University Semester Course Schedule
Six fall sections with MWF, TuTh and every-other-Friday repeat rules, room numbers and Thanksgiving week to skip.
Excel to ICS calendar converter for .xlsx schedules
Drop the workbook as it is. Date cells, time cells and serial numbers are read from the file itself, shown on a calendar, and written as an .ics that Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar import without shifting.
Samples
Columns were matched from your headers. Change any field; the calendar redraws instantly.
- Written as TZID with a VTIMEZONE block. Pick UTC for Z-suffixed times.
0 events Dates: —
Load a sample or drop a file to see it on the calendar.
Rows to check
Look inside the .ics file
How it works
Excel to calendar without a CSV detour
- Put the timetable on the first sheetHeaders in the first row, one class, shift or match per row below.
- Drop the .xlsxThe workbook is unzipped in the browser; shared strings, number formats and date styles are read cell by cell.
- Check converted cellsThe file line reports how many Excel date/time cells were converted, and the calendar shows where each row landed.
- Download the .icsTimes are written with your chosen time zone and a VTIMEZONE block, ready for Outlook or Google.
Excel keeps a date as a number and a separate display format. A cell that shows Mon 11/09/2026 may store 46335; a cell that shows 9:00 AM stores 0.375. Reading the workbook directly means the converter sees the number and the format together, so it never has to guess whether 11/09 means November 9 or 11 September.
Examples
Workbook layouts that convert cleanly
These four samples use the column layouts people actually build in Excel: a course timetable, a store rota, a release plan with a time-zone column and a fixture list. Each opens in the converter above.
Retail Store Weekly Shift Plan
Five associates, cashier / stock / floor-lead roles and a 15-minute reminder column for one store week.
Global Remote Team Release Calendar
Release steps owned by teams in New York, London and Tokyo, each row in its own IANA time zone.
Youth Soccer League Fixture List
Four Saturdays of U12 fixtures with home and away teams, two fields and four different date formats in one column.
Who it is for
When the schedule lives in a workbook
Course timetables
Registrars and department admins keep sections, rooms and instructors in one workbook. Each row becomes an event; add a Recurrence Rule column and the Pro repeat pack writes the whole term with holidays removed.
Rotas built from templates
Store and clinic managers copy last week’s tab and edit it. Drop the tab you just finished; the schedule CSV to ICS page previews one calendar per employee.
Project and release plans
Milestones with an owner and an IANA time zone per row. The free file uses one zone and flags rows that name another; the Pro pack keeps each row’s own zone.
Importing into Outlook
Outlook cannot import an .xlsx directly, and its CSV wizard maps columns by hand. An .ics skips the wizard. For Google, read the Google Calendar CSV import guide first.
Reference
Excel cell values and what they become
| What the cell shows | What Excel stores | Written to the .ics |
|---|---|---|
| 11/09/2026 (date format) | 46335 | 20261109 |
| 9:00 AM (time format) | 0.375 | T090000 |
| 11/09/2026 13:30 | 46335.5625 | 20261109T133000 |
| Nov 9, 2026 (text) | text | 20261109 |
| TRUE in an All Day column | boolean | DTSTART;VALUE=DATE |
| =A2+7 (formula) | last saved result | the calculated date |
The date system is the standard 1900 system used by Excel for Windows and Mac since 2011; the 1899-12-30 epoch already absorbs Excel’s historic leap-year quirk, so serial 60 onward lines up with real calendar dates. Text dates such as 9 Nov 2026 or 2026-11-09 are parsed with the same rules as CSV files. The property-by-property mapping is in the CSV to ICS field reference.
Privacy: the workbook is never uploaded. It is unzipped and read by JavaScript in this tab, and the .ics is generated in memory and saved straight to your downloads folder.
FAQ
Excel to ICS questions
Do I have to save my Excel file as CSV first?
No. Drop the .xlsx file itself. The converter opens the first worksheet in your browser, reads the cell types and the number formats, and turns date and time cells into real dates and times. Saving as CSV first is the step that usually breaks dates, because Excel writes them in your computer’s regional format.
Why do my dates show up as numbers like 46328?
Excel stores dates as serial numbers: days since 30 December 1899, with the time as a fraction of a day. 46328.375 is 2 November 2026 at 9:00 AM. When a sheet loses its formatting, those raw numbers leak into CSV exports. This page converts serial values back to dates automatically and reports how many cells it converted.
Which sheet is used if my workbook has several tabs?
The first sheet in the workbook. Move the timetable tab to the front in Excel or Google Sheets (or copy it into a new workbook) before you drop the file. Headers must be in the first non-empty row.
Can I import an Excel schedule into Outlook this way?
Yes. Outlook desktop imports .ics files through File › Open & Export › Import/Export › Import an iCalendar file. Outlook on the web uses Add calendar › Upload from file. The .ics carries a VTIMEZONE block, which Outlook needs to place times correctly.
Does it read .xls files from older Excel versions?
Not directly: .xls is a different binary format. Open the file in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice or Google Sheets and save it as .xlsx or CSV, then drop that. A text file renamed to .xlsx is rejected with a clear message rather than producing an empty calendar.
Are formulas and merged cells supported?
Formula cells are read as the value Excel last calculated and saved. Merged cells keep their value only in the top-left cell, so fill the merged range (or unmerge and fill down) before converting, otherwise those rows will be missing a date or a title.
The converter family