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Subscribing via Google Calendar no longer working

aebaxter says:
I was using this feature previously without a problem, but it seems to have stopped working.

I've followed your instructions here:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/icalendar/googlecalendar.rtm

My tasks aren't appearing on my calendar. I also tried unsubscribing, resetting the private URLs, and resubscribing.

Is there any trouble on the RTM end, or is it a gcal problem?

Thanks

- Al
Posted at 10:36pm on September 8, 2008
(closed account) says:
Same with me. My RTM tasks are not showing up in Google Calendar all of a sudden.

Richard
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
For iCalendar subscription issues, I'd recommend reporting this to Google Calendar so that they're aware there's an issue with your Calendar account. You can contact them directly or via their Google Group.

Unfortunately there isn't anything we can do on our end if Google Calendar isn't updating the iCalendar subscriptions properly, sorry. :(
Posted 15 years ago
jonathanmstein says:
I may be wrong but I believe this is a RTM issue. I set up my RTM account today for the first time, added several tasks and then set up support to export to igoogle, google calendar and gmail. Everything worked. I then went and added a second batch of tasks to RTM. The second batch showed up in gmail and igoogle but not in google calendar. I then removed my RTM calendar from google calendar and then added it again. After adding it a second time, ONLY the first batch of tasks showed up. The second batch was still missing.

I'd love to get this to work, but it looks like all my efforts to get organized are going towards setting up a system rather than getting things done.
Posted 15 years ago
christopher.smith says:
I'm having the same problems with this feature Google Calendar will not recognize the iCal feed.

I'd really like this to be fixed so I can sync everything to my BlackBerry Calendar.

Also, since I'm a paying customer, is it really my responsibility to figure this out? Or should RTM contact Google and hash things out?
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
I'm also seeing this problem, but with only one of the two lists I'm importing into my Google calendar via iCal.
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Everything is working fine on our end with iCalendar subscriptions -- if you're experience a problem with any third-party not adding the subscription properly (or not updating it once it's successfully added), you'll need to report this to the third-party (in this case, Google Calendar).

I'd recommend contacting the Google Calendar folks, either directly or via their Google Group, so that they're aware there's an issue with your Google Calendar account.

Unfortunately we're not able to provide support for third-party services/applications, sorry.
Posted 15 years ago
aebaxter says:
That contact link isn't a direct link to a contact form, btw.

I've posted to the Google Group. I guess I'll just have to wait on their answer. I'm still having this problem and it seems like there's no solution in sight.
Posted 15 years ago
gregdavis.ca says:
same problem
Posted 15 years ago
christopher.smith says:
So, according to Google this seems to be an RTM issue and according to RTM this is a Google issue. How annoying. And no real response from either entities. Since I don't pay anything at Google I suppose that's alright, but paying for a "Pro" account here, I would think that RTM would figure something out...
Posted 15 years ago
christopher.smith says:
Also, Outlook does not even work with the iCal.
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
I just wanted to note that this is not an issue that's specific to RTM iCalendar feeds; from a quick search on the Google Calendar group, and there are other people reporting that their non-RTM iCalendar subscriptions aren't updating either in Google Calendar. These people report that iCalendar files on their own servers and MobileMe aren't updating, so it would seem there is something weird going on with iCalendar subscriptions in general with Google Calendar.

From the Google Calendar help page:

"Currently, calendar feeds are automatically updated by Google Calendar every few hours. We understand that some users want to have the ability to refresh the calendars they added manually and we are exploring various ways to enable this.

If the calendar you're subscribing to using Google Calendar isn't refreshed after 24 hours, please send us the calendar address and the detail of the problem so that we can investigate."

So as I mentioned before, I'd recommend contacting the Google Calendar folks (as they advise in the above text from their help page) so that they're aware there's an issue with iCalendar subscriptions in your Google Calendar account. I'm not sure how they want people to contact them, but it seems like their Google Group is the best way to do this if their contact page doesn't provide a contact method.

Hope this helps!
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
It might not be specific to RTM feeds, and maybe it really is Google's fault, but I/we still have a problem and would really appreciate it if you could help us out.

