Times wrong after ical import

[aebrown]

Here's what I'm doing:
1) Export iCal file from LUWS (name the file "Stake Calendar").
2) Open Stake Calendar in Excel.
3) See below...I've tried variations of deleting lines 5, 6, and 22; or renaming line 6 to "Australia/Sydney".
4) Import the calendar into my Google calendar.

Nothing is working for me. Google gives me error: "Failed to import events: Unable to process your iCal/CSV file. The file is not properly formatted."

I'm curious why you are opening the calendar into Excel (step 2 above). The iCal file is a text file, not particularly friendly to Excel. If you had saved it as a CSV file, I might be able to understand why you would import it into Excel, but with iCal, that makes no sense to me.

I simply did steps 1 and 4 (export the iCal file and then import into Google Calendar) and it worked fine.

[danpass]

Actually the whole last half looks like it has time zone stuff in it. Especially anything that has "TZ" in it.

We should probably hope the original poster will clarify how he/she did it with a little more detail.

The original poster said the he/she removed the entire VTIMEZONE section. So remove the whole set of lines starting with BEGIN:VTIMEZONE through the line END:VTIMEZONE.

[russellhltn]

2) Open Stake Calendar in Excel.

Excel has a tendency to trash the formatting of text files. Try using Notepad instead.

[bibnib-p40]

Ummm...I only used Excel because I thought it would be fine...I'm not a IT guy. But the good news is I deleted lines 5, 6, and 22 using Notepad and the import into Google calendar worked fine. So, thanks...all sorted now.

Thanks,

Ian

[jbh001]

I tried this with a couple of different scenarios and keep getting the same (correct) results for my time zone regardless of the setting I use in Google Calendar. This leads me to believe that there is something coded somewhere in LUWS that is automatically compensating for the time differential between the unit's time zone, and US/Mountain time zone, at the time the export is done.

Here is how I exported the file:
Log in to LUWS.
Navigate to the Ward/Stake calendar (it didn't matter which).
Right-click the iCal link to export the calendar and save it to the desktop.

(Note: I did all this using Mac OS 10.4.11 and Firefox 3.0.5. Perhaps that makes a difference.)

To import the file I did this:
Log in to Google Calendars.
Click the Create link, under "My Calendars."
Typed a name for the calendar (i.e. Test, Test 2, Test 3)
Selected a time zone and then clicked the Create Calendar button.
Click the Add link, then select Import Calendar, navigate to my exported file, select the Google calendar I want the events imported into, click the Import button, then click the Back to Calendar link when the import is done.

Note: I tried various timezone/country combinations. Each time the events imported to the US/Central time slot properly adjusted to what ever timezone Google was set to display. That is, importing the events with Google set to US/Central Time on one iteration yielded the same event at the same time when the Google time zone was adjusted before, or after, regardless of whether the timezone was set at the user account level, global calendar level, or individual calendar level. I tried it several different ways, and each time the same event appeared next to the previous event regardless of my manipulation of the various Google timezone settings.

I must conclude that if Google is importing the calendar correctly, then the timezone offset is being exported by LUWS. Thus I believe that if this is in error for your unit, then there is some setting within LUWS that needs to be adjusted. However, I cannot find anywhere within LUWS where an administrator could set/adjust the LUWS timezone settings.

[mkmurray]

The original poster said the he/she removed the entire VTIMEZONE section. So remove the whole set of lines starting with BEGIN:VTIMEZONE through the line END:VTIMEZONE.

If you do that, there's nothing left. I almost suggested this as well, but all you would be left with would be the following:

1 BEGIN:VCALENDAR
2 VERSION:2.0
3 PRODID:luws-1.0
4 METHOD:PUBLISH

[aebrown]

If you do that, there's nothing left. I almost suggested this as well, but all you would be left with would be the following:

1 BEGIN:VCALENDAR
2 VERSION:2.0
3 PRODID:luws-1.0
4 METHOD:PUBLISH

There would be only those four lines left of the header, but there would still be all the VEVENT records, which contain the actual events and make up the bulk of the iCal file. That's the important information that needs to be imported.

[mkmurray]

There would be only those four lines left of the header, but there would still be all the VEVENT records, which contain the actual events and make up the bulk of the iCal file. That's the important information that needs to be imported.

Oh, thanks for the clarification...I was only going off of the 22 lines posted by bibnib.

[jmessinger]

On a somewhat related note to this thread, is it at all possible to change the timezone settings of the LUWS? Our stake is located in Western Australia (GMT+8). Mucking around with the VTIMEZONE header in the exported iCal file is OK, but a little bit of a pain. Some of our users (including my stake president) could handle the basic export/import operations well enough, but would most likely balk a little at having to open the file in a text editor and modify or remove any of what they see there.

Unlike jbh001, I found that importing the unmodified iCal file into Google Calendars regarded the event times to be in MT (as you would expect with that timezone explicitly declared in the VTIMEZONE header), and so displayed the event times as 14 hours later in my timezone - a meeting originally scheduled for 7:30PM in the LUWS calendar appears as 9:30AM the following day in my Google calendar. My Google calendar settings are correct for my timezone.

I haven't yet tested the iCal or vCal import into Outlook to see if the behaviour there is any different.

The other thing I find, is that looking at our stake or ward calendars in the browser (Firefox 3.0.7), the current date still appears to be based on Mountain time. At the time of writing this post, it is Friday 20th March, at 3:50 PM in Perth, yet my LUWS calendar has the current day highlighted as Thursday 19th March. While this may not seem to be a big thing, it would be nice to see the right day selected for this timezone.

I am the stake website administrator, and I can't seem to find any type of settings that allow me to specify our timezone. Am I missing it somewhere, or is it a case of there isn't actually any way to do this? If the latter, I will add it as an enhancement request on the LUWS Suggestion and Bug Tracking wiki.

Sorry for the long winded post, but if anyone has any additional insights into this, it would be most appreciated.

[techgy]

....looking at our stake or ward calendars in the browser (Firefox 3.0.7), the current date still appears to be based on Mountain time. At the time of writing this post, it is Friday 20th March, at 3:50 PM in Perth, yet my LUWS calendar has the current day highlighted as Thursday 19th March. While this may not seem to be a big thing, it would be nice to see the right day selected for this timezone.

I am the stake website administrator, and I can't seem to find any type of settings that allow me to specify our timezone. Am I missing it somewhere, or is it a case of there isn't actually any way to do this? If the latter, I will add it as an enhancement request on the LUWS Suggestion and Bug Tracking wiki.

Sorry for the long winded post, but if anyone has any additional insights into this, it would be most appreciated.

There is a new version of the LUWS under development but no release date has yet been announced and we do not know any details as what new features may be introduced. I personally know of nothing that would resolve this in the current LUWS version aside from the editing of the output file.