Entourage major calendar flaw

J

Josh D. Carlson

The following is part of a message I sent to Paul Berkowitz (the creator
of Entourage to iCal sync) which describes a problem I encountered when
trying to sync my iCal calendars to Entourage:

"I have a calendar group in iCal that mainly has recurring single day
all day events (100+) which I have no problem viewing in iCal. However,
when I use Entourage to iCal Sync and view the daily/weekly/monthly
calendars in Entourage these all day events are duplicated several times
during the week that they occur. The odd thing about this is that in the
Entourage "All Events" view these duplicates do not show up."

Paul says that this is a bug within Entourage and the way it handles
recurring events. Has anyone else ran into a situation such as this? If
so, have you been able to work around it?

Thanks,

Josh
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

The following is part of a message I sent to Paul Berkowitz (the creator
of Entourage to iCal sync) which describes a problem I encountered when
trying to sync my iCal calendars to Entourage:

"I have a calendar group in iCal that mainly has recurring single day
all day events (100+) which I have no problem viewing in iCal. However,
when I use Entourage to iCal Sync and view the daily/weekly/monthly
calendars in Entourage these all day events are duplicated several times
during the week that they occur. The odd thing about this is that in the
Entourage "All Events" view these duplicates do not show up."

Paul says that this is a bug within Entourage and the way it handles
recurring events. Has anyone else ran into a situation such as this? If
so, have you been able to work around it?
Click to expand...

Actually a couple of different things are conflated here. The only bug I
have found so far in Entourage 2004 related to this is that if you try to
make a recurring event:

Last day of the month
Last weekday of the month
Last weekend day of the month

you end up with an event that recurs Daily. That's a real Entourage bug.
(There is a workaround for "Last day of month": "31st of month", but not for
the other two. Also it's possible to make all three by AppleScript if you
know the the RFC for the recurrence string, which I don't think anyone here
knows except for me.)

Josh's daily events are I believe, due to a bug in iSync/iCal or 3rd-pty
(4th-party?) software using iSync. I think it creates a faulty or
inaccessible recurrence property for AppleScript, so when that sync over via
my script Entourage has to default to the standard recurrence, which is
daily. I've asked Josh to do a few tests in iCal to check on the details on
this bug. If I can work around it by script, I will. It's not an Entourage
bug, I'm 99% sure.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
J

Josh D. Carlson

Paul's suggestions and ideas have been quite helpful in fixing my problem. I
suggest all users of Entourage purchase his scripts. His support is worth
the price alone (and the scripts work well too!)

- josh
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I've asked Josh to do a few tests in iCal to check on the details on
this bug. If I can work around it by script, I will. It's not an Entourage
bug, I'm 99% sure.
Click to expand...

Well, it is a sort of Entourage bug after all. RFC 2445 4.3.10 which
determines such things says that when a "BYMONTHDAY=" part of the recurrence
rule is missing for a rule that should have one (MONTHLY or YEARLY) it
should get the month day from the original event by default. Entourage
doesn't do so - although it does do so for WEEKLY and YEARLY recurrences
missing BYMONTHDAY and BYDAY parts. Instead it does those daily repeats -
all wrong. Entourage always spells out the full recurrence string when
making one, which is good, but when importing from other apps which use the
defaults, it should do the right thing, and doesn't. I'm able to spell it
out for Entourage, however, in the script, and get the correct recurrence.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
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