In JEvents it is possible to import events from a CSV file.  The format of this file is very important - some users find MS Excel doesn't give enought flexibility to set the field delimiter to a comma and it often ends up leaving out the double quotes around the fields. If you have these problems then I'd revommend you try OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead to create the extract.

It must include the following columns:

"CATEGORIES","SUMMARY","LOCATION","DESCRIPTION","CONTACT","X-EXTRAINFO","DTSTART","DTEND","TIMEZONE","RRULE"

Club members can download a sample file.

For non-members - this is an example of the first line of events.

"Sport","Football Match","Football Stadium","This event is just for fun","Contact Name","Whatever extra-info","20100915T150000","20100915T191500","Europe/London","FREQ=DAILY;COUNT=10;INTERVAL=3"

You can use a CSV file whereever you would import an iCal file in JEvents.

Custom Fields

If you are using the Silver member custom fields addon then you can include the value of your custom fields in the CSV file too.  For example if you have a URL type field with a name 'field1' then a sample import could look like this:

"CATEGORIES","SUMMARY","LOCATION","DESCRIPTION","CONTACT","X-EXTRAINFO","DTSTART","DTEND","TIMEZONE","RRULE","field1"
"Sport","Football Match","Football Stadium","This event is just for fun","Contact Name","Whatever extra-info","20100915T150000","20100915T191500","Europe/London","FREQ=DAILY;COUNT=10;INTERVAL=3","http://www.mysite.com"

Notice how we include the fieldname in the first row of the CSV file.

Importing Locations

For importing locations there is a config option in the managed locations component to set to allow the matching of imported event locations.  If this is set to yes AND the location field in the CSV file is an exact match for and existing location title then it will be matched up with the location in the database (as long as the importing user is the creator of the location or the location is a shared/global location).

You can also auto-create locations IF the location field is in this EXACT format "Location Name - Street, City, Country" or "Location Name - Street, City, Country, Postcode"

Importing Standard Images and Files

If you use the silver member standard images and files plugin you can import these as follows:

Add extra column headings

"upload_image1","upload_image1_title"

So that the heading row and data looks something like

"CATEGORIES","SUMMARY","LOCATION","DESCRIPTION","CONTACT","X-EXTRAINFO","DTSTART","DTEND","TIMEZONE","RRULE","field1","upload_image1","upload_image1_title"
"Sport","Football Match","Football Stadium","This event is just for fun","Contact Name","Whatever extra-info","20100915T150000","20100915T191500","Europe/London","FREQ=DAILY;COUNT=10;INTERVAL=3","http://www.mysite.com","4ed5f32153fa64.61913523.jpeg","The Image"

Now JEvents will use the image images/jevents/4ed5f32153fa64.61913523.jpeg and the thumbnail images/jevents/thumbnails/thumb_4ed5f32153fa64.61913523.jpeg for this event