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Syncing your Zimbra calendars to Thunderbird is easy using CalDAV and Mozilla’s Lightning extension. Syncing via CalDAV allows you to sync, edit and create new appointments on any of your Zimbra calendars in Thunderbird.

In order to sync using CalDAV, you must first download & install the Lightning extension for Thunderbird at: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/download.html

Once Lightning is installed, open Thunderbird:

In the lower left corner of the main Thunderbird window, select Calendar:

In the menu bar, navigate to Calendar > New Calendar:

Select On the Network, then click Continue:

Select CalDAV as the calendar type:

In the location field you will need to enter your Zimbra calendar URL address. To find the URL for your calendar open a web browser and navigate to: https://mail.01.com/ and login to your Zimbra account. Once logged in, click on the Calendar tab:

In your calendar list, right-click (control-click on a Mac) on the calendar you would like to add to Thunderbird’s Lightning program then choose Share Calendar:

In the Share Properties window, copy the URL location of your calendar:

In this example, my URL is: https://mail-1.01.com/home/jay/Work

Close or minimize the Zimbra web client and navigate back to Lightning’s Create a new calendar window. In the location field, paste the URL location obtained in the Zimbra web client into the Location field:

Delete the word ‘home’ from the URL and replace it with ‘dav’. Then click Continue:

Name your calendar, choose a color for your calendar, check whether or not you would like to alerted to appointment alarms and press Continue:

Thunderbird’s Lightning extension will confirm your calendar addition. Press Done:

In the main Calendar window, press the reload button to force a sync to your Zimbra account:

Upon reloading your calendar events will appear in Thunderbird’s Lightning calendar:

New appointments made in Lightning will sync to your Zimbra acount while appointments made in the Zimbra web interface will sync to Lightning. To add additional calendars to Thunderbird, repeat these steps from the beginning.

Thanks to Jared Howell of jabyte.com, who adds: “combined with Zindus and a few other addons (Folder Account, Signature Switch, and Sync on Arrival), I have a great alternative to Outlook. And a free alternative at that”.

        

Tags: caldav, dav, mozilla, sunbird, Thunderbird, Zimbra

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 12:34 am and is filed under How to, Zimbra, Zimbra hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.