vCalendar Event

The Internet Mail Consortium created the VCS format in 1996. Many calendar programs support or previously supported the VCS format, but it is most notably used by Microsoft Outlook . While most calendar programs have now removed the ability to export events as VCS files, Outlook still allows users to export and import VCS files. Additionally, some previous versions of Outlook could export events as either VCS or ICS files, but import only VCS files.

VCS Format

A typical VCS file begins with the line BEGIN:VCALENDAR and includes VERSION:1.0 to indicate the format version. Inside the file, individual events are wrapped in BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT tags and can include details such as SUMMARY (event title), DTSTART (start date/time), DTEND (end date/time), and LOCATION . The file concludes with END:VCALENDAR .

Here's an example of a simple VCS file layout:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:1.0 BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Team Meeting DTSTART:20260310T100000 DTEND:20260310T110000 LOCATION:Conference Room A DESCRIPTION:Monthly team status update. END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

NOTE: Some VCS files may contain data that is encoded using quoted-printable encoding, and therefore is not human-readable.

You can open a VCS file with Microsoft Outlook (multiplatform), Apple Calendar (Mac, iOS), Google Calendar (multiplatform), and several other calendar applications, to import the event it contains to your calendar.

If you cannot open your VCS file with a calendar app, try renaming the file to use the .ics extension, then importing it. If that doesn't work, you can use the information below to convert your VCS file to the ICS format.

You can also open a VCS file with any text editor (such as Microsoft Notepad or Apple TextEdit ) to view the information it contains.

You can use VCS to ICS Calendar Converter (multiplatform) to convert VCS files to the .ICS (iCalendar) format. (Doing so may discard some non-compatible information your VCS file contains.)

Programs that open VCS files

Updated: March 5, 2026