Copying a Google Calendar from 2025 to 2026, part 4

In a couple of recent posts (here), I looked at the stage for exporting a Google Calendar as an .ics file, and updating it for reimporting as a new Google calendar.

However, if we get that reimporting WRONG, we need to know how to undo it. I did just that, by trying to get clever and assuming that I could change the dates of my calendar export and then reimport it into the same calendar. Of course it overwrote all this year's dates because the entry ID numbers were the same. Sigh.

Luckily someone has documented how to undo the import for us all to benefit from: and it is a life-saver (GCal Tools, 2020). All we need to do is to open our edited .ics file in some type of text editor (I use Notepad). Do a find and replace of the following:

STATUS:CONFIRMED

For:

STATUS:CANCELLED

Then save the .ics file. We are now able to reimport the .ics file into our Google calendar, and our mistake will be erased. 

All I need to do is now to undo the find and replace, then reimport the .ics file into a new Google calendar to avoid the duplicate problem. And that worked perfectly.

Yay! And next time I was much more careful, first creating a unique annual calendar for the next year so I can safely have duplicate event IDs :-)

Sam

References:

GCal Tools. (2020, November 12). How to undo an import to Google Calendar [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/hJdGBmHDafA

Google Calendar Help. (2025, January 1). Copy Google Calendar Events from 2024 Calendar year to 2025. https://support.google.com/calendar/thread/319764201/copy-google-calendar-events-from-2024-calendar-year-to-2025-year?msgid=320864848#