What Is an ICS File and How to Open It?

If you want to know what an ICS file is, it is an iCalendar document commonly used to diarize events. 

An ICS file is a plain text document that has event details in it. These details may include information like description, beginning and ending times, location, and so on. You can use the ICS format for sending requests for meetings to people. It is also a popular means of subscribing to birthday or holiday calendars.

Although ICS is the most popular calendar format, there are other types of ICS files as well. For instance, ICS files may also be IC Recorder Sound files that a Sony IC recorder has created.  ICS files can also be a 3D Drawing file created by the IronCAD software.

There are some other formats of ICS files that have nothing to do with calendars. These are formats belonging to the IEEE Computer Society, Image Capture Server, and Internet Connection Sharing. But, we will limit our discussion to the ICS file format for calendars only.

As ICS is a common format, many applications can open the files.


8 Applications to open ICS Files

  • IBM Notes
  • Windows Live Mail
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • VueMinder
  • Lightning Calendar
  • Yahoo! Calendar
  • Apple Calendar
  • Google Calendar

For instance, you may want to subscribe to a holiday calendar. Opening an ICS file from Calendar Labs within a program like Microsoft Outlook, will allow you to import all the holiday events as a new calendar. 

Once done, you can overlay this information with other events from any other calendar. Using such local calendars is useful for holidays that will not change during the year.

It is easy to open an ICS file. You can use any regular text editor for the purpose, for instance, Windows Notepad. While you can read and edit the file, the information in it is not easy to comprehend. 

For a better understanding, you can use the Google Calendar program. Here we explain how to import an ICS file into your Google Calendar.

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