As I mentioned earlier, I have two Google calendar subscriptions, one of which has stopped working, the other of which is still just fine. They'd very likely be a useful test case at least for identifying the problem.
Posted 15 years ago
arvid says:
Hi milessabin,

we are limited to what we can do. We have seen this happening multiple times and even without changing anything on our side, the problem was solved within a couple of hours. Opening a similar link you post to Google Calendar in Calendar software show us that the link is working.

Regards,

Arvid


Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
milessabin, the problem is that, according to all reports, Google Calendar's iCalendar subscription functionality isn't working in general.

There is really nothing that we can do if Google Calendar are experiencing an outage with iCalendar subscriptions, no more than we could help if Google Reader experienced an outage and wasn't updating some RSS feeds (which happen to include RTM feeds).

We have investigated on our end to make sure there are no problems with our system (this is also confirmed by the fact that no users of other calendar software such as iCal have reported problems with their subscriptions, and there are a lot of iCal users out there!).

As I mentioned above, Google Calendar users with non-RTM iCalendar feeds have reported that their iCalendar subscriptions aren't working either, confirming that it's a general problem with subscriptions in Google Calendar.

Google Calendar advises users to contact them if they have problems with iCalendar subscriptions not refreshing. As I said above, I'd recommend doing just that, so that they're aware there's an issue with iCalendar subscriptions in your Google Calendar account.

We're not part of Google; if you're experiencing a problem with a Google product, they're the only ones who can resolve this issue for you -- I would strongly recommend getting in touch with them.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help!
Posted 15 years ago
yone.likelifood says:
I have same problem long time.
But now It works to do well.
I changed format of date.
2008/12/31 or 12/31/2008

I make gcal and RTM format same.
And then It works well maybe.

Soryy poor English.
And I am not sure.
Posted 15 years ago
kecloud says:
Same here. Google says it's an RTM problem, RTM says it's a Google problem. Considering we are all customers to both you would think one of the two would start trying to solve the problem instead of pointing fingers.

The only reason I signed up for RTM was so I could sync calendars and make my life easier. Why is no one helping with this?

So much for getting organized
Posted 15 years ago
ranbarton Power Poster says:
I'm curious, kecloud - you indicate you are a customer and yet I don't see a Pro badge next to your user name. You have already had Emily reply on this topic repeatedly, and since there are so many RTM users for whom this is working, I think her suggestion that this issue does not reside on RTM's side of the fence is defensible.

Google creates wonderful tools, but trying to obtain support for them is often next to impossible. Sadly, when we use free tools, that's part of the bargain. I think the Google Calendar Google Group is going to be your best bet.
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
Are they not updating or just updating a lot slower than you want? It takes hours for GCal to refresh the feeds and google has stated as much. The best bet may be 30 boxes if you want a calendar where you can manually refresh feeds.
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
OK. So now my RTM lists arent updating on either Google Calendar *or* the Windows Live Calendar. What is going on here?
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
Giving up on GCal. Windows Live Calendar finally updated with my event feed but GCal still hasn't.
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
I was just in the process of opening a ticket with Google about this (I have a "premium", ie. paid for, Google apps account) and was pasting the webcal URLs into the problem description box when I noticed something ...

I mentioned earlier that I had one RTM calendar feed which worked and one which didn't. It turned out that the one which worked was using the iCalendar (Events) URL from the list page whereas the one which didn't was using the plain iCalendar URL (you can spot the difference by the presence of "/events/" fairly early in the URL before "?tok=".

Switching the non-functional feed over to using the iCalendar (Events) URL solved the problem for me and I now have two working feeds on my Google calendar.

Hopefully this will also solve the problem for the others who've been experiencing it.

Anyhow, I'm not particular impressed with RTMs "support" on this. If someone else can confirm that this sorts things out for them, then maybe emily can at least find the time to post a new FAQ.
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi Miles,

I'm very sorry for the confusion. :(

I think the trouble might've been my misunderstanding of your previous report where you indicated that one feed had "stopped working" but the other was "still just fine". I assumed (incorrectly, it seems :( that this meant both your feeds had been updating successfully previously -- which would have meant you were experiencing the problem reported here by others with Google Calendar's iCalendar subscription functionality not working in general (a feed that had worked before but suddenly stopped working was one of the symptoms of this).

