Home › Forums › Calendar Products › Events Calendar PRO › The iCal importer is exporting events to our Outlook calendar in Eastern Time.
- This topic has 14 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 9 months ago by Jennifer.
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September 15, 2017 at 11:05 am #1349918Kristen CullottaParticipant
When we attempt to export individual or full calendar events through iCal, it does not export in the correct time zone. It is exporting as Eastern time when it should be exporting in Central time. This issue affects all three of our sites.
- This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Kristen Cullotta.
- This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Courtney.
September 15, 2017 at 12:18 pm #1349947CourtneyMemberHi Grace
I’d like to first clarify what might be happening. I see you posted this in the iCal Importer forum. We discontinued this product a year ago and replaced it with a more powerful option, Event Aggregator. However, I don’t see a license for either of those products on your account.
Next up – can you confirm what timezone your website is set to? Settings ยป General ยป Timezone.
Thanks
Courtney ๐September 15, 2017 at 1:40 pm #1349981Kristen CullottaParticipantHi Courtney,
I selected the wrong forum. The issue we’re having is with the Event Calendar.
The timezone option on our website’s event settings is set to: Use the local timezones for each event.
September 18, 2017 at 9:24 am #1350733CourtneyMemberHi Grace
Not a problem, I can move this over to the EA forum.
Can you swap one of the sites to Central time and see if that resolves the issue?
Thanks
Courtney ๐September 18, 2017 at 11:29 am #1350802Kristen CullottaParticipantThe timezones on the website are all set to Central time, but we are still having an issue when exporting the individual and full calendar events through iCal. They are all exporting in Eastern Time.
September 19, 2017 at 5:26 am #1351054CourtneyMemberHi Grace
I reviewed your System Info and it looks like there may be a bug in your version of Event Aggregator because plugins have not been updated on your site. Please update your plugins to see if that resolves the issue.
Thanks
Courtney ๐September 21, 2017 at 1:47 pm #1353043Kristen CullottaParticipantThe plugins have been updated recently, but we do not use Event Aggregator. We use The Events Calendar and The Events Calendar PRO plugins.
September 22, 2017 at 7:45 am #1353416CourtneyMemberHi Grace
Can you tell me which way you are using to export? Is it the front end export button on your calendar?
Thanks
Courtney ๐September 26, 2017 at 7:16 am #1354908Kristen CullottaParticipantHello,
We are using both the export button on the full calendar view as well as the iCal export button on individual events. I’ve attached screen captures for reference. The Google export button is exporting in the appropriate timezone on our Google Calendar.
September 27, 2017 at 1:51 pm #1355790CourtneyMemberHey Grace
I exported in all 3 methods you mentioned. Each of them led to the expected result displaying the times correctly. I am in EDT, but all options provided put a disclaimer that the time zone was adjusted.
Are you able to test importing to Outlook with a different computer?
Thanks
Courtney ๐September 28, 2017 at 7:25 am #1356080Kristen CullottaParticipantHello,
We’ve tested this on several computers and we are all having the same issue.
October 2, 2017 at 1:51 pm #1357969CourtneyMemberHi Grace
I was able to get someone with Outlook to give this a test. It looks like Microsoft isn’t reading some of the data correctly upon import. The easier solution here might be to go to your WordPress dashboard – Settings ยป General and change the timezone from Chicago to UTC. However, this will need attention when daylight saving time changes. https://24timezones.com/world_directory/current_chicago_time.php
Please let me know if this method works. The other solution involves manually editing that export file before bringing it into Outlook.
Thanks
Courtney ๐October 3, 2017 at 6:43 am #1358259Kristen CullottaParticipantHi Courtney, I changed our website settings to UTC and the issue is still persisting. It’s been two weeks since we’ve placed our initial ticket for this export issue and there hasn’t been a resolution yet.
October 3, 2017 at 4:58 pm #1358625CourtneyMemberHey there Grace
I’m sorry to say I don’t have a sudden solution to offer on this. It may resolve itself with the daylight saving time change coming up in a few weeks. This is really a 2-fold issue. We’re sending all the correct data for calendars such as the Mac default calendar and Google Calendar to import this correctly, so Microsoft could do better at receiving the information that is in the proper format. Likewise, on our end, I’ve suggested that we add one extra string of details so that Microsoft definitely has what they want for imports.
As this is the first we’ve encountered this issues, I don’t expect a super fast solution either way unfortunately.
However, what I can suggest is a workaround. When you export your file, you can manually add that one string of data, save the file, and share that with those needing to import it. I know this is far from ideal, but it will achieve the import result you want.
You’ll notice in the code below we are adding in VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Chicago X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Chicago BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:CDT DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0600 TZNAME:CST DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE
We’ve tested this method and have successfully imported your files into Outlook in the proper time zone this way.
Please let me know how it works for you.
Thanks
Courtney ๐July 3, 2019 at 3:11 pm #1830354JenniferKeymasterHello,
Just wanted to let you know that a new maintenance release is out, including a fix for this issue.
Find out more about this release โ https://theeventscalendar.com/announcing-the-events-calendar-4-9-4-and-events-calendar-pro-4-7-4/
Please try updating and let us know if you are experiencing any further issues. As always, we recommend running updates on yourย staging siteย before doing so on your live site, just to be on the safe side.
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