outlook supports floating time for all-day events only spreading over multiple days

Question

I am trying to create a .ics file for an event that spreads over 5 days. An example of the .ics content is found below:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:BestMedTourDeBoland
DTSTART:20150302T000000
DTEND:20150306T230000
SUMMARY:Bestmed Tour De Boland
PRIORITY:3
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

As you can see the start date is set for 02 March and spans until the end of 06 March. When I import the .ics file I get the "outlook supports floating time for all-day events only" message. Any help on fixing this please?

Answer 1

It is telling you the problem: Don't use the floating time format for multi day events. Stick a Z after the DTSTART for UTC time or add a timezone identifier.

RFC 5545 explains the date format options: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5545#page-33 or specifically on floating: http://icalevents.com/2064-ical-local-or-floating-date-times/

Example:

`DTSTART:20100202T151500Z`

or with timezone id:

DTSTART;TZID=”America/New_York”:20080807T090000