Calendar Feature Request

When scheduling a repeating event at a location you often run into conflicts that prevent you from saving the event. For example, I want to enter all Sacrament Meetings for our ward in a single event that repeats every Sunday in the Chapel. Normally this would be an easy thing to do but since we meet in the Stake Center the building has Stake Conference scheduled two Sundays and our Ward Conference (entered as a stake event) scheduled on a third Sunday. So now I have to create four separate entries in the calendar to get around these conflicts.

It would be nice to have the option to have the system to go ahead and create the event on all non-conflicting days, skipping the days where there is a conflict.

mnmpeterson wrote:When scheduling a repeating event at a location you often run into conflicts that prevent you from saving the event. For example, I want to enter all Sacrament Meetings for our ward in a single event that repeats every Sunday in the Chapel. Normally this would be an easy thing to do but since we meet in the Stake Center the building has Stake Conference scheduled two Sundays and our Ward Conference (entered as a stake event) scheduled on a third Sunday. So now I have to create four separate entries in the calendar to get around these conflicts.

It would be nice to have the option to have the system to go ahead and create the event on all non-conflicting days, skipping the days where there is a conflict.

Note that there is a fairly easy workaround for this situation which is described briefly on the wiki (the 4th option listed). Basically save the conflicting event without a location, delete the conflicting instances and then edit the repeating event and add the location back. It would be easier if there were an option as you describe but it isn't too hard to deal with now either.

mnmpeterson wrote:It would be nice to have the option to have the system to go ahead and create the event on all non-conflicting days, skipping the days where there is a conflict.

This would work if you were notified of the conflicts and approved the system skipping the conflict days. Otherwise you could end up believing all repeating events were created as you entered it. This is not normally an issue for things such as conference dates but it most certainly would be for other events that are not attended by the entire ward or meetinghouse membership.

eblood66 wrote:Note that there is a fairly easy workaround for this situation which is described briefly on the wiki (the 4th option listed). Basically save the conflicting event without a location, delete the conflicting instances and then edit the repeating event and add the location back. It would be easier if there were an option as you describe but it isn't too hard to deal with now either.

I tried that but the calendar still says there is a conflict even though I deleted the single events in my series of repeats. I wonder if it's trying to re-create the repeating events that I deleted?

mnmpeterson wrote: I wonder if it's trying to re-create the repeating events that I deleted?

Yup, that's exactly what it did. I went into the conflicting events and set their locations to "No Location". Then Edited my repeating event, set the location and updated all events in the series. Sure enough it re-created the event on the days I had deleted earlier. The church needs to fix updates so they don't re-create deleted events or update the wiki.

mnmpeterson wrote:Yup, that's exactly what it did. I went into the conflicting events and set their locations to "No Location". Then Edited my repeating event, set the location and updated all events in the series. Sure enough it re-created the event on the days I had deleted earlier. The church needs to fix updates so they don't re-create deleted events or update the wiki.

It sounds like you didn't follow the steps in the wiki precisely, and that's why it didn't work for you. The instructions say to change the repeating event to be at "No Location" -- not the exceptions as you did. When you change the location for the repeating event and then say that you want all events to be updated, you are specifically asking for all the events (including your exceptions) to be set to the location you just specified, which would completely undo the work you just did of specifying different locations for specific exceptional events.

In my experience, the technique documented in the wiki does work, and deleted events will not come back, unless you edit something about the repeating pattern (the start or end date, or any of the repeating event options listed on the right-hand side of the event details screen). I just tested it again, and it worked exactly as I expected -- the deleted events did not come back when I changed only the location.

Nope, followed the instructions exactly: Created a repeating event with no location. Then deleted individual occurrences of the event that conflicted. Then edited the repeating event, set the location and tried to save. Got conflicts on the days that I deleted.

Not sure what you mean by "not the exceptions as you did." Did you mean "not the conflicts"? The only reason I changed the location in the conflicting events was to test my theory that updating the repeating event created the entire series again -- including the occurrences I had deleted. My test proved the theory. Maybe the calendar didn't used to recreate deleted occurrences when updating but it did this time.

Just did a little testing and tried editing the location of the event back to No location and saved all instances. Then changed the location back and saved all instances. This time it didn't try to create instances on the days I had deleted.

Must have been a temporary glitch or maybe the data in our calendar is messed up.

mnmpeterson wrote:Not sure what you mean by "not the exceptions as you did." Did you mean "not the conflicts"?

I guess I misinterpreted what you meant when you said 'I went into the conflicting events and set their locations to "No Location". ' I thought you meant by "conflicting events" the particular instances within the series of repeating events that conflicted with other existing events. It didn't make sense to me that you would actually edit the existing events -- I had understood that you were trying to work around the existing events as you were creating the new repeating event, not to alter the existing events so that the new repeating event could be saved.

But now that I know that you were just testing, I guess it makes sense.

mnmpeterson wrote: Maybe the calendar didn't used to recreate deleted occurrences when updating but it did this time.

The only time I've seen the calendar recreate deleted occurrences is when I do something to alter the date and/or the repeating event parameters for the repeating event and then update all events. I've never seen it recreate deleted occurrences when I only touch the location or description or title.