the possibility of a large number of reminders from being displayed after importing, events that occur in the past will not have their reminders enabled, even if the default calendar settings specify a reminder.
• You can also choose to exclude events older than a specified number of days from being imported. This could reduce the time required to import, if the calendar being imported contains many events going back several years or more.

Field Name Mappings

After you've selected a file to import and a destination calendar, click the Next button. The window will update to show a mapping of input fields to destination fields. In most cases, VueMinder will guess the destination field based on the input field name. If VueMinder is unable to make an appropriate guess, the destination field will be blank when using the Pro version. When using the Ultimate version, the destination field will map to a custom field. If the custom field hasn't already been defined, it will be highlighted yellow to indicate the field will be created during the import. A field mapping selection can be made by clicking the drop-down button, where a list of all supported field names will be shown.

Supported Field Names

The following “To Fields” are supported. Most of these are optional. The only fields that must be present are “Title” and “Start”. Also, since these fields might not be applicable to every event, you can leave the value blank to have the field ignored for a particular event.

Title – The event title text.

Location – The event location text.

Category – The event category. If there are multiple categories, separate them with semicolons. Example: “Work; Important; Follow-up”

Calendar – The event calendar. If not specified, the imported event will be assigned to the “Destination calendar” selected in the Import window. Otherwise, this will override the selected destination calendar.

Priority – The event priority. Example: “High”.

Start – The event starting date and time. For an all-day event, just the date is needed. The format should match the date/time format used for events in Windows, based on your regional settings.

End – The event ending date and time. If this isn’t specified, the Duration field will be used. If the Duration field is also not specified, the event will be assumed to last all day if the Start field doesn’t include a time of day in it text. Otherwise it will be assumed to be 1 hour in length.

Duration – The duration of the event. It should be formatted as “N span”, where N is a number and span is “minutes”, “hours”, “days”, ”weeks”, or “months”. Example: “30 minutes”.

All Day – An all-day flag. Values that are blank, “No”, or “False” will be treated as non all-day events, while values of “X”, “Yes”, or “True” will be treated as all-day. The same yes/no value parsing is used for other flag input fields, such as the “Completed” field.

Completed – The event completion flag. When set, the event will be marked as completed.

Popup Reminder Time – The time before the event start that a popup reminder should appear. If blank, there will be no popup reminder. Otherwise, specify the length of time as “N span”, similar to the Duration field format. Other time-span fields, such as “Desktop Alert Time” also use this format.

Desktop Alert Time - The time before the event start that a desktop alert should appear. If blank, there will be no desktop alert.

Email Reminder Time – The time(s) before the event start that an email reminder should be sent. If multiple times are desired, separate them with semicolons. The reminder will only be sent to the email address specified in the Email Settings. Additional recipients cannot be specified by the import.

SMS Reminder Time – The time(s) before the event start that an SMS reminder should be sent, similar to the “Email Reminder Time” field.

Run Program Name – The executable to run, including the full path (if not in the Windows path variable) and filename, when the event starts. This could be used to initiate a backup process, launch a web browser, or whatever else you want to start automatically. Example: “iexplore.exe”

Run Program Parameters – Parameters to pass to the executable specified in the “Run Program Name” field. Example: “https://www.vueminder.com”

Recurs Daily – When this flag is set, the event will be imported as a daily recurring event. The first occurrence is specified by the “Start” field.

Recurs Weekly – When this flag is set, the event will be imported as a weekly recurring event. The first occurrence and day-of-week is determined by the “Start” field.

Recurs Monthly – When this flag is set, the event will be imported as a monthly recurring event. The first occurrence and day of month is determined by the “Start” field.

Recurs Yearly – When this flag is set, the event will be imported as a yearly recurring event. The first occurrence and day of year is determined by the “Start” field.

Recurrence – This field can be used as an alternative to the recurrence flag fields like “Recurs Daily”. Supported text values are blank, “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly”, or “Yearly”.

Font Name – The name of the font, to override the default calendar appearance. Example: “Times New Roman”

Font Size – The size of the font. Example: “12”

Font Color – The color of the event text. All color fields support several formats. These can be “R, G, B”, where R, G, and B are each numbers 0 through 255 representing the red, green, and blue components of the color. Example: “128, 200, 30”. The format can also be a hex number starting with either “0x” or “#”. The bytes are ordered RRGGBB. For example, yellow would be “0xFFFF00”. A pre-defined color name can also be specified as text, instead of numerically. Example: “Yellow”. To see a list of pre-defined color names, click the drop-down button on any of the color inputs and select the “Web” tab. All the color names specified on that tab can be specified as text when importing.

Background Color 1 – The primary event background color. The format is the same as the other color fields.

Background Color 2 – The secondary event background color, as well as its border color. The format is the same as the other color fields.

Gradient Style – The gradient style used to blend the two background colors together. The value is text. To see a list of supported values, click the Gradient style drop-down button in the appearance settings. Note, if a style as spaces in its name in the drop-down list, the spaces should be removed in the specified import value. Example: "GlassTop".

Import Results

After specifying the field mappings, click the Next button. The spreadsheet will be imported and a summary of the imported events will be shown. To import another file, click the "Import Another" button. Otherwise, click the Close button to close the Import Events window.