Outlook ↔ Google Calendar Sync

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Download Blocked by Microsoft Defender SmartScreen?

29 Jan 2026

After downloading OGCS, if it’s been released recently, you may be faced with an alert below when attempting to run the installer or the portable application executable.

🔐 It can be resolved safely! See below for guidance

It just takes time for each new release to build reputation with Microsoft before the warning is removed.

Browser Download Blocked

Your organisation may prevent you from being able to keep files that are “not commonly downloaded”:-

See workaround  :eyes:

Download via PowerShell

Until enough reputation has been built to convince your organisation, try:-

  1. Click “Start” and “Run” (or Win+R) and type powershell
  2. In the console, copy and paste the below:-
    (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile((read-host "Paste in the download link"), "$ENV:USERPROFILE\Downloads\")
    
  3. Right-click the link on the webpage for the file you previously downloaded and “Copy link address”. Paste it into the Powershell window and press enter
    Eg: https://github.com/phw198/OutlookGoogleCalendarSync/releases/download/v3.0.1-alpha/OGCS_Setup.exe
  4. Locate the file in your Downloads folder and run as normal.

Unblocking SmartScreen

SmartScreen may still block a successfully downloaded file:-
image

See workaround for the installer  :eyes:

Unblocking the downloaded installer:-

  1. For OGCS_Setup.exe you may be able to simply click More info and then Run Anyway
    🔐 You can confirm the file is authentic and safe as it will show the publishers name
    image image

  2. If not, right-click the OGCS_Setup.exe file and select Properties
  3. In the bottom right hand corner, click the Unblock checkbox and then OK.
    🔐 Again, you can confirm the file is authentic and safe as it will have been “signed” by the developer
    image image

  4. Execute OGCS_Setup.exe
See workaround for the portable zip  :eyes:

Unblocking the downloaded portable zip:-

  1. After extracting the zip file contents, right-click the OutlookGoogleCalendarSync.exe file, select Properties and then check Unblock as per the images in the above installer section
  2. If there is still a problem, try unblocking all the extracted files. The fastest way to achieve this is:-

    1. Winkey+R and type powershell
    2. Change directory to the extracted files
      cd C:\my\extracted\files\directory
    3. Get-ChildItem | Unblock-File
    4. Now run OGCS by double clicking the executable.

Happy Syncing!


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