Working-a-round timezone issues with meetings in iCal

Remi_Woler | Dec 01, 2008 | 0 comments

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It’s a commonly known problem that if you import an ICS event into iCal, which is happening in another timezone, iCal will ignore the set timezone, and add the event in your own timezone. This means that a meeting in Israel time (GMT+2) at 14:00h, will happily show at 14:00h local time, even if you’re not in, and maybe never been in, the GMT+2 timezone. You can’t move the meeting to the real time, as iCal will happily notify you that you can’t move the appointment, because you are not it’s creator. By accident, I found a work-a-round that does allow you to change the time.

In the iCal window, it allows you to ‘cut’ a meeting, by right-clicking on it. A popup will appear, telling you that if you remove the appointment, it will send a notification to the organizer that you declined the meeting. However, the second of the three buttons says “Delete and DON’T notify”. Click this one. It says deleting, but technically, that’s not correct. We will paste it in the same location again, by right clicking, and choosing paste. Nothing changed, as it appears. However, behind the scenes, the event has been decoupled, making it changeable. You can now move it to any time and date you wish. However, since the event is now decoupled, any changes to the ICS file will not be reflected in iCal, and if you import a changed ICS file for the same event, it will not recognize the update, and create a double meeting.

Personally, I rather check for double meetings, than getting pulled out of what you’re doing, because the meeting starts an hour earlier than you expected.

~RW

Filed Under: Tutorial