iCal Imported everything an hour early Starting on November 6th (Daylight Saving

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

I just did an import from iCal and everything from November 6th on (which is Daylight Savings), has imported as an hour earlier.

Please let me know what is needed. I do not have time to go into each individual event and change the time.

Thank you!

[Andras]

Hi templesinai,

Thanks for reaching out and I’m really sorry you have an issue with the DST when importing events.

As a first I would like to ask you to share with me your system information. Here’s a handy guide on how you can do that. (There is the super easy way, and the easy way. 🙂 )

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

Usually it has to do with the timezone settings of your WordPress site under Settings > General. You can have it set UTC based or location based. I don’t see at the moment what your setting is, but try the other one. 🙂

The other thing you can try is importing with Event Aggregator if you have already updated to The Events Calendar 4.3+. Since you have a valid license for iCal importer you were granted a license for Events Aggregator for the same time period as well. You should be able to find it here.

(If you already have version 4.3 or above – very much recommended – the you will find Events Aggregator under Events > Import, while the “old” iCal importer will be under Events > Legacy import.)

Please also share with me the link to the feed that you try to import. Once I have your system information and the feed I should be able to help you further if the issue is not solved yet with the above.

I hope this helps and I’m looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,
Andras

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

Hi Andras,

I followed all of your recommendations:
– Updated the Events Calendar to current version 4.3.2. I also updated the ical Importer from 4.2.5 to 4.2.5.1
– Our system information is now shared with you
– Our timezone was set to local New York. I changed it to UTC based but it did not change the event times. So I put it back to the local time.

Please note that calendar events that were added manually have the correct time. Only those imported for November have the wrong time, which is one hour early starting on November 7. Here is a link to the file I imported: http://www.tsinai.com/November2016.ics

If I import this data again using Event Aggregator will I have duplicate events, or will it update the events that were already imported?

Thanks for your help.

[Andras]

Hello again,

Thanks for sharing the thread. Please give me some time to look into this.

If you import the data again, then the events should be updated. You shouldn’t get duplicates.

Cheers,
Andras

[Andras]

One more thing, simply changing your timezone will not change event times. Please check what happens if you import the events if you set it to the other timezone setting.

Thanks,

Andras

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

Should we try the import with the changed timezone using iCal importer as before, or should we stop using iCal importer and install Event Aggregator? I just logged into our site and it looks like we would need to purchase Event Aggregator for $89. Is that right?

[Andras]

Hi templesinai,

Hope you had a great weekend!

Yes, what I meant is to try importing the events with the changed timezone. For that you will need to delete all your events first, then remove them from Trash, and then purge them with the help of this snippet / plugin:

https://gist.github.com/andrasguseo/5f12965ce5a92927842026231b37e339

Then you can try to re-import.

And I’m happy you brought up Event Aggregator. You should try to run the import with that, rather than with iCal importer.

Since you have a valid license for iCal improrter you were given a free license for EA as well, for the same time period. You should be able to find your EA license key in your account under License keys (or just click here).

Give it a try and let me know if that solves it.

Cheers,
Andras

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

I don’t understand what to do with the snippet/plugin – all I see is a code snippet, not an option to download a plugin. What do I do with this code – add it to the events calendar plugin? If yes, do I add it to the Events Calendar or PRO version?

I don’t see where to get Event Aggregator without purchasing it. When logged into our Tribe account, on our plugins page it is not available for download with the other premium plugins.

Finally, before you wrote that if we imported again it would update the same events and we would not have duplicates. Now you wrote that it is important to delete events first before re-importing. I would like to know going forward if we should always delete before re-importing events to avoid duplicate events?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Marcy Lyons Gohen.

[Andras]

Hi templesinai,

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear in my previous post. Let me clarify your questions.

 

I don’t understand what to do with the snippet/plugin – all I see is a code snippet, not an option to download a plugin. What do I do with this code – add it to the events calendar plugin? If yes, do I add it to the Events Calendar or PRO version?

Copy the code and paste it into your theme’s functions.php file. You can do this under Appearance > Editor > choose functions.php on the right.

Note, you will not need the opening < ? php from the beginning of the snippet.

 

I don’t see where to get Event Aggregator without purchasing it. When logged into our Tribe account, on our plugins page it is not available for download with the other premium plugins.

You don’t need to download Event Aggregator, it is baked into the core The Events Calendar plugin. To unlock full functionality you need to enter your EA license key under Events > Settings > License Keys.

Since you have a valid license for iCal improrter you were given a free license for EA as well, for the same time period. You should be able to <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>find your EA license key in your account under License keys</span> (or just click here).

 

Finally, before you wrote that if we imported again it would update the same events and we would not have duplicates. Now you wrote that it is important to delete events first before re-importing. I would like to know going forward if we should always delete before re-importing events to avoid duplicate events?

If the initial import is good and no system settings are changed, then re-importing (or scheduled import) should simply update the events.

However, in this case it seems there might have been an issue with the initial import, that is why it is best to delete the events first to start with a clean slate.

 

I hope this clarifies. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Cheers,
Andras

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

Thank you – this was very helpful. I have activated Event Aggregator and added the purge snippet to functions.php and tested that it works.

I will let you know after we delete the events and test importing with Event Aggregator.

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

We ran a test today. I deleted 2 days of events and tried to import an .ics file exported from Outlook with events for those 2 days. I used Event Aggregator (iCal importer is deactivated). After choosing the file and clicking Preview Event Aggregator reported this error: “There was an error fetching the results from your import: There may be an issue with the Event Aggregator server. Please try your import again later.”

What next?

[Andras]

Hello,

Sorry to hear about that. It might be that our server was having a peak.

Did you try again a bit later, did you still have the error?

Could you send me a screenshot of the Event Aggregator status? You can find it under Events > Help at the bottom, and looks like this:

Thanks,

Andras

[Marcy Lyons Gohen]

Yes, I tried later yesterday and just tried again today. All 3 times the same error.

We are testing this with an import of just 2 days. I included the .ics file below. I’ve also included the screenshot you asked for below.

I previously shared our system information with you so perhaps that will help to troubleshoot this.

Thanks for your help.

[Andras]

Hi templesinai,

Thanks for sharing this. Please give me some time to check this out.

Thanks for your patience!

Andras

[Andras]

Hello again,

There was a small issue with the EA service, which was now fixed.

Could you please check again the import?

Also please check and confirm back to me if the start and end times of the events are correct when imported.

Thanks and cheers,
Andras

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