Line breaks in event description lost in ical file for Outlook subscribers

[Matt]

I’m not sure what the source of this problem is, but when I subscribe to my events calendar using the ical address in Outlook via the Internet Calendar option, the line breaks in my event description are lost; all the text just flows together. I tried several ways to fix this (adding break tags, using special plugins) but the visual editor of WordPress seems to strip these out when updating, which is probably the root of the problem.

Everything looks good on the website, but I’d like the ical file to reflect the breaks in my description–to reflect the breaks in my Outlook calendar. Do you have any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks!

[Andy Fragen]

This is actually done on purpose, line 251 of events-calendar-pro.php

We’ll have to wait for a Dev to comment on whether this should behavior should change.

[Joyce Grace]

Hello R M and Andy,

This is a good question, let me find out more about it. I’ll get back to you soon – thanks for your patience!

Joyce

[Joyce Grace]

Hello R M – do you by any chance have the CSV Importer installed? Can you send me screenshots of what is happening with your formatting so I can show the devs?
Thanks!

[Joyce Grace]

By the way you can use droplr to post the screenshots 🙂

[Matt]

Andy and Joyce: Thanks for your replies. To answer your question, no, I don’t have the CSV importer installed. Thanks for the lead on droplr–what a great tool!

The calendar is public, so I’ll just direct you there.

Here’s the events calendar URL:
http://commons.lander.edu/kb/events/

Here’s an example event:
http://commons.lander.edu/kb/event/how-to-construct-a-syllabus/

Everything displays as it should on the website: This event shows some bold formatting around “PRESENTERS” and a bulleted list item along with some extra line breaks.

However, the ical version does not preserve any of the line breaks. I’m ok with the plain text version (don’t need html tags), but would like line breaks to be preserved, if possible.

Event as it appears in Outlook:
http://d.pr/i/OkhU

Here are the instructions I published for our faculty members to subscribe to this calender via Outlook:
http://commons.lander.edu/kb/add-knowledgebase-events-to-outlook/

Thanks for looking into this.

[Joyce Grace]

Hello Matt, I’ve actually never seen a request like this before – but I’m new here, so hey, what do I know!

I think though, that based on what you’re trying to do, perhaps the CSV importer would work for you? It is in Beta right now, so we can’t guarantee it will work beautifully, but if you write me at pro /at/ tri.be I can get you a copy and you can see if that helps? It should help you add the events to an iCal or Google calendar.

In the mean time, I’ll also ask if this is intended behaviour.

Thanks for your patience!

[Matt]

Joyce,

Thanks for checking back on this. I’m interested in using Outlook to subscribe to a web calendar. I can do it, but the content pulled from the server does not preserve the line breaks. It’s a workable solution, just not very pretty. I know it’s possible for other subscribed calendars (such as Google Calendars) to preserve the breaks so I thought I’d ask if there was a way to do so with Events Calendar Pro.

To answer your question, no, I’m not interested in any import options, such as a CSV import (I can import the iCal file) because importing is a one-time operation that won’t work well for calendars that change often. Hope that helps.

Matt

[Andy Fragen]

Matt, I am loathe to recommend changes to the core files as there is great potential to screw things up requiring a reinstallation. That being said. You can try this.
Line 351 is as follows:

$description = preg_replace( “/[\n\t\r]/”, ‘ ‘, strip_tags( $eventPost->post_content ) );

comment it out and add the following in it’s place.

$description = strip_tags( $eventPost->post_content );

Let us know if that works for you.

[Andy Fragen]

BTW, I had a previous typo in describing the line number. It is line 351.

[Joyce Grace]

Hello Andy and Matt. I’m sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I’ve logged this as an issue for our developers to look at and will try to bug them to get you a response soon! Sorry I can’t be of much help 🙁

[Joyce Grace]

Just a little update, our developers are looking at it now and trying to find out if it was designed like that to solve another issue, or if it can just be changed in a future release as per Andy’s suggestion. Will keep you posted!

[Matt]

I just tried the Line 351 mod, per Andy’s suggestion, but nothing changed. I deleted and resubscribed to the calendar in case anything was cached, but still no difference with regard to line breaks.

Thanks for the suggestion though. Much appreciated.

Matt

[Andy Fragen]

Try this.

$description = $eventPost->post_content;

It’s possible the strip_tags was also removing stuff.

[Joyce Grace]

I have communicated this to the dev team!

[Author]

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