Austin Govella's dashboard

Rael Dornfest replied on July 17, 2008 00:41 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Hi Darin,

I've not used Microsoft Calendar on Vista in a while, but can see if I can get it up and running again and give it a whirl. Can you do me one favor though and either download and import or subscribe to one of the iCal files over at http://icalshare.com/ (to choose one source randomly) and see if it works better for you?

Rael

A comment on the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Austin, Just want to thank you for hanging in with me. I really appreciated your ablity to articulate the problem so clearly. I really share your sentiment on how dependent I am on this program. I guess like a human assistant Sandy can come "down with something" and then the question becomes 'What now?" Raul, trust me I am the Queen of reboot. When in doubt--refresh! So maybe that did make it "all better." But thanks for your help. I see others below that might need you as well! – Kb, on July 17, 2008 00:16

Darin replied on July 16, 2008 23:56 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Rael,

I'm having a similar issue and the fix above didn't work. I'm using Microsoft Calendar on Vista Home Premium. When I try to download the calendar file, I get the following error:

Bad file formatting encountered. Only iCalendar files that conform to the RFC2445 specification are supported.

Similar message appears when I try to Subscribe instead.

Thoughts?

Darin

Rael Dornfest replied on July 16, 2008 17:34 to the problem "Sandy calendar does not work with Google Calendar" in I want Sandy:

Howdy, Alex!

This has been solved for Austin et al using some troubleshooting instructions I posted at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... .

Please do give that a whirl and let us know how you get on (please post to that discussion thread so that we can consolidate a little so as to help out the next person who might run into trouble).

—R

Rael Dornfest replied on July 16, 2008 17:32 to the question "Outlook rejecting Sandy's calender link." in I want Sandy:

Howdy!

As a quick redux, both Kb and Austin are up and running using the trouble-shooting instructions I posted at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... .

If you encounter the same (or seemingly the same) problem they did, please give that a whirl first. If that doesn't do the trick, please re-open the conversation and we'll be glad to help you out.

—R

A comment on the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

I can hear you scratching your head from here, Kevin ;-). I don't know that this was a bug in the On/Off switch for private iCalendar feeds — I tried various combinations of On>On, On>Off, Off>Off, Off>On>On, etc and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. It was most likely a case of trying enough things in a row that the sequence became over-complicated. That said, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it (and am more than happy to be wrong and hunt down a bug if someone runs into this again). As for clicking the "download" link first, that should have had no affect at all — they use the very same back-end bits. I included that in the instructions only to make sure it wasn't subscription that was the issue. As always, I much appreciate all the help you provided these folks (Kb and Austin, note that Kevin1 is a helpful bystander). —R – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 17:25

Rael Dornfest replied on July 16, 2008 17:20 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Howdy, folks!

As a quick redux, the instructions at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... above seem to have done the trick. So if you run into the same problem as these folks, please do run through those first (even if you believe you've hit all the steps in the right order before).

—R

A comment on the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Hey Austin! I'm so glad to hear this is working for you too. Nothing at all changed on the back-end — my guess is that in the process of attempting to switch the feed on and off and trying the various download and subscribe links resulted in bamboozlement, the only solution for which is to do something like clicking "On" and then "Save" even if it seems to already be so so that you can get back into alignment with what you were sure you already did and proceed from there. I can't tell you how many times its just this sort of twist on trouble-shooting that makes it all better (I did many hours of telephone support for the Internet Service Provider I was involved with building a few years back and was amazed at how often "unplug the modem — even if you've already turned off the switch on the top" worked wonders. Anyhow.. glad to have you back among the iCalendar'd. —R – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 17:18

A comment on the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

I'm so glad to know that you're up and running — and sorry you had such a round-and-round beforehand. You're very welcome! – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 17:13

kevin1 replied on July 16, 2008 16:36 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

I'm glad the problem was fixed for you guys. It is confusing though, the instructions to fix the problem don't seem to be very different than what you've tried previously.

Going over the instructions in detail, I noticed two possible differences:

1) Turn on the private calendar feed *again*, without turning it off.
I recall another bug somewhere that had the same fix. Do it twice in a row.

2) Click on the "download" link first.
It's possible that clicking on the "http" link and downloading the *ics file first (before using the "webcal" lnk) helped in some manner.

Austin Govella replied on July 16, 2008 14:14 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Works here, too. Thank you, thank you. I didn't realize how much I depended on Sandy until the calendar stopped working.

For future trouble-shooting, was something changed on the backend? We tried turning the private feeds on and off (and resetting the address) previously.

Just curious.

A comment on the discussion "Sandy's doing well" in I want Sandy:

just a standard RSS aggregator was all i had in mind. I wouldn't expect Atom vs. non-atom would make a huge difference for that. – benbanjo, on July 16, 2008 14:09

A comment on the discussion "Sandy's doing well" in I want Sandy:

Hi Kb. I'm sorry you're frustrated. I followed up just a moment ago to both of the topic threads you started on this subject. Please take a gander in particular at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy/topics/calender_link_broken_help#reply_535709 . – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 09:44

Kb replied on July 16, 2008 09:42 to the question "Outlook rejecting Sandy's calender link." in I want Sandy:

Calender working like a charm! Austin, I hope you have the same luck!!

A comment on the discussion "Sandy's doing well" in I want Sandy:

Thanks for the praise, Ben! For details on Sandy's RSS feeds, see http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds#rss_feeds – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 09:42

A comment on the discussion "Sandy's doing well" in I want Sandy:

Thanks for the kind words, Will! – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 09:41

A comment on the discussion "Sandy's doing well" in I want Sandy:

Austin, I followed up on your query about Outlook rejecting the calendar link at the above-mentioned URL. – Rael Dornfest, on July 16, 2008 09:40

Kb replied on July 16, 2008 09:25 to the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

OH MY GOODNESS!! I think we solved the problem. My calender is working. The download worked-it did not the last time I tried but it did this time!! Getting up at 4:30 Chicago time and catching Raul on the computer seemed to have solved the problem. THANK YOU!!

A comment on the problem "CALENDER LINK BROKEN!! HELP" in I want Sandy:

Thanks Rael. Maybe Austin will have better luck but I have been doing what you just suggested from the start of the problem. I have taken these same steps many times over. Maybe Austin can help here--since he describes the problem so much better than I do. I mean am I missing something really obvious here?Aren't these rather obvious steps--to the problem, – Kb, on July 16, 2008 09:15

Rael Dornfest replied on July 16, 2008 09:12 to the question "Outlook rejecting Sandy's calender link." in I want Sandy:

Hi folks!

Kb, I just ran across the fork of this thread at http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and answered the issue there.

I'm guessing you're having the same trouble as Austin. Can you take a gander at the instructions included in that post and give it a whirl?

Rael