If anyone is still experiencing problems with iCalendar subscriptions in Google Calendar, there's a topic in the Google Calendar Google Group about the issue, where Becky from Google has requested more information from those Google Calendar users affected.

For anyone who'd like to just double check to make sure they're subscribing to the correct feed, we have instructions on subscribing in Google Calendar available. For the future, we'll add some troubleshooting info to the FAQ as well to help people to check that they're subscribing to the correct feed.
Posted 15 years ago
wernst says:
I'm going to look into milessabin's details for my links and see if there's anything to it. My feeds top Google Calendar stopped working about 3 weeks ago, and since I use GooSync to sync the GCal to my Treo, it's kind of a problem.

Posted 15 years ago
tim.skoczen says:
I was working on a similar problem, and found this on the google groups site: http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-bugs/msg/4defa15c09f69a63

For me, the solution was 1) use the Ical (Events) feed, and 2) navigate directly to google Calendar. I was using the shortcut in the header of Gmail and the URL is slightly different. Try going to https://www.google.com/calendar/render

I will see if it continues to work.
Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
Hi emily,

No, you assumed correctly: I had two feeds which were working perfectly, then all of a sudden one of them stopped working, at around the same time as the start of this thread, which is when I first posted.

It looks as though you already have a FAQ about something related (ie. the one where you mention that some calendar apps don't accept todos, only events), so maybe what happened is that at around that time Google calendar stopped recognizing todos and started only recognizing events ... that would certainly explain what the behaviour I saw.

Whatever the explanation, I would have thought that my "one works, one doesn't" situation would have been a pretty useful test case for you to investigate ... hence my not being very impressed that you didn't.
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi Miles,

In the future, I would really recommend submitting a support query if you're experiencing a specific problem; this will ensure that we have the full details to investigate.

The problem you're now describing is an entirely different issue to the one that this topic is about.

The problem described by most of the posters above is that Google Calendar's iCalendar functionality wasn't working in general (in some cases, new events feeds couldn't be added, and existing events feeds wouldn't update). We did a whole bunch of testing around this issue to determine what was happening, which I described in multiple posts above.

The problem you're describing is subscribing to an incorrect URL (the non-events feed), and subsequently having the events not show in Google Calendar. To my knowledge, Google Calendar doesn't (and has never) supported subscribing to the non-events feeds (it can only handle feeds with events, thus the specific feed and instructions for this :) Given this, I can't explain how you would have had the non-events feed working correctly in Google Calendar previously (that would be a question for Google!).

Again, for anyone still experiencing the problem with Google Calendar's iCalendar subscriptions (and who has double checked to make sure they're subscribing to the correct URL), there's a topic in the Google Calendar Google Group about the issue, where Becky from Google has requested more information from those Google Calendar users affected.
Posted 15 years ago
wernst says:
An update: I myself definitely had the correct "events" feed URL for my two lists that go to GCal. I posted the details to Google Support as requested and got no response for a few days.

The feeds were still not updating.

I have since deleted the calenders in GCal and recreated them with the correct "ICal (events)" URLs. They immediately grabbed the list and displayed the events correctly in the calendar.

I've added a few new "test events" in RTM and will see if they appear in GCal as they used to. We shall see, and I'll post an update.
Posted 15 years ago
jeffisageek says:
I tried the method mentioned above from tim and seems to be working so far

For me, the solution was 1) use the Ical (Events) feed, and 2) navigate directly to google Calendar. I was using the shortcut in the header of Gmail and the URL is slightly different. Try going to https://www.google.com/calendar/render
Posted 15 years ago
jeffisageek says:
ok maybe i spoke to soon :)
Posted 15 years ago
wernst says:
well, re-adding the ical events feed to my gcal seems to have done the job. all of my new test events are showing up in gcal.

we shall see...
Posted 15 years ago
wernst says:
Well, I spoke too soon.

When I removed my test events two days ago from RTM, they still haven't been removed from my Google Calendar.

Darnit, this is gettingn beyond frustrating...
Posted 15 years ago
wernst says:
I've made a test feed for Google to play with. I've displayed it at the following new thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-bugs/browse_thread/thread/34b6e6a975757d2d#

I urge RTM users (and admins, for that matter) to follow along and chime in.

-Warr
Posted 15 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.