Calendar not importing .ics

I too am having this problem with some .ics files. None of the workarounds in this thread work for me. I have to manually enter the appointment into my calendar.

When I quicklook, the event shows up with a gray background with a dotted border...is it possible this is some sort of cateogry that conflicts with my icloud calendars, hence I don't see it?

I'm also having this problem, specifically I'm trying to import an .ics file from iCal v2.0 on my old PB G4 (yes, I was overdue for an update!)

Its not just a Mavericks problem because I'm using Mountain Lion 10.8.5 and its not just a question of switching to the calendar.app (see mrabne's post) because that also doesn't work for me.

This isn't an iCloud problem for me as I don't use that, nor do I receive .ics files from others. I'm just trying to transfer my old information to my new computer!

Interestingly enough, its such a basic inherent problem that when I export the (empty) Work calendar from Calendar v6 and then try to reimport it right back into the same program, it says it can't read that .ics file either!

I can't find any .ics files but the one for Timezone so I don't think that's the issue.

I'm no crack, just a normal user. What am I missing? What can I try doing to solve this?

This is very frustrating. After all this money spent on a new macbook, you would think my loyalty would be rewarded with some continuity and the ability to transfer such basic information as a calendar into a newer version of the very same program. This is one of the many issues I've had as I haven't been able to simply migrate because Tiger is already too old to bother making compatible even for a migration. Apple's lesson: Keep buying new (buggy) products and feeding the money machine or you'll be permanently cut off!

Here's a workaround that's worked very well for me, which is based on the fact that the gmail app can handle outlook invites:

1. Create a rule that sends a copy of all invitation requests to your gmail account

2. Generate a link to your gmail calendar to be used for sharing

3. Use that link to add a calendar to your iCloud account, which will sync with your gmail calendar

4. Open your calendar invite from the gmail app. When you accept the invite it will notify the sender, the event will be added to your gmail calendar and then automatically be added to your IOS calendar.

Once setup properly it works very smoothly. Hope that helps.

Hi Lonnie,

I tried that on 10.8.5 today a couple times and it worked for me! My test include both calendar invitations and a meeting cancellation notice. Interestingly enough, some of these .ics files are not working on my iPhone. But that is obviously a different thread.

Thanks so much for the suggestion! It would be very nice if Apple fixed this, but I can live with your workaround...

Jeffery

Same problem!!

I try to remove all .ics files from ~/Library/Mail Downloads/, but I use OS X 10.9 (yes, several years later, we are bstill talking about the same bug... thanks Apple!) and the ~/Library/Mail Downloads/ don't have any .ics files. I deleated any thing in that folder anyway... but didn't solve the problem.

I talked to Apple support and they were not aware of the issue...!!!!!! Whaaaaaat!

I believe I have solved everyone's problem with this...assuming that people still have the problem. Anyway, the problem is that the appointment in the ICS file is outside of the Day Starts Time and Day Ends Time. If you modify those times in your preferences to include 24 hours or a reasonable time, you should be able to double-click the ics file or drag it to your calendar successfully.

Nope, that did not solve it for me. Actually, I'm not even sure what you're talking about, but I changed my preferences to 24 hour time, and it didn't fix it.

This is a .ics file my daughter got from her place of work, her residency schedule for the whole year. I've looked at it using TextWrangler, and can read the dates from that. iOS 7 kind of reads it, but it misses a lot of the information that's in the file. Somehow my daughter can read it, probably because she doesn't keep her MacBook up to date.

From reading this thread, I suspect with each update, Apple makes .ics files more and more difficult to read. The developers come to this thread to find out which hole to close next. As a developer, just looking at the format of the file, it seems simple enough that I could write something that would read and format it into a calendar for me. Thanks, Apple!

I found out how to do this. Log into your Google account on Chrome. Click on the icon with nine squares, and select Calendar. Since this was my daughter's work schedule, I clicked on the down arrow next to My Calendars and created a new calendar. Then I clicked on the down arrow next to Other Calendars, selected Import Calendar, selected the .ics file using the Choose File button, selected the target calendar, clicked Import, et voila! Now I have my daughter's schedule available to me on my Mac as well as my PC, my iPhone, and my iPad.

BAM!

Same here, Mavericks but been this way for a while. Click .ics attachment, iCal opens and does... nothing. Opening the attachment in a text editor, it very clearly had "STATUS: CANCELLED" so this was a cancellation. Tested with another cancellation - same result. Maybe this particular field isn't part of the spec? But it would sure be nice if someone at Apple could take five minutes to add some code to parse that field and at least provide a popup box or something notifying it was a cancellation; doing absolutely nothing is terribly unintuitive and unsettling to the user.

For me the problem seems to have been that the .ics file I was trying to import was set as VERSION: 1.0. I noticed that imports that DID work were VERSION: 2.0. So, I edited the content of the ics file to read version 2.0 and it imported properly.

Try looking at this thread. It looks like Apple removed some support for Sync services (that Outlook needs) to move to different methods.

outlook calendar sync with Ical mavericks, outlook calendar sync with Ical maverik

Thanks for this simple solution, this worked for me. meeting.ics files emailed to me from a client using Outlook never used to change anything in my iCal which was really frustrating. Changing to open the file type with calendar.app worked a treat.

Phil,

I tried every fix in this thread, nothing worked. Then I tried your fix. Editing the version to 2.0 worked !!!

How do we get your post moved to the top to save everyone else wasted time?

Thanks
Phil.

I had a similar problem and think I just solved it!

- Go to Mail > Preferences and switch "Add Invitiations to Calendar" to Never and close the Preferences window.

- Go again to Mail > Preferences and switch "Add Invitiations to Calendar" to Always and close the Preferences window.

Previously Google Calendar invites coming in email weren't getting added, and manually clicking them would just put focus on Calendar but nothing would happen. After doing the above, I can now click on invite.ics and they'll appear in Calendar, and just forwarded myself a couple emails with invites attached and they're showing up in the Calendar inbox icon. Back to normal!

Well, this seemed to work but now I think it was a coincidence. I found another thread below where someone had figured it was if there were non-alphabetical characters in the Location field. I checked, and the one I couldn't open today had a dash in the location. Removed that with a text editor, saved it, and it worked! Sender was Outlook, so not sure which ics creators are a factor. This did not seem to be a problem when creating an ics in Calendar with a dash in the location field, as I could reopen those just fine. Go figure...

iCal not accepting windows ".ics" invitations since enabling iCloud..