You might face a very intriguing problem when you import a VCalendar (.vcs) file into Microsoft Outlook. The appointments all appear to be perfect after the import operation has been done. But the moment you synchronize with your Pocket PC, these appointments will lose their time on the Pocket PC. The appointments will appear as "all day" events and might also get pushed forward to the next day.

Now instead of importing the file, if you were to open the .vcs file (using Outlook) and click Save and Close in Outlook and then synchronize it with your Pocket PC, then all is well.  However, the problem here is that this action will only enter the first Calendar item within the .vcs file.

If your .vcs file contains multiple entries, then you will need to use a text editor to separate them as individual .vcs files.  This can be a little time consuming approach depending on the number of entries.  Open the main VCS file and copy the following block -

BEGIN:VEVENT
........
........
........
END:VEVENT

Each VCS entry file will have to look like the following (They are not case-sensitive):

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
........
........
........
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Save the file with a .vcs extension.  Double click on the VCS files and click "Save and Close" to enter them into Outlook.

For some reason using the Import feature causes the appointments to be displayed as all day events and move them one day ahead upon synchronization with the Pocket PC.  It appears as if the import feature is not generating some entry within Outlook which ActiveSync is looking for during Calendar synchronization.

To make your task easier in going about generating the individual .vcs files, you can download the VCalendar Splitter.  This utility automates the task of creating individual .vcs files.  So all you need to do after it generates the .vcs files is to select them all and open it in one go.  This would open the .vcs files individually with the details shown in the Outlook Calendar form.  All you have to do now is click Save and Close.

	Download VCalendar Splitter Version 1.0 VSplitter.zip (71Kb)  You will need WinZip to extract the files.
	Minimum Requirements: - Operating Systems: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows XP - Visual Basic 6.0 runtime.  Refer the Readme file in the zip to find out if you need the download the run time files.   (Download site)

Instructions: 1.  Download and extract the file by clicking the Download above. 2.  Refer to the readme.txt file provided to make sure you have all the required files. 2.  Double-click the VSplitter.exe file and select the .vcs file. 3.  Files will be created in the same location as the selected file under a folder - "VCS Folder".

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  Update:

If you have several appointments, then an alternate method  is to get your appointments exported as a Comma Separated Value (.csv) file.  I have seen that appointments that are imported from .csv file, do not get affected when synchronized with the Pocket PC.  Before importing the csv file, make sure you have the fields mapped correctly.  You will be prompted by the import wizard with the mapping option after selection of the file that needs to be imported.

The only problem with this file format is that it does not support recurring Outlook appointments and tasks.  Individual occurrences will be created for recurring items.  It will also be limited with a date range boundary, thereby any appointment that is not within the date range, will be ignored.