User Guide – Sharing Reminders

Exporting and Importing is useful for backing up your reminders as well as sharing them with other profiles, computers, or calendar services. Only iCalendar (ics) files are supported for importing and exporting.

You can import or export reminders and ToDo’s via the ReminderFox Options dialog. When importing reminders, you can either overwrite your current existing reminders, or add the imported reminders to your existing list of reminders (sort of like merging). This allows for you to import common shared lists of reminders for multiple people who share a pool of reminders such as family members (birthdays, etc).

You can share reminders with most any Calendar program that supports the iCalendar format such as iCal or KOrganizer. Most calendar programs allow you to import files to get your calendar data from one program to another.

Not directly at the present time. You can import your outlook data into another calendar program that can export as ICS, and then import the data into ReminderFox.
Alternatively, you can use the following utility provided by Günter Wahl to to convert your Outlook reminders into the ICS format compatible with ReminderFox.
Downlod this program into the Windows environment where your Outlook account is is stored and execute it there (note: it will not run successfully from the browser link; you need to download it first.). The utility will generate an ICS file; this file should be imported with the ReminderFox import function. Instructions are available in the downloaded zip file or here.

Notes:

• Importing Outlook-Todos does not support ‘Recurring’ Outlook-Todos
• Outlook-Todos ‘Categories’-items are treated as ReminderFox-List ‘Names’; if that ReminderFox-List does not exist, ReminderFox will build it while importing the ICS-file
• If an Outlook-Todo holds multiple ‘Categories’-items, the Outlook-ToDo is imported to a ReminderFox-List named “CATEGORIES”. You should move it to the required ReminderFox-List manually.

Yes, with a bit of a workaround. See an example here: http://www.finchsync.com/howto/sunbird3/sunbird3.html

Yes, you can do this by changing the Options to use the same file from both programs. From one instance of ReminderFox, go to the Options and then go to the File tab. Copy the ReminderFox File Location (you may need to first uncheck Use Default). Now go to your second instance of ReminderFox, go to the Options and then go to the File tab. Uncheck ‘Use Default’ and then paste in the file location you had previously copied. Now both programs are pointing to the same file, so any changes made in one program will be reflected in the other.

You can share your reminders via the network. You can easily share reminders with other instances of ReminderFox – for example, to use the same list of reminders between your computers at work and at home.

You can use any FTP or WebDAV (HTTP/HTTPS) server to store your reminders. If you do not have any servers available for sharing, there are a number of freely available services, such as iCal Exchange (icalx.com).

Select the protocol from the drop down (http/https/fttp) and then enter in your address in the address
text field. Make sure that your address ends in a filename. Enter in your username and password needed to access your server (if required). You can then press Import to download your events from the remote server, or Export to upload your reminders to the remote server.

Here’s an example of a network setup using iCal Exchange:

If you enable the Automatic Synchronize Reminders With Network option, your local reminders and ToDo’s
will automatically be kept in synch with your remote reminders. Whenever you make any changes to your
reminder list, your reminders will automatically be uploaded to your remote server. And when any changes
are made to the remote reminders, they will automatically be downloaded to your local machine. Your remote reminders are checked to see if there are new changes whenever you view your list of reminders as well as when your start ReminderFox and once an hour after that.

Though not explicitly supported, you should be able to share with most other calendar services that are also based on the iCalendar (ics) format, and which support both reading and writing events. Some of the services that have been reported to work with ReminderFox are:

• Memotoo
• Zimbra
• iCal Exchange

Note that you should be careful when sharing with other network services and automatic synchronization; you may want to back up your ReminderFox reminders first.

ReminderFox works with the ICS-format and stores all data in a calendar File. This file can be used to sync with PDAs and Smartphones.

You can use the program FinchSync, which supports devices running MS Windows Mobil. FinchSync is compatible with ReminderFox, which makes it possible to exchange Events and ToDo’s. In FinchSync, for “Appointments” select the source as “Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird”.

Note: FinchSync stores a backup of the source/destination file before syncing, but it’s also recommended to make a copy of the ReminderFox ICS file before starting. (See also File options).

Also note that in ReminderFox Todo’s can be stored in individual custom lists (eg. Birthdays, Albums). These lists are ReminderFox specific. When exporting to ‘MS Window Mobile’, all list entries are transfered into the PDA as regular “Todo’s”.

Make sure your address is written properly (http:// or ftp:// should not be part of the text of your address – they are selected in the drop-down box before the address). Make sure that your address ends with a filename (example: reminders.ics). Also, some servers do not accept files with certain extensions (like .ics), so try changing your filename to end in another extension (example: reminders.txt). Also, make sure that you can access your server via FTP or HTTP outside of ReminderFox to ensure that the server is properly accepting requests in normal circumstances. Also if the address you are synchronizing to is another calendar service, you should make sure that they support downloading and uploading from other calendar programs.

ReminderFox stores all of its data in a file called reminderfox.ics. To see the location of this file, go to the Tools menu at the top of Firefox and select ReminderFox->Options. Click the ‘File’ tab. Uncheck ‘Use Default’ and note the path to the reminderfox.ics file. Browse to that file on your computer and make a copy of it for a backup. Then, copy it to your DropBox. Next, go back to the ‘File’ tab, uncheck ‘Use Default’ and point ReminderFox to the reminderfox.ics in your DropBox folder. Do the same on your other computer(s).