Importing .vcs file gives wrong times

[graeme at perrow dot ca]

I'm trying to import a .vcs file with events in it. The times of the
events are in the format:

DTSTART;TZID=US-Eastern:20031001T193000
DTEND;TZID=US-Eastern:20031001T213000

Since I'm in the Eastern time zone, this event should show up in Outlook
(2000) as 7:30-9:30 pm, but it shows up as 3:30-5:30pm. I've imported
the same file into Palm Desktop and the events show up at the right
times. The test .vcs file is attached.

--
Graeme Perrow
graeme at perrow dot ca


BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=US-Eastern:20031001T193000
DTEND;TZID=US-Eastern:20031001T213000
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED_PRINTABLE:Test event
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

 

[Kasey Quanrud [MS]]

The problem is iCal/vCal does not have default time-zone names like
"US-Eastern". So if you're going to use time-zones, you'll need to include
the time-zone definition in the event. On top of that, Outlook does not
support vCal (version 1.0) time-zone definitions, so the appointment will
need to be iCal (version 2.0). Because of the overhead with writing
time-zone definitions, I recommend using UTC time; DTSTART:20031001T233000z,
for such a simple item. You can also just use local time;
DTSTART:20031001T193000, of course if you sent the meeting to someone in
another time-zone it would change.

Refer to the RFC for additional information:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt
Page 30: "This document does not define a naming convention for time zone
identifiers."

Sample:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
METHODUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:US-Eastern
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:20021027T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
TZOFFSETFROM:-0400
TZOFFSETTO:-0500
TZNAME:Standard Time
END:STANDARD
BEGINAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20030406T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0300
TZNAMEaylight Savings Time
ENDAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
ORGANIZER:MAILTO:[email protected]
DTSTART;TZID="US-Eastern":20031001T193000
DTEND;TZID="US-Eastern":20031001T213000
UID:041120008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000E06067EB3CFCBD010000000000000000
100
0000078CEAFD02868D211ABA000A0C911E8E4
DTSTAMP:19981021T043258Z
SUMMARY:Test event
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

~Kasey

 

[graeme at perrow dot ca]

Strange...the reason I went with the time zones was because Palm Desktop
got the times wrong when I had them in UTC format.

Thanks for your help!
Graeme