Failing to import generated ics file to google calendar and outlook

Question

I'm trying to generate ics-files, see sample here: http://deap.nu/myprogram.ics

It validates alright here: https://icalendar.org/validator.html but when trying to import it into a google calendar I get the message

"Failed to import events: Unable to process your ical/CSV file."

which isn't very informative. I've tried to slim the file down, and googled a lot but can't find whats wrong. Any input on this is appreciated.

Importing to outlook doesn't work either.

Answer 1

I realize this is an old post, but I'm adding this in to help others that might run into issues trying to import an .ics file.

As far as Google Calendar, the errors are not descriptive or outright misleading. I had a permissions error, but that was due to a UID (Unique Event ID) being in the file. As described below from Google's Calendar Community Forum, the solution was to remove that line from the file, save it, then try to import it again. It worked!

some of Google Calendar's error messages are not to be taken at face value... this particular error often means that your UIDs (unique event IDs) are not formatted to Google Calendar's liking, so my question is where was this ics file generated?

I would try opening the file in a good text editor, and deleting every line starting with UID as they are not needed for inserting new events, and will cause this error if not formatted correctly.

Answer 2

After some sleep and more trial and error I managed to pinpoint the problem to the Organizer elements in the .ics file. So I removed them for now, adding the information to the description instead.