Time Zone Problems with Internet Calendar

[Martin_1234]

Dear all,

I use an internet calendar (iCal) from my grad school with my Outlook 2010 x64 German.

I subscribed to the calendar but Outlook has some problems with the time zone decatarion in the calendar. I receive the following Error message (German):

Fehler (0x0004001A) beim Ausführen der Aufgabe "Internetkalenderabonnements": "Der im Bereich von Zeile 8 definierte VEVENT-Wert "Elena Semenova: " enthält eine Eigenschaft, die auf eine nicht deklarierte Zeitzone mit dem TZID-Wert "Europe/Berlin". Von Outlook wurde jedoch ein entsprechender Ersatz gefunden. Beachten Sie, dass einige Termine um eine Stunde verschoben sein können. Dieses Element kann durch Doppelklicken geöffnet werden."

Basically saying that the TZID-Value"Europe/Berlin" is not declared and all the appointments in the calendar are incorrect. Outlook found a realted replacement but the appointments are one hour later than they are supposed to be.

Is there any workaround for this porblem?
I could think about of defining a time Zone for the calendar, but I dont find any options for editing the processing of the calendar. Or is it possible to create a rule which moves every appointment from this calendar one hour in the past? I also tried to set a second time zone in outlook, but it didnt help either. Any other ideas?

You can find the calendar here:

http://gk.wiwi.uni-jena.de/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Ical

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Best, Martin

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Interesting. All 3 calendar links are working just fine for me - no errors - in Outlook 2010 32bit, Eastern TZ.

I'm pretty sure 32/64 bit Outlook is not a factor, although I have no idea if the times are on my calendar at the correct time - Peter Walgenbach: Organization Theory is at 4 AM ET. With the computer set to Berlin +1 UTC, it's at 10 AM. Is that correct?

 

[Martin_1234]

Interesting. All 3 calendar links are working just fine for me - no errors - in Outlook 2010 32bit, Eastern TZ.

I'm pretty sure 32/64 bit Outlook is not a factor, although I have no idea if the times are on my calendar at the correct time - Peter Walgenbach: Organization Theory is at 4 AM ET. With the computer set to Berlin +1 UTC, it's at 10 AM. Is that correct?

Hey Diane, thanks for trying.

I get the same results with all 3 links as well. But 10 AM is not correct, it is supposed to be at 9 AM. So you basically get the same mistake without an error.

Btw, if I use any other software, the apointments are at the correct time.

Any ideas?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

i cant see any thing in the ical code and it is off an hour in outlook 2007 too.

 

[Martin_1234]

okay,

so basically there is an error in Outlook handling the tinezone information, right? (I also thought about daylight saving time problems, but changing this didnt help either)

How about possilble workarounds? Is it possible to create a rule for new calendar items and moving them in time?

I also thought about a Macro which copys all the ical items to another calendar and moving the items backwards in time. But I have no idea about implementing something like this.

Any suggestions?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Yeah, but I'm not sure where/what the problem is. I'm checking with support.

Because its a subscribed calendar, there isn't much you can do - other than export into Excel, fix the times and import.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

As an FYI, they are looking into it - i may know more next week.

 

[Martin_1234]

As an FYI, they are looking into it - i may know more next week.

Thank you very much for your time and effort!

 

[Martin_1234]

Hey Diane,

have you gotten any news so far?

Thanks!

 

[Diane Poremsky]

no, nothing, sorry. We (MVPs and the product team) discussed it but they did not say anything about a fix. Outlook uses standard time when the offset is not included, which is stupid - it should use the 'local time' and apply DST if DST is in effect.

There was one thing I was going to test - rename TZ key for Berlin so outlook finds an exact match and see if it still uses standard time. But I need to reboot for it to take effect so i put it off and forgot.

 

[agribus]

Dear Diane, dear Martin,

I found your discussion because I have the very same problem. My ical calendar in outlook shows a time shift of +1 hour. Do you have any new information about this problem or even solved it?

regards from Germany,

agribus

 

[Diane Poremsky]

It's still on the drawing board - it's in the bug database - I don't think it's going to make it into SP2 (probably due out over the winter) but I won't know for sure for some time.

 

[agribus]

Thank you for your replay! It's fine to read that it's on a bug list! Till then my workaround is to turn off the automatic Daylight saving time (DST) option in the control panel. I have to adjust the time manually, but the ical appointments in outlook are now fine.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

When does your area flip over to Standard time?

 

[agribus]

I'm from Germany and the time will flip over on 28th of October. Please find detailed information about my time zone here: Time changes in year 2012 for Germany – Baden-Württemberg – Stuttgart




By reading the following article (Time zones that do not observe daylight saving time and Outlook 2010) I had the idea to disable the function that the time is automatically changed due to summer and winter time. After disabling the function I had of course to set the correct time manually. Doing so, this had no influence on my appointments of my standard outlook calender, but on the appointments of my ical calender in outlook.




Let's see what happens on the 28th !

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Let's see what happens on the 28th !

You'll need to fix your clock yourself. But i don't expect to see issues with the calendar - it should work correctly.

 

[coalchamber1022]

Hi,

I along with my company are experiencing this same error with a internet calendar shared via the Confluence platform.

When syncing the internet calendar we get roughly 10-15 of these errors:

• Task 'Internet Calendar Subscriptions' reported error (0x0004001A) : 'The VEVENT, "Shaw, Lucia Y.: QCPR IF Support", defined near line 671, contains a property that references an undeclared time zone with a TZID of "America/Los_Angeles". Outlook found an approximate replacement, but note that some of your appointments may be off by an hour. Double-click to open this item.'
  

I have tried syncing the calendar on a non-company computer in the same version of Outlook 2010 32 bit and do not get the errors. Wondering if there is a setting within Outlook for timezones?

View attachment test.txt

Here is a .txt version of my .ical file. I don't see anything out of the ordinary in here but maybe I am overlooking something.

Any input would greatly be appreciated!

-Aaron

 

[Urz]

Same problem (Switzerland, same time zone as Germany...)

My problem starts in the week of March 31st! Before that the times are correct. So it's a daylight saving time issue. I thought, what if the problem will be solved by itself as soon as my computer will shift to summer time? Could this be?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Yes, if it's related to DST, it should correct itself when the computer shifts, however, if the computer has the correct time zone definitions, it should be ok regardless, under most circumstances.

When the problem is that Outlook doesn't understand the TZ naming convention used by the appointment, you could create a time zone definition in windows using the other naming convention. Export the registry key for the zone name windows uses then edit the name in the reg file and double click to import it. The key is at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones\.

 

[basementclev2]

When does your area flip over to Standard time?