Google Internet Calendars and Outlook 2007 - The DST Fun Continues
OK, this isn't fun or funny any more. I use the Outlook 2007 extensively. My whole life is in there.
My wife uses Google Calendar, and she has shared her calendar to me as an ICS file. I subscribe her her calendar in Outlook, and it appears as an additional calendar. In the screenshot at right, her calendar appears under Other Calendars. This has really helped us keep our life more organized.
Tomorrow we're going to look at a School for Z at 11am. In the ICS file from Google it says:
DTSTART;TZID=
America/Los_Angeles:20070322T110000
DTEND;TZID=
America/Los_Angeles:20070322T120000
That's pretty unambiguous. 11am to Noon. However, Outlook displays that appointment - seen at right - as occurring from Noon to 1pm. I would have missed it if I didn't know this.
I don't know if this is a Google thing, but I do know I'm not alone as others are reporting this problem and Google has updated some servers, but not others but is trying to fix something as reported on their Calendar Google Group.
This totally sucks. Even though we have updated all our Outlooks and all our Servers here at work, we're still seeing sporadic meeting problems, and most of us have just recreated all recurring meetings. I hope this gets fixed soon, either in Outlook, or on Google's side.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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My guess is it's the local DST settings. You can check your Windows machine and see if it has the DST patch by looking Add/Remove programs. You will have to check the box to "Show updates". Under Windows XP you should have an Update for Windows XP (KB931836).
If you do not, you can get it http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=66F1420C-DF2D-400B-A8A9-EF9061A9A3CA&displaylang=en. After you install it, change time zones and then change it back, just to make sure it's taken effect.
If you use an Exchange server for mail, they will have to be patched as well.
I used to work with Tim R. (if you're wondering how I happened upon your blog). I apologize in advance if you were already aware of the above information.
Mark
As a result, half my staff missed the meeting. It is irritating and I'm glad I'm no the only one that's affected! Next week, the meetings will be back on track. I suppose I could have deleted the meeting recurrence and started over, but it's annoying to get invites and cancellations in your email all day because of a DST issue.
There's something else fishy at work. I hope it is not dasBlog.
Thanks!
Aside from how Scott does it, there are a number of other ways to get your Google Calendar into Outlook. One such is called SyncMyCal (www.syncmycal.com).
Cheers.
Interestingly, I've tried these same feeds in Apple iCal and Vista's Windows Calendar applet and the rendering is correct. Clearly this is an Outlook issue, now just to figure out who's working on a fix...
http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=75
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Hey Scott,
I've spent a lot of time working with ICS <shudder/>. The data you listed above from the google .ics is correct. BUT the google calendar servers are all running different versions of their software and I've seen it happen a lot where one call will return x.1 and the next call will return x.2. They are constantly tweaking their servers and rolling out patches over a period of days and weeks (as confirmed to me by the head of the google calendar group). BUT what they gave you at that moment is correct.
Is it possible that your outlook and host machine is having problems with the recent timezone change? I know this wouldn't every happen on your ultimate box ;), but perhaps if the calendar is being read on an older, rarely used machine?
Adam