Issue importing events to outlook and DST

[Stephen Gasser]

I’m running into an issue where if I import events from March into my Outlook events before March 13th show the correct time but all events after March 13th are showing as one hour later. I pulled the raw ics file and a sample event has a start date / time of DTSTART;TZID=”America/Chicago”:20160315T070000 which is what it should me 2016-03-15 7:00 am but when that event is imported to Outlook it shows up as 2016-03-15 8:00. How can I prevent this behavior? I checked my local computer timezone and outlok timezone are both set for UTC -6 Central Time US & Canada

[Josh]

Hey Stephen,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

It looks like Outlook is modifying the import time based on Daylight Savings Time which is set to occur March 13 this year. If that is the case, I’m honestly not sure what our options are for addressing an issue such as this. Looping in one of our developers to get further feedback on this one.

Thanks!

[Stephen Gasser]

Thanks that’s exactly what I’m seeing as well. Just curious if there is a workaround I can give my client or if the issue simply lies with Outlook and is out of our control. Look forward to hearing more.

[Josh]

Hey,

I reached out to another team member for feedback here and it sounds like he may be onto something:

“one thought is he notes:

I checked my local computer timezone and outlok timezone are both set for UTC -6

the thing is, UTC-6 is UTC-6, whereas a regional flavour like America/Chicago can conceivably by either UTC-6 or UTC-5 (or whatever way round it is) depending on DST

perhaps something along those lines is causing the discrepancy?”

With this, does the issue persist if you switch the timezone on your WordPress installation to the UTC format rather than the “Chicago” setting?

Thanks!

[Stephen Gasser]

Ok I’ll experiment with that, but won’t switching to UTC -6 mess with things like Publish Date/Time once DST kicks in? I think that is why we choose to go with the America/Chicago timezone setting in the past.

[Stephen Gasser]

I tired setting it to TUC -5 and I’m still getting the time shift when importing.

[Josh]

Hey Stephen,

To clarify, it looks like you originally mentioned that your local and Outlook settings were set to UTC-6. For your previous response did you test UTC-5 or did you intend to write “6” there?

Thanks!

[Jennifer McDonald]

I am having this same issue. When you export from the button on the calendar page and import into Outlook the times are not correct, it’s off by an hour for the months after daylight savings time.

We have tried multiple things to try to fix including your suggestions above.

Any other thoughts?

[Josh]

Hey Jennifer,

Thanks for following up with us here. I’ll reach out to the rest of the team today to get more specific testing done here. Definitely seems like a strange issue and may be a setting within Outlook and the way that it interprets the time with importing.

Thanks!

[Josh]

Hey,

Doing some additional research, can you check the “Adjust daylight savings time” check box and see what the current status is and whether or not modifying that setting makes a difference here? These directions are from within Outlook.

• On the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click Calendar Options.
• Click Time Zone.
• Click to select the Adjust daylight saving time check box.
• Click OK three times.
• Exit Outlook.
• Restart Outlook, and then follow steps 1 through 3 to verify that the Adjust daylight saving time check box is still selected.

Let me know if this changes anything.

Thanks!

[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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