Calendar sync with google - time zone data is incorrect

[Nicholas Perkins]

Binary package hint: evolution

I have selected a Google calendar to sync with Evolution. However the events are being marked as having a timezone of GMT so Evolution is offseting the start and end times accordingly. The correct timezone is set in my google calendar.

Using Ubuntu 10.10 64bit.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: evolution 2.30.3-1ubuntu7.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Jan 4 01:36:59 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evolution
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution

[quequotion (quequotion)]

This bug is NOT a duplicate of bug 290368 and it is NOT solved.

This is not the result of syncing a calendar across several machines in different time zones.

Google Calendar events are not synced to the correct time zone as set by the system time, the evolution settings, or the Google Calendar settings.

The events are synced as though they were set in GMT, arbitrarily.

[quequotion (quequotion)]

Ok.... here's what I found:

Google Calendar is significantly smarter than Evolution 2.30.

I usually enter events in my calendar through an iPhone and occasionally directly by Google Calendar's page.

In either case, I don't need to specify a timezone for each individual appointment.

Since I enter the appointments from a device set to JST, in a calendar set to JST, in a location that conforms to JST, Google Calendar makes appointments in JST.

Evolution 2.30 however, assumes that appointments in a JST calendar, on a JST device, in a location that conforms to JST, but without an explicit timezone specification, are GMT.

This issue can be resolved by adding a timezone specification to each and every appointment in your Google Calendar.

Good news: Evolution 2.32 seems a bit smarter. Although it initially shows the same behavior, it seems to resync appointments to the correct time zone after a logout. Unfortunately 2.32 is not fully compatible with Maverick; it won't be able to send events to gnome-panel 2.30, and upgrading the entire distribution to Natty should be less painful that calculating the list of backported dependencies to get it all working in Maverick.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the stable release - Oneiric Ocelot. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Ryan Hoover (rhoover84)]

I do not believe this is an Ubuntu issue, or a bug, for that matter. I had the same problem with my Google/Evolution calendar sync. This is what fixed the problem for me:

-Edit > Preferences > Calendar and Tasks

-Uncheck "Use system time zone (UTC)"

-Select your time zone in the next field (Click the Select button to the right)

This solved the issue for me. If I misunderstood your post, however, please let me know.

[Tom G (tagra123)]

I can confirm that Ryan's Solution worked.

-Edit > Preferences > Calendar and Tasks

-Uncheck "Use system time zone (UTC)"

-Select your time zone in the next field (Click the Select button to the right)

I agree that this may not a bug but could use some documentation since the defaults result in the applications not behaving as expected.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for evolution (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]