Outlook Calendar Sync--: 'The operation failed.'

I used the link provided by the church website to sync with Outlook. However the error that i receive is :
Task 'Internet Calendar Subscriptions' reported error (0x80004005) : 'The operation failed.'

The link, with personal info removed is "webcals://www.lds.org/church-calendar/services/lu ... da2423bbf9**********". Anyone have any ideas. By the way the link it gives me for Gmail works just fine.

I think it's the same link, isn't it? Note that there is a 9 minute throttling limit. Once you use the link, it won't work for nine minutes. Note that 9 minutes for all of your devices, not per device. Set your sync frequency accordingly.

Problem is that the link doesn't work at all. The error, according to Microsoft, means that the link is bad. Timing doesn't matter as it it doesn't try to sync an invalid link.

bigdamon14 wrote:The error, according to Microsoft, means that the link is bad.

Doing a Google on the error message, it appears that it can be a number of things, not just a bad link.

However, I suspect there may be a problem with the calendar server as my attempt to use the link in a browser results in the lds "Out of Service" message.

Same problem here. Using the link in Outlook results in the error message.
However, I can add the link in Google Calendar or on an iOS Device and it works just fine there.

russellhltn wrote:However, I suspect there may be a problem with the calendar server as my attempt to use the link in a browser results in the lds "Out of Service" message.

Interesting. I used the link in Chrome but under a different "user" and it worked fine. (downloaded an ics file) Something odd about that chrome user.

russellhltn wrote:

russellhltn wrote:However, I suspect there may be a problem with the calendar server as my attempt to use the link in a browser results in the lds "Out of Service" message.

Interesting. I used the link in Chrome but under a different "user" and it worked fine. (downloaded an ics file) Something odd about that chrome user.

In Firefox I end up on outofservice.lds.org all the time. In Chrome/Edge one call every 9min works -> subsequent calls end up in an empty page.

I have a feeling this may be related to some recent changes with outlook and accepted types of encryption, maybe the calendar server is using an older version?

You might try posting the http verson of the link into Outlook. It appears the purpose of using the webcal is to make the OS ask what you want to use to open it with.

Just did some testing with Outlook, my webserver and an ICS file. Seems that Outlook (2013 32bit) tries to open the file twice for one sync attempt: Would it be possible to temporarily remove the 9min throttling limit for testing, so we can rule out Outlook's "double-tap" as the reason for the problem?

s.sunke wrote:Would it be possible to lift the 9min throttling limit for testing?

That would be up to the developers. Right now, I'm sure they're slammed with all the changes that have been happening.

russellhltn wrote:That would be up to the developers. Right now, I'm sure they're slammed with all the changes that have been happening.

Fully understand that. Do the developers follow this forum or would I have to file a request somewhere?
I'm just curious whether the 9min limit was newly introduced on the server side or Microsoft changed something about the way Outlook performs it's sync.

About Google: I just deleted and re-added the calendar URL in my google calendar -> not working anymore (empty calendar).

s.sunke wrote:Fully understand that. Do the developers follow this forum or would I have to file a request somewhere?

Some developers do visit here, but I'm not sure what their scope is. You can submit feedback to indicate that it's not working with Outlook and suggest that it's the throttle.

s.sunke wrote:I'm just curious whether the 9min limit was newly introduced on the server side or Microsoft changed something about the way Outlook performs it's sync.

Six years at least. 9 minute sync throttle thread

s.sunke wrote:About Google: I just deleted and re-added the calendar URL in my google calendar -> not working anymore (empty calendar).

Has it been more than 9 minutes since you tried to sync with Outlook?

russellhltn wrote:

s.sunke wrote:About Google: I just deleted and re-added the calendar URL in my google calendar -> not working anymore (empty calendar).

Has it been more than 9 minutes since you tried to sync with Outlook?

It has been >9min.


I keep getting more reports from members in our ward that their Outlook sync has stopped working. Since many of them rely on the Outlook it would be great if somebody could look into this?

One thing bothering me is that I'd think we'd get a lot more posts if everyone's Outlook failed. I'm thinking it might be a data issue in one of your unit's calendars. We've seen that problem before. As a test, you might try downloading the ICS file manually (paste the http link in the web browser) and see if Outlook will accept the ICS file.

russellhltn wrote:One thing bothering me is that I'd think we'd get a lot more posts if everyone's Outlook failed. I'm thinking it might be a data issue in one of your unit's calendars. We've seen that problem before. As a test, you might try downloading the ICS file manually (paste the http link in the web browser) and see if Outlook will accept the ICS file.

You're right! I'd expect more posts, too. I'll ask in our ward to see if more people are affected.

I've downloaded the ICS-file and uploaded it to one of my servers. That file works perfectly in Outlook, so we can exclude any issue with the calendar data itself.

We found a network issue that was blocking syncs. It was fixed yesterday. It should be working again. Sorry this took so long, it was puzzling.

CrockettDR wrote:We found a network issue that was blocking syncs. It was fixed yesterday. It should be working again. Sorry this took so long, it was puzzling.

Sync works great again! Thanks for your help, we appreciate your support!

No luck trying webcal:// vs webcals://

Not seeing anything specific in the outlook logs either.