Cannot export multiple events

[Jeff]

I am trying to export multiple events. I can only seem to export a single event at a time. My preference would be to export to Google calendar, cannot see that option. I have exported a single event to ics, and imported that one single eventinto Google calendar.

I have also tried exporting via Worpdress to xml but get an error when importing to Excel, see attached screenshot.

This is mission critical for us, would appreciate an urgent reply please.

Thanks Jeff

ps – once again will make the point that this website is ridiculously slow and that you do not offer direct email support for your paying, premium customers.

[Courtney]

Hi Jeff

Let’s see what we can get through ASAP on this. On the front of your calendar, in the lower right corner is an “Export Events” button. You can see ours at http://wpshindig.com/events.

When you click this, it provides a downloadable .ics file that you can take to Google Calendar. Google has put this together for help importing .ics files: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en

Is this able to solve the problem? It will export all of your upcoming events.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Jeff]

What is the matter with you people? As I see from another reviewr of your software, all you do is scan a support request, see what you want to see, and then send out a canned response. You have done it with me before on another response. Your “premium service2 is absolutely abysmal.

Which part of
I am trying to export multiple events. I can only seem to export a single event at a time.
was so difficult to understand?

With the time difference between the UK and US, plus your awful response time, it means that DAYS pass before I get any kind of meaningful answer.

Now can you perhaps READ my ticket PROPERLY and tell me what to do do you think?

[Courtney]

Hi Jeff

I have thoroughly read the ticket. I have not used a canned response with you.

Let’s see how I can further help.

To be clear, you want to export to Google Calendar.

Our export tool is in the lower right corner on the main Events calendar page. This creates an .ics file that Google can import.

This sends the entire upcoming events into Google Calendar.

I really do want to help. This ticket has been assigned to me, and on average, I check for follow up threads with open tickets 2-3x per day. I will check in.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Jeff]

Goodness me, this is almost comedy

I HAVE USED THE EXPORT BUTTON AND IT ONLY EXPORTS

O N E E V E N T

How many times do you need this explaining???????????????????????

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Jeff.

[Courtney]

Ah, thanks Jeff. I’m sorry we are still working on getting this narrowed down, but will absolutely be sure we get this resolved.

It is good to know you were using this “export events” button. Could you send me a link to exactly where this button appears on your site? I’m not seeing it at http://www.sussexlocal.net/events-calendar/. I’d like to test this myself.

Also, have you gone through the Testing for Conflicts Guide https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/testing-for-conflicts/ to be sure this is not a theme or plugin issue?

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Courtney]

Hey Jeff

I did some more digging and found that even without the button appearing on http://www.sussexlocal.net/events-calendar/, I can still export your .ics file using http://www.sussexlocal.net/events-calendar/?ical=1&tribe_display=photo.

When I import that file, I see 30 future events. Is that the number you are expecting to see?

Is there any chance you were trying to export from inside a single event? If so, getting just 1 result would be the expected behavior. Exporting from the publicly viewable Events calendar page should produce the 30 results I see in that ics file.

Does this help?

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Barry]

Hi Jeff,

I wanted to jump in and address a couple of things.

To the issue at hand: the main event views normally have an +Export Events button rather like the example Courtney shared earlier in the exchange. This links to an iCal feed which will indeed contain multiple events, if multiple upcoming events are available.

On your site, it appears that this link has been purposefully hidden via some custom CSS – possibly added via the Appearance ‣ Customize ‣ Additional CSS setting found in the admin environment – that looks like this:

.post-type-archive-tribe_events .tribe-events-button {
    display: none !important;
}

That is hiding that button, which is probably why you couldn’t find it and thought that Courtney was referring to a different iCal export link. The one you found, I believe, exists in the single event view and by design that will only ever contain one event.

If you prefer to keep the +Export Events button hidden from the main events view that’s fine and you can still access the feed via a URL like Courtney shared above. Note also that you can copy the link address and use this from within Google Calendar to import events en masse.

I hope that clarifies things with regards to the specific issue you flagged at the start of this exchange 🙂

What is the matter with you people?

I also wanted to touch on this and some other comments you’ve left here and in other topics you opened.

We understand you’re frustrated but, frankly, remarks like this are disrespectful and unhelpful. Our job is to help and that’s what we’re trying to do – I’m afraid that sometimes it takes a little back and forth to get to the bottom of things and an element of patience can be required.

Now, there are certainly areas where we can do better – and we are constantly evaluating ways to improve – but if you are fundamentally dissatisfied with our service (having reviewed your feedback and notes in other topics, it certainly seems that way) perhaps we should consider parting ways so you can re-invest in a new solution that more closely matches your requirements.

At this point, do you wish to receive a refund?

[Jeff]

Dear Barry

Thank you for finally getting to the bottom of the issue.

The link I was using is
http://www.sussexlocal.net/events/

which is a month view with a link to export events at the bottom. I therefore not unreasonably expected that to export a month’s events. It is not, as you state, a single event view.

This doesn’t take away the fact that Courtney took three attempts to grasp the issue at hand.

Now, the link that Courtney has supplied, which she says contains 30 events, is pretty useless for two reasons:

1. I have no idea how to reproduce that link, all it does is download me a file. I need this on a regular basis.
2. If she, or you, bothered to look at the site, you would find a few more than 30 events on it. There are currently 495. Yet she asks me if 30 is right. Why not take a look herself? With the time difference, I have lost another day on this by replying to something she should have already worked out.

So I ask you Barry, do you think you are giving good service here? Even now you haven’t bothered to really get to the bottom of the issue, as giving me a one-time download of 30 events when I have 495 on the site isn’t really going to solve my problem is it?

