Google Calendar Sync Problem

[kiddori]

I'm excited to have updated to Windows Phone 8.1 developer preview. I think 8.1 brings a lot of goodies that I've been waiting for....but it's still not perfect.

One big issue is syncing with Google Calendar.

My "All day" events end up showing twice.....once correctly as an all day event, but also once as an event with a time....and it's always 2pm (14:00). And this happens on all my calendars I have syncing. My personal, my work, and the birthday calendar - they all show the same pattern.

Anyone else had that problem, and is there a fix? I can't figure out why WP would do this. My Google Calendar shows up fine on the web and on my Android and iOS devices.

 

[jleebiker]

I'm syncing 3 Gmail calendars. One has 8 subcalendars. They are all showing the all day events correctly without doubling them. (Please don't jinx me now and have that start happening. ;-) )

 

[kiddori]

Glad to hear it's working for you. It's very strange. I disabled the calendar sync and then re-enabled it, and it still shows the same. For example, tomorrow on the 23rd I have an all day event in my Google Cal called "Julie traveling". But it also shows up today at 2pm with the same title. The weird thing is, when I tap on the all day events that show up correctly, it says the start time and end time is 2pm.

 

[kiddori]

Just want to add that I tested Chronos and it shows my events just fine. So it's obviously not a WP problem, but a problem with how the native WP calendar on my Lumia 521 reads my Google calendars. I would love to get any fix suggestions, because I prefer to use the native calendar.

 

[kiddori]

 

[jleebiker]

Hmm... You did the thing I was going to ask you to test.

What happens if you eliminate all but one calendar? The one with your all day appointments? Also, how are you putting the appointments on the cal? Via the web or a 3rd party app?

 

[kiddori]

I will try that. I usually add appointments through the web, sometimes on my Android phone. I don't think it would be that though, as the events shows up fine in all other apps.

 

[kiddori]

It has to be something with time zones. I went into date+time and changed the time zone to UTC and it removed all the duplicate all day entries.....but of course, the times were now off on everything else. When I changed it back to my time zone (UTC-10:00), it went back to having the same problem. :-(

 

[Splacknuk]

I've seen this in our corporate environment on Outlook when folks were in different time zones, but didn't have all of the settings just right and events appeared in a time-shift like that. This smells like a time zone issue to me. Looks like you are already working on that possibility.

In a side note, I was having trouble keeping in sync last year since my family spans the spectrum of OS - Windows, Winphone, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android... what seemed to work best for us was to always do (add/remove/update) to our Outlook.com calendars. Everyone seemed to play nice with those, versus Google or iOS.

 

[foxbat121]

It seems your all day events in Google was created wrong. Instead of created as all day events, it created as a timed events with wrong timezone. I just did a test. Create a new all day events on my google account using browser on a PC. It synced up correctly with my 1520 running 8.1. There is no start time or end time for the event show up in WP8.1 calendar app.

 

[jleebiker]

Kiddori, check your PM. I sent you something.

 

[kiddori]

Just an update: Together with jleebiker we did a test with a fresh calendar that shows up fine on jlee's device but not on my device. See attached below. So I'm pretty sure this bug is related to my timezone (Hawaii). Unfortunately, I don't have a separate WP phone to test on.

 

[jleebiker]

Kiddori, so did you put the "Test of an all-day appointment" in on Wed 23? The one that shows up at 14:00? I put the one for Wed 23 at 7:30 and Thur 24 in. Looks like you can see them fin on your device.

If so, then it does look like it is something specific to your device or time zone setting.

 

[kiddori]

In this test, I didn't put anything in myself. The "All day" entries always show up at 14:00 on the prior day.

 

[jleebiker]

Ok, I just checked my phone AND via PC to the Gmail account itself. Neither shows the appointment at 14:00 on the 23rd. What happens if you change your time zone to Mountain Time?

 

[kiddori]

It shows up fine when set to Mountain Time. That is, no 14:00 entry on the prior day for the "All day" event.

Does anyone know how I can report this to Microsoft or the Windows Phone division?

 

[jleebiker]

I believe there's a bug tracking thread and there's an actual MS employee that is here taking requests.

 

[kiddori]

I ran the latest 8.1 upgrade but the problem is still there. :-(

 

[leaningshane]

This very same issue occurs for syncing with iCloud. Time zones all messed up!

 

[kiddori]

When my Windows Phone died this summer, I switched to my iPhone. I won't switch back to WP until this issue is fixed. It's a deal breaker for me. :-(