Migrating Calendars and Contacts between Google Apps Instances

I’m in the middle of a Google Apps migration project, moving users from one instance of Google Apps to a completely different instance of Google Apps.  I haven’t found a great free method to migrate Calendars and Contacts so I documented the process to move them manually.  Here you go…

Migrating Calendars

Since there isn’t a tool to migrate calendars from one Google Apps instance to another, this is a manual process done user by user.  The good thing is that it’s pretty straight forward and your users should be able to do this themselves.  Here we go:

1. View your Calendars within the OLD instance of Google Apps.
2. Click on Settings in the upper right corner of your screen and select Calendar Settings.
3. Click on Calendars and then click on Export Calendars. This will download a .zip file to your  computer.  (Pay attention to the location that this file downloads to.  Mine downloaded to my “Downloads” folder.  Yours MAY download to a different location.
4. Find the file you just downloaded and open it.  This will reveal your exported calendars.  Pay attention to the loaction of these files.
5. Open your Calendars in the NEW instance of Google Apps.
6. Repeat step 2 to open your Calendar Settings.
7. You will now need to re-create your calendars so that you can import to them.  Click on Create New Calendar. Repeat for each calendar that you exported.
8. After creating your new calendars, it’s time to import the old calendars to the new ones.  Click on Import Calendars.  Click on Browse.  Navigate to the calendar files from Step 4 above.  Select one.  Select the Calendar you would like to import to. Click Enter.
9. Repeat this process for each calendar you would like to import.
10. Done!

Migrating Contacts

1. The user should login to their OLD Google Apps Email and click on contacts in the left-hand column. 
2. Click Export in the upper right corner of the Contacts screen.
3. Compare your settings to the following Screen Shot.  I recommend only Exporting “My Contacts”.  Also be sure to select Google CSV format.  Click Export.  (“All Contacts” is EVERYONE you have ever emailed, whether you have entered them into your contacts or not.  The email addresses imported on this setting may not have a name associated with it.)
4. Clicking Export will download a file to your computer called google.csv.  Make note of its location.
5. Open the email of the NEW Google Apps instance and click Contacts as you did in step 1 above.
6. Click on Import in the upper right corner of your screen (same area as Export from Step 2).
7. Navigate to and select your google.csv file that you exported in Step 4.  After selecting the file, click Import.
8. Done!

Apple Home Folder Permissions

Today, I had the pleasure of migrating a user from a MacBook to a MacBookPro.  Apple includes this cool tool call  the “Migration Utility” which allows you to link the old and new computer together either by firewire or ethernet and then transfer all Applications, Documents, Settings, etc. from the old to the new.

After completing the transfer process, I was having issues updating a few applications and accessing files in the user’s Home Folder on the new computer.  After some research, I discovered that these issues are usually caused by permission issues.  I opened Disk Utility to Verify and Repair Permissions on the disk but to no avail. I was still having issues.

Then, I stumbled across this a post that suggested  removing the ACL’s (Access Control Lists) and restoring them.  Here is how I did that:

1. Login as the user having issues and open the Terminal.app in the Utilities folder
2. Type the following command and hit enter:    sudo chmod -RN ~
3. You will be prompted for a password, enter it and hit enter
4. Type the following command (pay attention to the correct symbols) and hit enter:   sudo chown -R `id -un`
5. Reboot your computer from your Install disk (Leopard or Snow Leopard dvd) by making sure the dvd is in the drive and holding “C” down while booting the computer.
6. Select your language and continue
7. At the top of the screen, select “Utilities” and then “Reset Password”
8. Select the username that you want to reset the ACL’s and then click the option to do so in the lower right corner.
9. Reboot the computer upon completion.

Permission issues resolved!