ICS export and Outlook Issue

[wiscweb]

When we use the ics export for an event and import it into Outlook (Windows) the time is off by an hour. For instance a 9:00am start time will import into Outlook as a 10:00am start time. This only occurs in Outlook for Windows. Windows for Mac works as expected.

[Andras]

Hi wiscweb,

Thanks for reaching out!

Could you share with me the file you are importing and also name a sample event that has the issue?

To which version of outlook are you importing to?

Thanks and cheers,
Andras

[wiscweb]

This can be replicated with any event at https://wiscweb.wisc.edu/events/ and this occurs using Outlook for Windows 2016.

Thanks

Cathy

[Andras]

Hi Cathy,

Thanks for sharing that.

I would need two more things from you.

Can you please share your system information with me?

What are your timezone settings?

• WordPress timezone under Settings > General (screenshot)
• Events timezone handling under Events > Settings > General tab > Time Zone Settings section (screenshot)
• What is the timezone of the events? (screenshot)

What I see from the exported file is that the events are in the UTC+0 timezone.

Thanks and cheers,
Andras

[wiscweb]

Requested Files are attached

[Barry]

Hi @wiscweb,

Andras is out this week but I’d love to keep this conversation moving if possible.

When I look at your ICS feed I see that some events have a geographic timezone. Training – Introduction to Google Analytics on 26 March is a good example and is set to Chicago time, rather like in your screenshots – however many more events are set to use UTC+0, such as Training – WordPress Using the UW Theme on 3 May.

Those events (set to UTC+0) could be problematic and might result in off-by-one-hour errors when you import them. I realize you shared screenshots already, but can you double check that the timezone is correct for Training – WordPress Using the UW Theme and other events on your site?

Thanks!

[wiscweb]

The May 3rd event is set to UTC+0, which is odd. Why would this be happening when all of our settings are for Chicago timezone and we are not manually updating this.

Cathy

[Barry]

Hi Cathy,

If you’re sure there was no user error when the events were created, we’d need more information to figure out why they changed to UTC+0.

Before we look at that, though, can you confirm you are able to correct any events that were previously set to UTC+0 by changing them to Chicago time – and does that resolve the problem with the iCal feed? Or, can you try this for at least the event taking place on 3 May and let me know if the offset-by-one-hour problem is then resolved for that specific event?

Once we’re happy we have a solution for that part of the problem, we can investigate why events were incorrectly set to UTC+0 🙂

[wiscweb]

I am certain that no one selected the UTC+0. I updated this setting in the May 3rd event and used the iCal export option to import it into a Outlook 2016 and the date is still off. Still 1 hour late.

Cathy

[Barry]

Hi Cathy,

So right now I see two events on 3rd May:

• Training – WordPress Using the UW Theme (now showing as taking place in Chicago time – thanks!)
• WordPress Open Lab Time (still UTC+0)

I don’t have Outlook 2016 available to test with and not many team members do, but I can say that the feed imports correctly into Google Calendar and other well established calendar apps. Nor do I see any obvious errors in the iCal feed.

• Is your PC set to a specific timezone, do you know which if so?
• Can Outlook 2016 be configured to always use a specific timezone, again do you know which if so?
• Given the iCal feed seems correct to us and it works appropriately with other calendar tools, is this something where you could reach out to the support team for that other product?

[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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