Workaround to fix calendar sync problems

[GrasseDD]

Sam, thanks for the help here.
There is some strange interaction between the Church, technology, and me that doesn't always click. But maybe you have figured this one out and can help me.

I was never able to get anything to show up in Google calendar using my sync link. I went to your page and tested my link, and it says it works and shows a bunch of calendar-looking code.

I tried it at Google calendar and Hey--it says it's importing calendar from URL, which it never said before! Alas, it was fool's gold. That importing message just stays at the top of the calendar and does nothing. If I refresh my browser, or click the Refresh link on the calendar, all that happens is my optimistic importing message goes away, and I'm still left with an empty calendar.

FYI, there is lots of stuff on my Church calendar--it syncs with my Outlook very well.

Thanks again, and any help is greatly appreciated!

D.G.

[knelsonb]

Thank you BellMR and tortdog!!! Both of our calendars are working great with the church calendar on our devices! Thank you also to samliddicott for posting the workaround!

[samliddicott]

Sam, thanks for the help here.
There is some strange interaction between the Church, technology, and me that doesn't always click. But maybe you have figured this one out and can help me.

I was never able to get anything to show up in Google calendar using my sync link. I went to your page and tested my link, and it says it works and shows a bunch of calendar-looking code.

I tried it at Google calendar and Hey--it says it's importing calendar from URL, which it never said before! Alas, it was fool's gold. That importing message just stays at the top of the calendar and does nothing. If I refresh my browser, or click the Refresh link on the calendar, all that happens is my optimistic importing message goes away, and I'm still left with an empty calendar.

FYI, there is lots of stuff on my Church calendar--it syncs with my Outlook very well.

Thanks again, and any help is greatly appreciated!

D.G.

The first thing I need to check is what URL you have to google, so I can look in the logs. However, you can also do this yourself.

1. Point your browser to: https://mail.liddicott.com/ldscalendar.php/ and then type your ID in the Test your calendar ID section and click Test My ID.
2. You should see test Results for .... for your calendar ID and see a load of VCALENDAR items.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and then back up (past the coloured source code) until you see Log file on requests.
4. Read through the logs and look for logs where the second line contains the word Googlebot
5. If you don't find any recent googlebot entries (and they are in UTC / Zulu not your local time) then google never asked for the calendar
6. If step 2 worked and you saw calendar items then copy-n-paste the link at the top of the page in the section How to use the LDS Calendar Proxy and make sure that is the link you give to google.

Or, you can private-message me and tell me your calendar ID and I will take a look.

[chrissv]

The first thing I need to check is what URL you have to google, so I can look in the logs. However, you can also do this yourself...

Hi Sam,
Thank you for the good example on checking myself on the calendar workaround. I enabled Google to tell me when meetings appear and disappear on the calendar, and daily I get anywhere from 2 to 3 bunches of messages telling me that all of my calendar entries have been deleted, and then minutes later that all of my calendar entries are new.

This seems to tell me that during one of the calendar requests, the data was empty (and Google thinks all of the entries have been deleted), and another request has them all there.

Looking at the log for my calendar ID I did not see anything which indicates a problem - all of the log entries have what look to be appropriate responses (no 500 responses, for example). Is there any way to tell for each entry how much data was returned by the LDS calendar request? Something simple like a gross count of characters of the iCal data would be enough to tell if something were wrong or not.

Is there something in the current log that I am missing? Otherwise, is this something you could add as part of your logging?

Thanks - Steven

[ScottNussbaum]

New clue?

I too have experienced the trouble and though I've tried the options in this thread, I have yet to successfully see my local unit calendar in Google. It attempts to load, but never fully succeeds.

Sam, your website provided some useful information. It did show that the https://mail.liddicott.com/ldscalendar.php/ link was valid, and the test results showed our extensive online calendar. However, after multiple attempts to load the calendar into Google via URL, I tried to import the file.ics file on my computer that I had saved from your link.

Perhaps there is a formatting issue with the ics file that is affecting me and others. Trying to import that data into an existing Google calendar from the saved file, I received the following error from Google:
"Failed to import events: Unable to process your iCal/CSV file..
Error at line 5872: Expected [VEVENT], read [VCALENDAR]"


Maybe that helps someone? It might have something to do with the very length event descriptions on some of our events.

[ernieblodgett]

I tried all the workarounds. www. https: new.lds.org - None of them worked with Google. The only thing that works is the liddicott.com workaround. And it works like a champ. Hope the real links get fixed... Thanks Sam

[aliceknd]

Like many other people, I have been unable to sync with Google calendar. Sam's work-around worked... sort of. Instead of showing only the calendars that I subscribe to, it shows every event, from every organization in my stake, including every ward (including the ones I'm not in!). It clutters up my calendar with many events that don't apply to me, so this isn't a practical solution for me.

My husband's works fine, and has from day one. The only difference I can see is that he is ward Executive Secretary so he has administrative privileges, though he didn't use any of those functions to sync his calendar.

Any suggestions?

[dburrell]

My problem is that Hotmail/Windows Live doesn't allow HTTPS.
The example for the Google Calendar subscription is fine, because it doesn't have HTTPS as the URL.
But when you use it, LDS.ORG routes it to HTTPS, and it fails.
We need a way to use HTTP for Calendars, and not get routed to HTTPS.

Yes, I can manually import, but really don't want to cause I want to see changes to the calendar when they come in, not when I decide to import again.

I do like the new calendars, its nice to see us getting more advanced

[Kyrandita]

I was just about to start using the workaround when I looked again at my calendar after trying one last suggestion I'd seen in another thread (using https://new.lds.org) and that seemed to work just fine... It didn't work right away... but I'd say within a few minutes of me putting it in when I switched tabs to look up other options...

for some reason Google seems to like the website identifying itself like that, I really don't know anything about how any of this works really, and I'm sure it's been brought up (I'm really sorry if I'm repeating someone, my intent was only to report success in hopes that it would be informative) but is it at all possible that somehow a certificate or something is reporting the URL as new.lds and Google doesn't like the discrepancy? Ignore this if it's stupid...

[BellMR]

When I use https://new.lds.org I ONLY get old calendar entries that existed before the cut-over to the production URL.