Google Calendar Import Time Zone Question

[BassClef]

Well..I love the new feature to be able to import my month's schedule into Google Calendar. It was easy to download the .ics file.

However, once it gets imported, it is all in UTC time. In other words, a trip that begins at 0900 CST shows as if begins at 0300 CST.

I have tried changing the Google Calendar time zone settings...a lot...but to no avail.

Whatever I set the Google Calendar to, it always shows the trip starting at 0300 - no matter what.

Does anyone know of a way to tell Google Calendar, "Hey, convert all those imported times (UTC) to my local time (CST)?"

Thanks.

 

[Neal Culiner]

Hello David,

Go to your Google Calendar and on the top right click Settings. You'll see the option to set your time zone.

 

[BassClef]

Yes....that is how to change the time zone for every one of the Calendars in Google Calendar. It changes all the sub-calendars under "My Calendars" on the left side of the screen. So now, my Flying Calendar is correct, but everything else is 6 hours off.

Oh well, apparently this is a known issue that Google hasn't fixed yet. I found a recent Washington Post article that discusses this very topic.

I ended up manually changing my flights to the correct time zone. Tedious, but it works until Google enables us to use different timezones for different calendars.

Anyway....I still like the feature.

 

[Neal Culiner]

Thanks for the info. Yes, the calendar integrations are very neat, we have it coming within the iPhone and iPad apps mid-December.

Glad you got it figured out.

 

[f9av8r]

I have found a way to import my trips into Google Calendar with correct local times by using MS Outlook 2007.

You must first export your trips using the schedule importer provided by NC Software to a .vcs file of your choice to be accessed by Outlook 2007.

Open an outlook calendar and make sure that you have your local time zone selected by going to Tools>>Options>>Preferences>>Calendar Options>>TimeZone and select your time zone.

Check mark to show an additional time zone and make it Zulu. Next swap time zones and then import the file you saved. This should place all trips exported from NC Software into Outlook 2007 into your calendar in local time. Then export this calendar to a .csv (Windows) file and save it.

Next, go to your Google Calendar and import this file and it should place each individual flight into your calendar (all in local times--so there is some discrepancy when traveling across multiple time zones.)

Hope this helps.