Any help converting from Entourage to iCal?

Question

With all the problems syncing between Entourage calendar and my wife's iPhone (and now Apple dropping sync to Entourage in the new "forced" upgrade on MobileMe), I want to help my wife convert from Entourage to iCal.  Anyplace to go for that help?

Answer 1

You can use Thundebird to replace Entourage and get the Lighting.Add-on to Thunderbird to replace the calendar of Entourage which USED TO synch over ical to Mobile Me as follows:
1. How to set up the iCal for Lightning and MobileMe
open Thunderbird
Install the Lightning add-on
Select “Preferences” “Advanced” “General”“Config Editor…”
yes, be careful
scroll down until you find  “general.useragent.extra.lightning” andset the value to (nothing). you can also set the value to “ical” or whatever,just change it.
Close the config editor, close Thunderbird
Get the link to your iCal on MobileMe asfollows:
open ical (YES, iCAL)
right click the calendar under [email protected] youwant to access 
select“get info”
copythe url after “CalDAV url:” it should read“/calendars/users/1.xxxxxxxxx/xxx-x-x-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx”
OpenThunderbird (assuming you have the Lightning add-on installed)
Within Thunderbird
File/ New / Calendar
onthe networkselect “CalDav”
intolocation: type the following (excluding the “”) :“https://cal.me.com:8443/calendars/users/1.xxxxxxxxx/xxx-x-x-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-x xxx-xxxxxxxxxxx”where the xxx stuff is the part of the url that you copied under 5. above.
Whenyou check what is written in the location field, it will end with a   “/” which is correct.
This works fine for me.
If you want to back-up your calendar on Thunderbird/Lightning outside the cloud,  goto iCal and export the file to a local location as backup.