Calendar files
Everything here runs in your browser. Nothing about your event — the date, the venue, the guest list you pasted — is uploaded anywhere, because writing a text file does not need a server.
Tools
- ICS File GeneratorMakes the .ics file and the pre-filled Google and Outlook links — because a downloaded file alone does not work for half your visitors.
- Excel to CalendarTurns a spreadsheet of events into calendar files — one for the whole schedule, and one for each row.
- ICS ViewerRead the calendar file you were sent — every event in plain words, and a straight answer about the time it claims to be.
- ICS to CSVEvery event in the file as a row you can sort, filter and total — with a straight answer about which timezone each time is really in.
Arrived here from a calendar entry?
Then somebody built that entry with theICS file generator above, and you can do the same thing in about a minute. Fill in a title and a time, and you get a file to put on your site plus the two links that cover the people a file alone does not reach.
What an .ics file actually is
A plain text file, readable in any editor, describing one or more events in a format every calendar application agrees on. It has been standardized since 1998 and is remarkably stable — the same file works in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird and everything else. Open one and you will see lines likeSUMMARY: and DTSTART: wrapped between BEGIN:VEVENTand END:VEVENT. That legibility is the reason these tools can show you the file before you download it.
The two things that go wrong
Timezones. A time written without one means this hour wherever you are, so a talk at two o'clock in Stockholm lands at two o'clock in Denver for anybody reading it there. The person who made the file never sees the bug, because they live in the timezone it was written for. Every file made here is converted to UTC from a timezone you pick, and the conversion is shown on screen while you work.
Only publishing the file. A downloaded .ics adds an event in one step on iPhone, macOS and Outlook desktop. Google Calendar will not import a file you merely open — it takes a trip into Settings that nobody makes. Roughly half an audience is therefore lost by an event page offering a download and nothing else, which is why these tools produce pre-filled Google and Outlook links next to every file.
Which one you want
One event, typed in by hand, is theICS file generator: a webinar, a launch, a single deadline. A list you already have in a spreadsheet — a conference program, a course, a fixture list — is Excel to Calendar, which reads your rows and gives you both a combined file and one per row for individual buttons.
Going the other way — a file somebody sent you — splits by what you intend to do next. To look at it, the ICS viewer lays out every entry in readable form and, unusually, tells you whether a start time carries a timezone at all rather than silently picking one. To get the contents into a sheet you can sort and total, ICS to CSV hands over the columns you choose.
About the credit line
Files made with these tools carry one line at the end of the description pointing back to this page. It is switched on by default, it is shown in full before you download anything, and one checkbox removes it — nothing else about the file changes. It is there because it is the only way anyone finds out these tools exist without searching for them, and it is visible and removable because it ends up in other people's calendars, which is not somewhere to put a surprise.