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Gmail sync'd dates wrong

Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:22 pm
by craiggsmith
Our stake clerk and exec sec are reporting that some calendar item dates are incorrect when sync'd to Google. I couldn't find anything about this through a search; has anyone else experienced this?

Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 9:52 pm
by aebrown
When you say "from gmail" I assume you really mean "to Google Calendar" -- I can't imagine what else would make sense in this context.

There have been some reports of dates being incorrect (off one day) for all-day events that are synced to third-party calendars such as Google Calendar, but none of those reports came from the Mountain Time Zone, where you apparently live.

When you say "incorrect," do you mean off by one day, or more than that? Are times off as well? Which direction are they off? Does this apply to all-day events, or timed events? Are other events correct?

Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 10:01 pm
by craiggsmith
Sorry, yes, Google calendar, correction made.

My understanding is that only some events are off, and these are timed events, and they are off by a week or two. Doesn't really make sense. They said they deleted everything and re-synced with the same results. I'll ask these questions but I guess I'll have to play with it to really be able to help; I was hoping this was a common problem.

Thanks!

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:33 am
by russellhltn
craiggsmith wrote:My understanding is that only some events are off, and these are timed events, and they are off by a week or two.

That is odd. By any chance, do any of these events cross the midnight hour? There was some reports of display issues for New Year's Eve parties (showing up on Jan 7) that should have been fixed in this last release. Perhaps there's a related bug introduced or still there.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:08 am
by craiggsmith
We figured out the issue -- we think it is some sort of caching issue. I synced for the first time and it came down fine, and we looked at the ics file that his link pulls down and it's correct as well.

The event in question is 2 weeks off, and we think it must have been scheduled for that date at one point in time and synced then. He tried unsubscribing and resubscribing from scratch and settings from the previous subscription customizations (name, color) are still there. Is there any way to get Google to forget everything and/or force a refresh? The Refresh command under the More menu doesn't seem to do anything, unless it's just taking a long time (the Church calendar has had issues today).

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:20 am
by russellhltn
craiggsmith wrote:Is there any way to get Google to forget everything and/or force a refresh?

First thing I'd do is turn off that calendar in Google and make sure it's not still there. It might be coming from a different calendar. Perhaps something he placed on there.

One way I've found to force Google to go "from scratch" is to go into the LDS Calendar, Settings > Sync and "Generate a new sync URLs" (button at right). When you input the new URL into Google, it will see it as a totally different calendar.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:24 am
by craiggsmith
Fantastic, thanks, we didn't notice that "generate new URL" button. That should solve the problem for now.

We did some research on Google's site and apparently Google calendar has a lot of sync issues. We did find a note that it only syncs every few hours, and that it sometimes takes up to 24, and that there is no way to force a manual refresh. But this event has been set for a long time.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:25 am
by craiggsmith
FYI we also had him unsubscribe, log off Google, and clear his browser cache, but it didn't seem to help.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:31 am
by russellhltn
craiggsmith wrote:We did some research on Google's site and apparently Google calendar has a lot of sync issues. We did find a note that it only syncs every few hours, and that it sometimes takes up to 24, and that there is no way to force a manual refresh.

Depends. Is the reason he's using Google Calendar because he has a Android phone? He can force a sync from the phone.