How to Bulk-Import Calendar Events Using the .ics File Format
A developer needed to convert a spreadsheet of roughly 40 work shifts into calendar events and turned to the iCalendar (.ics) format, defined by RFC 5545, which is universally supported across calendar apps. The format is plain text and requires each event to be wrapped in a VEVENT block with three mandatory properties: UID, DTSTAMP, and DTSTART. Timestamps can be expressed in UTC, a named IANA timezone, or as floating time, and all-day events require a separate DATE value syntax where the end date is exclusive. Common pitfalls include incorrect line endings, lines exceeding 75 octets, and unescaped special characters in text fields. The developer ultimately built a free browser-based tool called csvtoics.app that handles column mapping, timezone selection, and file generation.
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