iCal alters end date on one specific event from Google Calendar

[Carla Dagnone]

Hello,

I agree this is a very strange behavior but please trust me for a minute :

I import with no problem a Google Calendar into our WordPress Events Calendar , excepted for one event (out of 180+) .

On Google, this event is entered as “All Day Event” : Mon, August 3, 12am – Tue, August 4, 12am
So it is a one-day event. It displays properly in Google.

When I import it in WP, the start date is correct and it is seen as an All-day-Event BUT the end day is changed to the current date! ( as noticed over the last two days – yesterday it turned into a two-day event / today into a 3-day event )

Thinking that the wp_post for this event was somehow corrupted, I followed the helpful instructions given by Brook in a previous ticket and I deleted the database record for this event so it could be re-imported. I was able to re-import it but the problem remains : it is imported as a muti-day event.

A few notes:
a) when I import the Google calendar into my personal calendar , everything looks fine.
b) we run the free version of Events Calendar (with the paid version of iCal Import ) .
c) the ics record is:

————————————————————————–
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20150803
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20150804
DTSTAMP:20150805T155756Z
UID:[email protected]
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;CN=Resurr
ection School;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:rescatholicschool.org_ngm7ord3nqbsitilj
[email protected]
CREATED:20150521T212015Z
DESCRIPTION:
LAST-MODIFIED:20150802T200727Z
LOCATION:
SEQUENCE:0
STATUS:CONFIRMED
SUMMARY:School Office Opens
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:AUDIO
TRIGGER:-PT15H
X-WR-ALARMUID:C7EC8C0F-34AC-4D10-B8A6-25733EFFC7A1
UID:C7EC8C0F-34AC-4D10-B8A6-25733EFFC7A1
ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Basso
X-APPLE-DEFAULT-ALARM:TRUE
ACKNOWLEDGED:20150802T200725Z
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
————————————————————————————

I am running out of ideas to fix this problem . Of course I can delete the event in the the WP admin panel so it is never re-imported by the plugin (this event is in the past) BUT I would also like to understand what the issue is so it does not repeat.

Any suggestion would be highly appreciated!

Thanks,

Lisianne / Carla

[George]

Hey Lisianne and Carla,

I’m very sorry you’re having trouble with this issue. There are a few different things worth touching on here:

1. First of all, thank you for your patience as we investigate this issue. You mention having already opened another thread and such, so I’m sorry that this has taken a bit of time to work through! It is indeed an odd issue and your patience means a lot 🙂

2. After importing that problematic “All Day Event”, even though its end date is imported incorrectly, are you able to adjust the end date manually in the backend edit screen for that event and then save the event? This should set the end date to what you want, and should not change thereafter – I only mention this because if you are able to do this, then while not ideal you can at least have this option so that your events are usable in the meantime while we investigate these issues. Just an idea, I hope you’re able to manually adjust the end dates and therefore can use the events on your site after you import them.

3. I appreciate you sharing the ICS record here – however, it is not a complete .ics file. Perhaps you spared us the whole .ics file because of its length or something, but would you be able to upload the entire .ics file to something like Dropbox or http://ge.tt and then share a link to that download? We’ll download the full file and test it out.

4. Finally, for now, can you clarify each of these details:
a) What version of The Events Calendar is active on your site?
b) What version of the iCal Importer is active on your site?
c) What version of WordPress is your site running?

Thank you Lisianne and Carla!

[Carla Dagnone]

Hi George,

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately, your suggestion#2 does not work : when I alter the date manually in the WP admin, the next import *resets* it to the current day! I know it sounds crazy but I just tried again and now (Aug 6) the event shows as starting Aug 3 and ending Aug 6!

To answer your questions :
a) Events Calendar : 3.11.2
b) iCal : 3.11
c) WordPress : 4.2.4

Link to the ics file : http://ge.tt/7GOyAlL2/v/0?c

Please let me know if you find anything or if you need any other info.

Thanks,

Lisanne and Carla.

[George]

Hey Lisanne and Carla,

Thank you for your patience with this issue. I will investigate this a bit more closely and try to create your problems. In the meantime, can you try deactivating other plugins on your site and activating a default theme like Twenty Fourteen or something, and then running another test import?

If you can do this – does the same problem persist?

Thank you! Stay tuned.

— George

[Carla Dagnone]

Hello,
Yes the same problem occurs when I run the Twenty Fifteen theme with no plugin .

You an see a screenshot at http://ge.tt/1cD8DqL2/v/0?c
Notice how the event “School opens” start on the 3rd and end on the day I run the import ( the 7th)

I think my installation is totally up-to-date and we have eliminated all other elements. I would appreciate if you could import the file and tell me if you duplicate the problem.

Many Thanks,

Lisianne

[George]

Hey Lisianne,

Thank you so much for your patience with this issue. We did test this file and are unfortunately getting the dates to import properly!

I’m really sorry about the frustration here…it’s an odd issue indeed. We’re scratching our heads and trying to figure out the problem, I wish I had something more substantive to share in this update but just wanted to let you know that we have tested the file and are investigating this.

Thank you for your patience with all this – please share any further thoughts you have on this matter and let us know if you have any other questions in the meantime.

– George

[Carla Dagnone]

Hey George,

This is really really strange …There must be something on our side but I don’t know where else to look.
The latest tests I run are even more puzzling :

1) we deleted the event in Google calendar
2) deleted (the hard/complete way) the event in Wodpress
3) run an import – obviously the event did not show
4) re-created the event in Google
5) run an import ..and guess what …
6) same problem with the same event (or rather the newly created event) . The start date is correct. The end is *always* altered to the current day!

The workaround is to change the start date of the import but an unexplained problem is not exactly reassuring. By any chance, is there a way to turn on a trace?

Thank you!

Lisianne

[George]

Damn, I’m really sorry about this Lisianne, and puzzled by it too!

You said this in your reply:

an unexplained problem is not exactly reassuring

And I could not agree more – I’m really sorry that “unexplained problem” is where we currently are on this, please be assured that we’re scratching our heads and are trying to replicate and resolve this!

Doing a backtrace is possible, but what might be just as (if not more) helpful and a bit easier to implement would be to simply see if any errors pop up during a test import if you head to your site’s wp-config.php file and change this line of code:

define('WP_DEBUG', false);

to this:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

That will display PHP errors if any exist, which might be quite useful here.

Beyond that, if possible the only other step that comes to mind would be spinning up another fresh, all-new WordPress installation on another site for testing purposes, then trying the import from scratch. I’m not suggesting you do this, just noting it could be another valuable test to have under our belt.

Thank you so much for your patience and persistence here. We’ll be discussing this bug on our support meeting today and hopefully something fruitful arises from that.

One last thing for now: there’s an event in your file called “School Office Closed” – does this event, or any other all-day event for that matter, import fine for you? Is it just that one “School Office Opens” event, or does literally every all-day event import incorrectly for you?

Thank you!
George

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

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