ICS timezone not working

timezone google-calendar-api offset icalendar
simonbs picture simonbs · Oct 2, 2011 · Viewed 25.3k times · Source

I have made an ICS feed containing a long list of events. My timezone does not seem to work.

In the sample below you see that my event should start 07:55:00 and end 09:30:00. This is what it should show in my calendar. Instead it shows 09:55:00 and 11:30:00 - an offset of two hours. The timezone should be set to Europe/Copenhagen but this does not have any effect.

Can anyone tell me how I can achieve the right times?

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Test Calendar
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/Copenhagen
X-WR-CALDESC:Test Calendar
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20110926T075500Z
DTEND:20110926T093000Z
DTSTAMP:20111002T133505Z
UID:E9QNQ30EG-5SRB7-QQKL3-2JUUZ-477LBRV4IMSJ78
CREATED:20111002T133505Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20111002T133505Z
LOCATION:B34
SEQUENCE:3
SUMMARY:2abc3c Ma3 CD (B34)
TRANSP:OPAQUE
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Oct 2, 2011

You've specified that your event starts at 07:55 in UTC - that's what the Z at the end shows. If you want it to be in local time, you shouldn't have the Z, and you should probably specify the time zone there too:

DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Copenhagen:20110926T075500
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Copenhagen:20110926T093000

Alternatively, specify the UTC start and end time using Z, but taking account for the relevant time zone difference - so an event that starts at 07:55 in Europe/Copenhagen at the moment is actually 05:55 in UTC.

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