I ask you how is a paying customer supposed to react? I am not the only one who thinks your service is pretty poor. However for you to do the classic “if you don’t like it have a refund” doesn’t really cut it either, and I shall tell you why.

You come out on yur website with a bold statement – “Powerful. Easy to use. Supported”

I would say that at least two of these statements are untrue. But I and my developer relied upon them when making the purchase decision for our new website. I didn’t hesitate, I purchased the whole add on suite which i think came to around £500 or so. I expect there will be ongoing payments to you, (which, so far, I haven’t actually seen specified anywhere.)

For that payment I expected what was promised. But you can never really know how something is going to work out until it is installed and you are trying to get it to work. I can deal with it being complex, but what I cannot abide is a company which simply does not do what it says when it comes to support. It is very poor. Other plugins give excellent email support to premium customers and, allow for time differences as they realise they are selling worldwide.

We have a new website and, whilst no I don’t think you do deserve the money, you know full well that your offer of a refund is meaningless. We have a newly live site, we have spent a lot of time and effort preparing it and cannot now easily spend more time backtracking on the events module. We have moved on.

If you really were a customer-service centred company, you would say is Jeff I am sorry we have let you down, thank you for your business, let us grab hold of this and other issues properly and give you first class direct email/chat service to get you going. We then know that when it is configured, it is likely that you will then need less support and we will have a lifetime customer who pays us every year and recommends us.

No. Instead of that, you want to cut and run because i have complained, and this says more about you than anything. So please don’t come complaining to me about my attitude. How about looking at actually how you have handled just even this issue, and maybe take a view on how your service could be improved to everyone’s benefit?

You know my email address, but you won’t use it for support. Yet I note with interest that you don’t mind sending me loads of direct emails telling me how I can get 30% off the list price THAT I HAVE ONLY JUST PAID – I think one per day for the last week. And that also shows where your priorities lie.

[Barry]

Jeff,

Thanks for getting back to me 🙂

Let’s be clear first of all, though, that we don’t want to cut and run.

What we do want, given your level of dissatisfaction, is to provide you with the option to recover some of your investment so you can reinvest in a different solution, now or in the future. That doesn’t mean you suddenly need to pivot away from using our software which is already in place on your site – you can continue to use that for as long as you like.

It is, also, just an option. If you want to stick with us, great! Hopefully we can get this back on track.

With regards to marketing emails, please do feel free to opt out of the mailing list if you don’t want to receive these by using the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email.

I have no idea how to reproduce that link, all it does is download me a file. I need this on a regular basis.

I’m sorry this wasn’t clear … the +Export Events link that you have hidden is the source of those URLs. So you can either remove your custom CSS so it isn’t hidden, or you can simply reuse the URL Courtney shared.

The content of the file it provides (it is an .ics file, which can be imported into Google Calendar and other applications – and/or you can simply provide them with the URL directly) is updated dynamically and changes over time: it always reflects the current list of upcoming events.

If she, or you, bothered to look at the site, you would find a few more than 30 events on it. There are currently 495.

There does seem to have been some confusion stemming from the earlier responses – our apologies on that count. Let me try to clarify this point:

• By design, the number of events that are listed is not unlimited as for most websites generating a feed with hundreds of events would have a detrimental impact on site performance
• For list-like views (photo view, list view itself etc) the iCal URL by default will provide information about the next 30 upcoming events
• For month view, the iCal URL should contain data for all events that month

It is also possible to override the default of 30 events with a simple piece of custom code, which could be added either to a custom plugin (preferred) or else to your theme’s functions.php file:

add_filter( 'tribe_ical_feed_posts_per_page', function() {
    return 500;
} );

That code will enforce a new default maximum of upto 500 events for the list view iCal feed – you can of course adjust this up and down as needed. Again, be aware of the fact that trying to pack too many events into the feed could be a source of performance issues for your site (hence the safe default of 30 we have in place).

Further reading about our event export functionality can be found here and may be of interest to you or your developer.

[Jeff]

Barry thank you for your response.

OK I have now successfully imported into Google Calendar and found a tool to re-export to csv, which is actually what I need.

Sadly this has included the Venue but not the Organiser details. Does the Ical export not include these?

If not I suppose the only way will be to get a plugin developed which will do this, correct?

Jeff

[Barry]

Hi there Jeff,

The iCal feed does contain the venue address as well as the organizer name and email address for each event (where available). Here’s a slightly formatted example of how the data itself looks within the feed:

BEGIN:VEVENT
	DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20180212T114300
	DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20180215T221100
	DTSTAMP:20171130T173912
	CREATED:20171123T172036Z
	LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T172036Z
	UID:[email protected]
	SUMMARY:Test event
	DESCRIPTION:Test event description \n
	URL:http://dev.events.tribe/calendar/test-event/
	LOCATION:2204 Acacia Avenue\,Billington\,ABC\,AB1 1AB
	ORGANIZER;CN="Tom%20Thumb":MAILTO:[email protected]
END:VEVENT

Please note that the +Google Calendar button (found in single event pages) works differently and passes across a different range of data. For example, it does not include the organizer name/email address. If you’re importing from the iCal feed though that won’t be a problem in of itself, but I wanted to flag it.

Now, the important thing here is that once the data is imported to Google Calendar it is of course out of our hands. I believe that, currently, the organizer is not retained (in a sense, it’s replaced with the name of the calendar into which the feed has been imported).

The consequence of this as you have found is that when you pull the same data back out of Google Calendar, you aren’t guaranteed to get the same information that was originally supplied.

If not I suppose the only way will be to get a plugin developed which will do this, correct?

To get to the meat of your question, if what you’re really after here is a CSV export of event data then yes, developing a custom plugin is probably the fastest and most efficient way to do that and ensure that it contains all of the data you require.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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