ICS to Excel Converter — Every Event as a Spreadsheet Row

What lands in which column

The workbook has a single sheet named Events: one header row, then one row per event. The nine columns are the same headers the CSV download uses, in the same order — eight of them are the header names Google Calendar's CSV import recognises (Recurrence is this site's extra column), which is why the sheet can go back into a calendar later.

Column widths are the header length plus two characters, with a floor of 12, so the header row is readable the moment the file opens. Nothing else is styled — no bold, no fills, no frozen panes. The parser also reads UID, STATUS and ORGANIZER from each VEVENT, but those do not get a column; the sheet is limited to the nine fields above. Events with no DTEND are kept, and an all-day DTEND (which ICS stores as the day after the event) is converted back to the inclusive end date you would expect in a spreadsheet.

Dates are kept as text on purpose

Every data cell in the workbook is written as a text cell — SheetJS cell type s — including Start Date, End Date, Start Time and End Time. Start Date holds the literal string 09/05/2026, Start Time the literal string 2:00 PM. No value is converted into an Excel serial date number.

Three reasons. A serial date is displayed according to the locale of whoever opens the file, so 03/04/2026 can read as March 4 on one machine and April 3 on another; a text cell says the same thing everywhere. The .xlsx shows exactly the same values as the CSV download, so switching between CSV and Excel never changes the values (JSON keeps the same strings too, except allDayEvent, which becomes a boolean). And the conversion is reversible: on a US-locale Excel, DATEVALUE and TIMEVALUE turn the text into real dates when you need arithmetic; on a day-first locale build the date from the MM/DD/YYYY parts with DATE, LEFT and MID instead, because DATEVALUE follows the machine locale.

The trade-off is sorting. Sorting the Start Date column sorts the MM/DD/YYYY strings alphabetically, which is month-first, not chronological across years — convert to real dates first if you need a true date sort.

The exporter also forces text for any column whose header contains id, uid, phone or tel, so leading zeros survive. None of the nine default headers match that rule; the test file scripts/test-ics-export.mjs checks it with a synthetic UID column, writing a workbook and reading it back with the same library to assert that 12345 and 0042 come back as strings and that the Start Date cell is type s with value 09/05/2026.

Recurring events: one row, rule kept

When a VEVENT carries an RRULE line, the parser stores its value untouched and the exporter writes it into the Recurrence column — for example FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=FR. The event is written once. The tool does not expand the rule into one row per occurrence, so a weekly meeting is one row in the sheet, not 52.

The parser ignores EXDATE, RDATE and RECURRENCE-ID lines, along with VALARM reminder blocks and vendor X- properties. That means a cancelled occurrence is not removed from the series row, and a moved occurrence that the calendar exported as its own VEVENT with RECURRENCE-ID shows up as an extra, unlinked row — the series row itself is as originally defined. If you need one row per date, expand the series in your calendar app before exporting, or build the dates in the spreadsheet from the rule.

Getting the .ics file out of your calendar first

Most people arrive here without an .ics file yet — the calendar lives in an app. These are the export paths for the three big ones.

Going back to a calendar file

Because the headers are the ones Google Calendar's CSV import expects — Subject, Start Date, Start Time, End Date, End Time, All Day Event, Location, Description — a sheet you edit can be turned back into an .ics. The Excel to ICS converter reads the .xlsx directly, and the CSV to ICS converter takes the CSV; both detect those headers automatically, so you do not rename anything. Bulk-edit titles or locations in the spreadsheet, convert back, import — that is the round trip this page is built for.

CSV or JSON instead

The three buttons beside Download switch the output. CSV is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, the same nine headers, and opens by double-click in Excel with accented characters intact. JSON is an array with one object per event; the keys are the headers in camelCase — subject, startDate, startTime, endDate, endTime, allDayEvent, location, description, recurrence. allDayEvent is a boolean true or false; every other value is a string, with an empty string for a field the event did not have. The file is indented with two spaces.

The download is named after your input: meetings.ics becomes meetings.xlsx, meetings.csv or meetings.json, and pasted text becomes pasted.xlsx.

ICS to Excel — frequently asked questions