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I am trying to create a .ics file for an event that spreads over 5 days. An example of the .ics content is found below:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:BestMedTourDeBoland
DTSTART:20150302T000000
DTEND:20150306T230000
SUMMARY:Bestmed Tour De Boland
PRIORITY:3
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

As you can see the start date is set for 02 March and spans until the end of 06 March. When I import the .ics file I get the "outlook supports floating time for all-day events only" message. Any help on fixing this please?

Rudolf Lamprecht
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1 Answers1

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It is telling you the problem: Don't use the floating time format for multi day events. Stick a Z after the DTSTART for UTC time or add a timezone identifier.

RFC 5545 explains the date format options: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5545#page-33 or specifically on floating: http://icalevents.com/2064-ical-local-or-floating-date-times/

Example:

`DTSTART:20100202T151500Z`

or with timezone id:

DTSTART;TZID=”America/New_York”:20080807T090000
Community
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anmari
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  • Thanks for the guidance, but I am still having issues. I used the TZID property for the timezone Africa/Johannesburg, which is a valid timezone I assume, but receive an error indicating that it is an undeclared timezone. My code now reads `DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150725T000000 DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150726T230000` I might add that I am using Outlook 2013 – Rudolf Lamprecht Nov 24 '14 at 11:15
  • Icalendar has no facility for referencing externally defined timezones. Your TZID needs to point to a timezone definition _in the icalendar_. – bbsimonbb Nov 24 '14 at 15:52
  • Yes outlook doesn't play nicely with the commonly accepted timezone ids. So either convert your times to UTC time (the 'Z' format) or possibly include the timezone definition at the beginning of your file. This post indicates that may be the way with outlook:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7436629/is-there-a-workaround-for-lack-of-olsen-tz-tzid-format-in-ics-file – anmari Nov 25 '14 at 22:48