Export Calendar Files from FileMaker – the easy way!

I have written about this multiple times in the past and thought I was done with this, but apparently not. A reader from Germany reported that there was a problem with a certain type of export and could I just tweak the script to make it work.

Why fix something minor, when I can rewrite the entire script? FileMaker has come some distance from the old days of FM 13 (UTF, WTF! Writing HTML and JSON from FileMaker) and all the hoops we needed to jump through just to export a plain old UTF-8 text file.

This file borrows from, but ultimately supersedes my previous demos and blog posts, assuming you are using FileMaker 16 or newer.

• Exporting Calendar files (.ics) from FileMaker Pro 13
• Export Calendar files from FileMaker Pro – Virtual List Technique

What we are doing in this script is generating a text file that is saved with a .ics ending so that your calendar will import it.

The script steps are:

• Decide if it is a Batch export or a single record being exported
• Set the UTC offset
• Set the Header
• Build the Body – this is the hard part
• Set the Footer
• Set the Path
• Set the File Name
• Combine Header, Body and Footer
• Set the calculated text to a Global Container field for export – using the TextEncode function
• Export the file
• Automatically open it in your default Calendar app.

Integrating the Script with your Solution

This demo is a single script that you should be able to import into your solution and then modify the following variables in the Body section to match your solutions field structure:

Modify the Export Path

You may also want to modify where the exported files end up. I have it set to your desktop, but the could be placed in a Temporary folder or perhaps on Dropbox etc.

Hope this is useful.

Download Demo