iCal is not allowing set up for syncing

Upon inserting the URL from the Church website, it says that there was an error. Any ideas?

Are you aware of the 9 minute throttle? You can only use/request a refresh once every 9 minutes. That includes all devices that sync to your calendar. So if you had another device that synced in the 9 minutes prior to your attempt, then it would fail.

I was not aware of that. Seems like a tricky window to identify. How does one know when another device (of which I have two) sync's with the Church calendar?

I would assume these devices are under your control. You'll have to set them up or use them in a way that works with that Window. Since it's a "pull" the sync is controlled by the device, not the website as it would be in a "push".

New problem. Now I get the following notice:

"The data downloaded from http://www.lds.org/church-calendar/serv ... 1367936872 isn’t valid."

When you get nailed by the 9-minute window you end up with a empty file. It seems most devices fail to recognize it as a empty file and declares it as "invalid" or "corrupt" or some other less-than helpful label.

Of course its possible that there really is a problem with the file. You can put the URL in your browser. It should cause a file to be downloaded. Feed that file to a iCal validator of your choice. (After making sure it's not a empty/zero byte file.)

I was able to add the calendar to my Google calendar but Outlook 2013 won't add this one like it did the other calendars.

I just have an "untitled" calendar with no events.
I am not an expert at the calendar portion of OL.

What else do I need to do to get this to work?

I followed the instructions that were on the site for syncing the calendar on my machine...

Thanks

mistercrowley wrote:What else do I need to do to get this to work?

Did you carefully read the posts in this topic that deal with the 9-minute limit? If you got your Google calendar sync to work, and less than 9 minutes later tried Outlook, your Outlook sync would definitely not work.

Note also that you can't always control exactly when third-party tools such as Google choose to do a sync. So the first recommendation is to wait well over 9 minutes after you do a sync before trying another one, and realize that even then you might have gotten unlucky and another sync occurred in the meantime. You may need to wait and try again.

Been WAY more than 9 minutes. Still not getting updates at all.

Also... this is on OL NOT GOOGLE - GOOGLE works... OL is a different animal.

Again. This is in Outlook, NOT Google Calendar.

mistercrowley wrote:Been WAY more than 9 minutes. Still not getting updates at all.

Also... this is on OL NOT GOOGLE - GOOGLE works... OL is a different animal.

Again. This is in Outlook, NOT Google Calendar.

If you will review my post, you'll see that I am perfectly aware that you are having trouble with Outlook and that you said that you succeeded in syncing with Google. I'm not sure why you would think I misunderstood that important point.

What you need to understand is that the Calendar's sync service doesn't care who the request comes from -- it could be from you entering your sync URL in a browser, or from Google, or from Outlook. I was trying to help you understand that once you set up your Google calendar to use your Sync URL, you are no longer in control of precisely when the sync occurs. Google will make its choice when it wants to, and you might get unlucky and have Google do a sync request a few minutes before you happen to be trying to do an Outlook sync request.

That said, it's possible that Outlook is having difficulties with this sync process that are independent of the 9-minute limit. One approach that could shed some light on that is for you to capture the iCal file from the sync. If you are able to capture the iCal file, then the sync service is doing its job. Then you can import that iCal file into Outlook. If that succeeds, then the problem is most likely with controlling the timing of sync requests (since that will prove that Outlook can handle your LDS calendar's data). But if that fails, then there is something in your particular data that Outlook can't handle, and you can work on narrowing that down.

If you need help with the steps to capture the iCal file, let me know.

So if I remove the calendar from Google, which will kill the phone sync, you're saying that it won't sync to both?

Ok forget Outlook. I just see Google Calendar "Importing calendar from URL..." and I am not getting anything.. why do they make changes just to break other things?

Just got a message: settings error. Failed to import."

mistercrowley wrote:So if I remove the calendar from Google, which will kill the phone sync, you're saying that it won't sync to both?

If you remove it from Google, then that's one less issue that could be causing your Outlook sync to fail.

As for syncing to both, it can be done - as long as the combined requests from both do not happen in the same 9 minute window.

It can indeed sync to both. But when you sync your calendar to more than one service, you need to do whatever you can to control the timing of when they sync so that they don't do that sync too close to each other.

For example, configure Service A to sync on odd hours, and Service B to sync on even hours. That way you can be confident that Service A and Service B won't hit the LDS calendar's sync service within 9 minutes of each other. The challenge is that some services don't give you control over the timing.

But before you do that, I'd highly recommend that you eliminate the issue of timing and make sure that both services can work independently. To be specific, you've already determined that Google works, but you have not yet been able to sync to Outlook. So remove your LDS calendar from Google entirely (or reset your calendar sync URL, which would stop Google from accessing the sync service). Then you can focus on Outlook and make sure that it is working.

Only after you have made sure that each of the two services work on their own should you worry about them working at the same time.

I generated new sync URLs and I was copying it and I downloaded the ics file somehow... so that works... I have made sure that Outlook is NOT running.

I coped the URL back in to Google Calendar - in the browser - and for the past 10 **now going on 20** minutes it is giving me the importing message.

Are there permissions on LDS.org that a member can set? If so, where?

Ok... Refreshed the page and there was the Google calendar

Not sure how this will Outlook....

mistercrowley wrote:I coped the URL back in to Google Calendar - in the browser - and for the past 10 minutes it is giving me the importing message.

Sometimes Google takes several minutes to sync, but I've never seen it take 10 minutes. It does depend on the amount of data on your LDS calendars.

There have been a couple of times that I've decided Google wasn't going to ever say it was done, so I just refreshed the page, only to find that the sync seems to have been done already. So I'm not sure that Google is 100% effective in refreshing its page at the end of the sync.

mistercrowley wrote:Are there permissions on LDS.org that a member can set? If so, where?

No. Did you have some particular permission in mind?