iCal Import – How do we get it to add event to an existing calendar in Outlook

[Dave Meyer]

The events calendar imports as an iCal feed, but what our client is looking for is are is an appointment that can be saved into existing calendars (not create a new calendar) in Outlook.

We found this link on your old site, http://support.makedesignnotwar.com/discussion/comment/4919/#Comment_4919, that basically says the older versions of this plugin does not provide this functionality without a little bit of a programming hack. I was unable to find anything on the current discussion forums about this.

Is there a way to make the current version of Event Calendar Pro provide this functionality? Does that hack still work? Will this be added on a future version?

[Jonah]

Hi Dave,

The file and location for that hack has changed but it should still work. You would want to modify /wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/events-calendar-pro.php on line 374.

Unfortunately though this hack will be lost each time you update. I’m not sure whether this specifically has been asked about before but I know there have been other requests to be able to change what comes across into iCal. I would suggest making a feature request for being able to do this here: https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/events-calendar-pro-feature-requests/

I hope that helps but let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks,
Jonah

[Andy Fragen]

@Jonah, with the appropriately placed `add_filters` function I could write up a quick hack for the theme’s functions.php file that would survive updates.

[Dave Meyer]

@Andy – We’d be interested in contracting you to do the hack in the themes functions.php file. Contact my VP of Operations Vince at [email protected] and he will fill you in on the details.

[Rob]

Dave/Andy: you guys ever connect? Let me know if we at Modern Tribe can do anything else here.

[Andy Fragen]

Dave/Rob, if what I’m thinking about will work its like 5 lines. I’ll post a link to gist when I get the time to do it. Then we’ll have to figure out if it works.

[Jonah]

I agree, we should have an add_filters for this but it probably won’t make it in for a while unfortunately… But, I’ll add a ticket for it 🙂

[Andy Fragen]

So it was a bit longer than 5 lines. 😉

You will need to add the indicated “add_filters” line to the events-calendar-pro.php file. Then add the code at https://gist.github.com/2831526 to your theme’s functions.php file. This should allow Outlook to add events to it’s primary calendar.

WARNING: This will make your ics file an invalid calendar file to subscribe to. At least it does here.

[Andy Fragen]

@Rob, any chance on adding the “apply_filters” lines in the function iCalFeed and function googleCalendarLink to the core?

[Rob]

Jonah, what’d it take to incorporate Andy’s last suggestion there?

[Jonah]

Sorry but it’s out of my area of expertise. We’ve got a ticket out to add a filter for iCalFeed in the next release and I’ll add another for googleCalendarLink. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait until its out.

[Dave Meyer]

I incorporated Andy’s suggestions and it worked for some users (Outlook 2003) but not all (Outlook 2007 & 2010).

Our client has a tech guy who went back to the original link I posted (http://support.makedesignnotwar.com/discussion/comment/4919/#Comment_4919) put the hack in place and it works perfect on all events on the site.

I don’t know if it was just the hack he found at makedesignnotwar.com worked, or that in combination with the hacks that Andy suggested (which are also in place) that fixed it.

Can you guys add this to the next release of The Events Calendar?

[Rob]

Hey Dave. Appreciate the follow-up here; that raises a good question that I’ll need Jonah to take a look at. I know the code has changed somewhat substantially between the 1.x releases we had supported on MDNW and the 2.0 build we launched when we moved over here…but I suspect there’s a way to make it work somehow. Stay tuned.

[Andy Fragen]

Hey Dave, that’s very interesting because the hack I did removes the line in question. Can you do me a favor? Have your tech guy create an ics file using both of our hacks and send the files to me. I’d like to see the difference for which one works and which doesn’t. As I’m not using Outlook as a calendar I can’t do this on my end. He can send the files to me at andy [at] thefragens [dot] com. I’ll expect 2 ics files. One using my hack and one using the hack from the original reference. Also, please verify that my hack didn’t work using all versions of Outlook. Thanks.

[Dave Meyer]

The Run-down – http://www.clearnorthtech.com

The problem reported was that the The Events Calendar imports into a separate calendar (instead of the default) on our clients computers. They are running Office 2010 wiht an Exchange server. They are running Internet Explorer (9 I think).

When they click on the iCal Import button in IE, they are asked if they want to download it or open it. They click on Open it, and it is creating a new calendar to import it into.

I could not recreate this on my PC running IE 9, Outlook 2003 wiht my email hosted at Gmail/Google Apps. It worked perfectly on my PC.

1. I did the fix as suggested by Andy to add the indicated “add_filters” line to the events-calendar-pro.php file. Then add the code at https://gist.github.com/2831526 to your theme’s functions.php file.
2. I tested it and it worked perfectly.
3. The client tested it and it was still not working.
4. My clients tech guy found this link http://support.makedesignnotwar.com/discussion/comment/4919/#Comment_4919 and implemented that fix to the events-calendar-pro.class.php file.
(I don’t know if he removed my updates/fix from step #1 or not.)
6. After the client did their fix in #4 it started working correctly for them.

Here are links to some files that may help solve this myster:

1. WEbEx.ics http://www.bizzytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/WebEx.ics
– An example of a ICS file that work working as expected

2. Original iCal File _ iCal-TribeEvents.ics http://www.bizzytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Original-iCal-File-_-iCal-TribeEvents.ics This is an example of the ICS file before any changes were made. This file did not import into the clients setup.

3. (Working) iCal-TribeEvents http://www.bizzytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Working-iCal-TribeEvents.ics – This is the ICS file after both of our changes. This one is working.

[Author]

Posts