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In searching the forum, I am finding a lot of reports of this, so I understand I’m not alone with this experience.
We are consistently seeing the ical importer create new events on every import for calendars, regardless of how we have set the import.
Here are 2 URLs of the same event, one imported on March 31, the other on April 6 (we had turned off the ical importer when we first saw this behavior, and turned it back on to re-test):
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/event/softball-entry-deadline/
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/event/softball-entry-deadline-2/The calendar that these are imported from:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/7357k65seetlltq4b7ochq0ckc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.icsOur quantity of calendar events has swollen to 3,700+, I understand we have a lot of work ahead of us to delete events as there is no easy way to undo the problematic duplicate imports.
What fixes are on the way for this? We understandably cannot use this ical importer for our website as long as it recreates all of the events every time it imports.
Good evening Mike and welcome to the Events Calendar Support forum!
Thank you for reaching out to us.
We are sorry to hear about the duplicate events creeping up while using our iCal importer, especially to that level. This must be terrible!
I would love to help you with this topic.You are right, some of our customers have been experiencing this issue. However, even when the symptoms are similar, the causes can vary greatly. For that reason, I would like to get the ball rolling to find out why that is the case for you specifically.
With that in mind, I went ahead and tried the gCal link you have provided (which actually doesn’t bring me to the calendar, but rather downloads a .ics file).
I believe I have found the cause of your duplicates. I have:
- Used the gCal link twice in a row (downloaded 2 .ics files)
- Opened both of them in a text editor and compared them
For every single event, the timestamp changes each time you click on the link, which in turn fools the plugin into perceiving them as different events.
I do not have an immediate fix for this, but I will definitely open a bug ticket for it immediately and see if I can find a workaround.
Thank you for your understanding,
Geoff B.
Hi Geoff,
This is helpful, and sounds like it does identify why we are seeing duplicate events on subsequent imports.
Is there a better link we should be using to import Google Calendars in particular?
Kind regards,
Mike
Hey Mike,
That is a great question.
Full disclosure, currently, this is a top priority for our Dev team (to try to see if this is generalized and how we can find a workaround for it).
As far as I know, you are simply using the public link provided by Google Calendar, could you confirm ?
At the present time I am unaware of a different type of link that would be available, so unfortunately, the only thing to do is to let our Dev work their magic as fast as they can.I apologize for all the inconvenience this is causing.
Hang in there, I will relay their findings as soon as I have them.
Geoff B.
As far as I know, you are simply using the public link provided by Google Calendar, could you confirm ?
Correct— We have calendars via Google Apps for Education that are made available to the public via their sharing settings, here is one such calendar embedded in an iframe on our public website:
We then go to ‘calendar settings’ for the named calendar, and choose the ICAL web address from the Calendar Address section. I can share more of these calendar URLs if that will help with testing (some are empty unless the importer is set to import past events):
Group Exercise – https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/umcrec%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics
Intramurals- https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/7357k65seetlltq4b7ochq0ckc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Kids and Family – https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/hlnnufqgqtjmum8j7rb3bagm7o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Maine Bound – https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/b1r1vmcqv7th4m31aam09ukps8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Public Skate -https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/b1r1vmcqv7th4m31aam09ukps8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Session-Based Fitness – https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/fbcmcak43k6bklsj0gd602k768%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Special Events – https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/4hpq8ap5ogu6roiv1oisilg0pg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Looking at the category pages on our website, it looks like it is the Intramurals calendar that is repeating, and the others are not.
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/events/category/group-exercise/month/
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/events/category/kids-and-family/month/
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/events/category/maine-bound/month/
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/events/category/public-skate/month/
https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/events/category/session-based-fitness/month/I believe the large quantity of events is not actually duplicates but rather events going back to 2013. Does “import all” pull all events in the ical file, or all events that show up based on the original query (setting what date to start finding events)?
A venue is duplicating as well, with the group exercise category. An example: https://umaine.edu/campusrecreation/venue/free-this-week-only-57/
Note, the “FREE this week only)” is actually what is appearing within the event location field: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?eid=dGN1dDliZTU0cWZvZ2RrbG1jYmtlY2tnM2MgdW1jcmVjQG0&ctz=America/New_York&sf=true&output=xml#eventpage_6
Most of these I checked had no upcoming events.
Hi again Mike,
Wow, this is super useful!
Thank you for providing us with more info. It will totally help us figure things out faster.
Have a good week-end,
Geoff B.
Have a great vacation Mike,
Hopefully, Dev will have made some progress on the topic when you return 🙂
Best regards,
Geoff B.
Hi Geoff,
I have returned from vacation, any updates on this issue? I see that Events Calendar Pro was updated on 4/11, but the ical importer is still at the version we are using.
Good evening Mike,
Welcome back and I hope you had a good vacation.
Actually, we are now up to 4.1.2 🙂Dev is still working extra hard on packaging a Maintenance (bug fix) release that is especially geared towards the iCal importer. It’s coming very soon, so stay tuned!
Have a great day!
Geoff B.
Hi there,
Just wanted to inform that maintenance release 4.1.3 is out. The update includes a fix for this issue.
Please update the plugins to the latest version and re-test to see if the fix works for you.
Best,
Nico
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