Outlook does not take daylight saving information from ICAL Export file

[Christian]

Hi,

We are using the event calendar, event calendar pro and filter bar plugins for website. Website is in Europe/Berlin timezone. When ical file is exported and imported into outlook, the time information is shown incorrectly. It shows one hour ahead of actual time, it means it does not contain daylight saving information. It works perfect in thunderbird and google calendar.

We tried ical file from your demo calendar too and it gives same issue.
Example: Your ical file is in America/Los Angles timezone our outlook is in Europe/Berlin timezone, so Berlin is 9 hrs ahead than Los Angles. But event is exported with 10 hrs difference.

We tried to export one of thunderbird event ical file and found that there are some additional header about daylight saving in ical file and due to this thunderbird file is successfully imported into outlook and shows correct time. We add same information in the event calendar ical php file and it works fine in outlook too.

Here is the solution

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Europe/Berlin
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZNAME:CEST
DTSTART:19700329T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:CET
DTSTART:19701025T030000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE

We know that this is temporary solution, so we would like to find proper solution with the help of you.

[Cliff]

Hi Saloni.

We have a bug logged internally regarding DST for recurring events, which sounds like your issue.

I’ll mark this ticket as Pending Fix, which means this thread should receive a reply once the applicable fix has been released. I cannot guarantee when it will be fixed as it’s in the development team’s hands now. They need to assign it, code it, test it, and schedule it for release.

I apologize for this issue and appreciate your understanding and patience.

[Christian]

Hi Cliff

Thank you for the reply.

But I would like to tell you that this issue is not only related to recurring event but it is still there for single event.

[Cliff]

Saloni, please further detail your experience with DST regarding non-recurring/single events so I can try to reproduce the issue.

(Please note that your single event’s timezone or at least your WordPress timezone should be set to a location-specific timezone. If you set it to a manual UTC offset, DST won’t be recognized.)

[Christian]

Hi Cliff

Website has Europe/Berlin timezone.
In Events Settings->Timezone settings is set to Use the sitewide timezone everywhere.

I have also attached sample ical file. When this file is imported into Thunderbird it shows correct time 7th October 1pm but when this file is imported into Outlook it shows 7th October 2pm. It seems outlook does not take daylight information.

If I put following code into ical file then it works fine into Outlook. Outlook needs special description for timezone.

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Europe/Berlin
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZNAME:CEST
DTSTART:19700329T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:CET
DTSTART:19701025T030000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE

[Cliff]

 

I understand you’re suggesting we include an explicit statement of DST/Standard times in our own iCal export to help Outlook and all others better know how to properly handle the times.

Out of curiosity, do you know why Outlook requires a different timezone format or where its standards/requirements are documented?

FYI: the test.ics file you attached does not validate, per http://severinghaus.org/projects/icv/. It’s always best to be working with a file that validates.

[Christian]

Hi Cliff,

Sorry but I don’t know why outlook needs additional header for DST. I just exported one event from thunderbird and imported into outlook and it was running fine and then I found above solution in thunderbird ics file. I put same in the event calendar ical.php file and then it was also working in outlook.

FYI: yes test.ics file is not validated per http://severinghaus.org/projects/icv/ but also any ical file from your demo website is not validated per this website.

[Cliff]

Saloni, I previously logged our own calendar’s validation issue, but thanks for pointing it out.

I’ve added your findings to our bug ticket for the DST issue.

[Geoff]

Hi Saloni.

We wanted to let you know that we were unable to get a fix for this issue in the latest maintenance release that we shipped this week. Our team did spend a considerable amount of time looking into the issue of Daylight Savings Time not being taken into consideration with an iCal file export but were unable to replicate the issue after many repeated and individual tests.

We are still interested in pinpointing why the behavior exists in this case but it will take some more digging to properly diagnose whether the issue exists in all cases before we can plan a release for a solution.

In the meantime, we would really appreciate it if you would update your plugins to the latest versions and test whether the issue persists. If it does, then it would be great if you could run through the steps outlined in this guide and let us know if you notice and difference in behavior when your site (or a separate test site, ideally) is in a default WordPress environment.

Thanks so much for bearing with us while we work on this together.

Geoff

[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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