Outlook 2007 and Google Calendar

I've wanted to be able to sync up Google Calendar to my Exchange account on Microsoft Outlook for a long time now, to let others check out my calendar and to make it more accessible to myself when I'm not at my desk.

I tried installing Remote Calendars with Outlook 2003 but the toolbar or options dialogue never appeared, so I put it down to the fact I was using an Exchange server and left it. Having recently upgraded to the fancy new Outlook 2007 I decided to give it another try. The dialogue box appeared and let me put all the details in, however, nothing seemed to happen when I'm sure it was supposed to, so I gave up.

After some more Googling I found another couple of programs, SyncMyCal and gSyncit both of which give you the option of a cut down free version, or a paid version with useful features like autosync.

After spending 10 minutes trying to get SyncMyCal working, I gave up - it wasn't working. Thinking maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all I finally installed gSyncit as a last attempt. Amazingly it worked superbly, just as it says on the tin, and only took me a minute or so to set up.

The annoying nag screen and lack of autosync in the free version were frustrating, and although I wouldn't normally buy software like this (especially when Remote Calendars was free, although it didn't work!), I splashed out on the $9.99 for it. It's been well worth it, my only quibble is that when an autosync happens a window pops up and steals focus, but apart from that it is a really useful and well written little app.