Perhaps it works with date settings “out of the box”. I use an ISO format: 09-06-20 14:30:00. Both Sunbird and Outlook give me these formats in lists of appointments. But the import/export rules seem to be a different story.

An Outlook export shows ..,”2009-6-20″,”14:30:00″,.. Looks like my fav but with a four digit year–fair enough.

A Sunbird export shows ..,”06/20/09″,”02:30:00 PM”,.. Where did that come from? But wait, there's more… When this file is re-imported into Sunbird the event doesn't show up in the calendar. But if you force a display of “All Events” there they are. Click on one and the calendar will show it but the heading on the calendar will be “June 8 – July 5, 9″. That 9 seems to refer to the year 9 A.D. Does Sunbird import assume a four digit year no matter what?

I solved this by importing the Outlook .csv file into a spreadsheet (O-O Calc, of course) and messing with formats (including adding the double quotes). Saving as a .csv gave me a usable file. But while writing this up an easier method occurred to me.

Go into your Control panel Regional Settings and change your date/time formats. If you're not in a “US” region you'll have to use customize. You need date format as MM/dd/yyyy and time as hh:mm:ss tt. Outlook export will then put out ..,”06/20/2009″,”02:30:00 PM”,.. and Sunbird import will work.

Parting shot: At first it seemed that “Sunbird did nothing” as noted by others. Not true. It read the file, found an invalid date format and then did nothing. Like put out as simple message, “Invalid date format” maybe? Shoddy. Oops, sorry, I shouldn't be snarking like that, I should get involved in the project.