325475 - Sunbird cannot export calendar data to a file

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Calendar :: Sunbird Only, defect)

Description

[lars noodén]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060127 SeaMonkey/1.0
Build Identifier: 0.3a1

Sunbird seems to lack the ability to export calendar data (all of it) to a single file either on the local file system or via WebDAV.  

It would be very very helpful to be able to dump the entire contents say to an iCal file.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
If specific events are highlighted, then they can (in theory) be exported in iCal format to a WebDAV server.  This is a major problem in that a whole year's worth of events can't be highlighted and WebDAV is not always an option.  Cool idea though.

Expected Results:  
File->Export->iCal should be available to put the whole calendar in a local file.

What I see of Sunbird so far is great.

Comment 1

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Sunbird seems to lack the ability to export calendar data (all of it) to a
> single file either on the local file system or via WebDAV.  

Hello,

you already can do that. Go to the calendar tab, select the desired calendar and open the context menu. Select "Publish Entire Calendar" and specify a url for a remote calendar or a special file url for a local calendar.

In Sunbird 0.3a1 only export events and not tasks, but this error is fixed meanwhile.

Comment 2

[lars noodén]

I stand corrected.  The functionality is there.  It's just somewhat obscured and requires two seemingly unrelated steps.  

I had tried typing only a regular path and filename into the dialog box asking for a URL.  To get it to work, typing something beginningwith 'file:///somepath...' is necessary.

Sometimes the menu option File->Publish is greyed out for reasons not yet obvious to me, but Stefan's comment cleared that up.

Comment 3

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

You're right. Seems that "File->Publish..." only publishes the selected events (and is only enabled if events are selected). So this should be renamed to "File->Publish Selection..." or something better.

Maybe we should clean up the entire menu too.

Comment 4

[Joey Minta]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Expected Results:  
> File->Export->iCal should be available to put the whole calendar in a local
> file.

With the checkin of bug 323085, this should be possible in tomorrow's nightly build.  Please verify.

Comment 5

[lars noodén]

Not yet.  

I downloaded the nightly build from 19 Feb:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060219 Mozilla Sunbird/0.3a1+

File->Publish and File->Export only apply to a selected item and are greyed out otherwise.  In that build it does not seem possible to export (or publish) a whole calendar. 

For that matter, Edit->Select All doesn't seem to select anything anymore.

Comment 6

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> File->Publish and File->Export only apply to a selected item and are greyed
> out otherwise.  In that build it does not seem possible to export (or publish)
> a whole calendar. 
I think this menu items are intended to export/publish selected items only. To export/publish an entire calendar right click the desired calendar in the calendar tab and select the appropriate command. That works fine for me.

> For that matter, Edit->Select All doesn't seem to select anything anymore.
See bug 321384 for that issue.

Comment 7

[lars noodén]

Ctrl-mousebutton does it in OS X.  Once found, it does export the whole calendar.

However, I'd expect the function to eventually also be available under the File menu or maybe a submenu within that.

Comment 8

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Ctrl-mousebutton does it in OS X.  Once found, it does export the whole
> calendar.

Setting back to FIXED regarding that comment.

> However, I'd expect the function to eventually also be available under the File
> menu or maybe a submenu within that.

I filed bug Bug 327912 on this.