CalDAV will not connect, or the service has no CalDAV: use the feed instead

Updated 14 October 2026

You want a schedule from work, a school, a club or a booking system in your own calendar. The instructions say CalDAV and it will not connect — or there is no CalDAV at all, only something called an ICS, iCal or webcal link. Here is the difference, and what works.

CalDAV and a calendar feed are different things

Why CalDAV fails in Outlook and Google Calendar

• Outlook has no CalDAV account type of its own. Classic Outlook for Windows can be given one with a third-party add-in; Outlook.com, the new Outlook and Outlook on a phone cannot.
• Google Calendar speaks CalDAV only in the other direction: other apps can connect to Google with it, but Google Calendar cannot connect to someone else's CalDAV server.
• Apple Calendar does speak CalDAV (Add Account → Other → CalDAV), so that is where CalDAV instructions usually work. When it fails there, the usual causes are the server address (it often needs the full path, not just the site name), an app-specific password that the service requires, or CalDAV being switched off for your account.

So if your calendar is Outlook or Google, a CalDAV address is usually the wrong tool, however carefully you type it.

Look for the feed instead

Most services that have a calendar also publish it as a feed, even when their help page talks about CalDAV or about nothing at all. In the service's calendar or settings page, look for:

• a button or link named Subscribe, Export, Sync to calendar, iCal or Calendar feed;
• an address that starts with webcal:// or ends in .ics;
• "Add to Outlook" or "Add to Google Calendar" — these almost always hand over a feed link underneath.

Open the link in a browser. If a file downloads, or you see text beginning BEGIN:VCALENDAR, that is the feed. If it asks for a username and password first, it is a feed with a login.

What to do with the feed

If the link is public and a delay of hours is fine, subscribe to it for free: Add calendar → Subscribe from web in Outlook, or Add calendar → From URL in Google Calendar. Expect changes to take several hours to show.

If the feed asks for a login, or hours are too slow, the built-in subscribe cannot do it — here is why. That is the case PortalCal was written for: a small app for Windows and Mac that fetches the feed itself every five minutes, signing in if the feed needs it, and writes the events into a calendar of its own inside your Outlook or Google account.

What PortalCal does not do

PortalCal reads feeds. It does not speak CalDAV, and it is one-way: events come from the service into your calendar, never back. If your service offers CalDAV and no feed link of any kind, PortalCal cannot help — ask the service whether it has an iCal or ICS export, since many have one that is not advertised. The 30-day trial is free, so you can find out with your own link before paying anything.