The iCal importer is exporting events to our Outlook calendar in Eastern Time.

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  • #1349918
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    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.
    #1349947
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1349981
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    Hi 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.

    #1350733
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1350802
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    The 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.

    #1351054
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1353043
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    The plugins have been updated recently, but we do not use Event Aggregator. We use The Events Calendar and The Events Calendar PRO plugins.

    #1353416
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi Grace

    Can you tell me which way you are using to export? Is it the front end export button on your calendar?

    Thanks
    Courtney ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1354908
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    Hello,

    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.

    #1355790
    Courtney
    Member

    Hey 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1356080
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    Hello,

    We’ve tested this on several computers and we are all having the same issue.

    #1357969
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1358259
    Kristen Cullotta
    Participant

    Hi 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.

    #1358625
    Courtney
    Member

    Hey 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

    #1830354
    Jennifer
    Keymaster

    Hello,

    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.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
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