.ics file date and time not matching the invitation date and time

[Itsolutionz]

I have never seen this before, so any ideas are welcome…when scheduling a meeting, i send out the invitation to attendees as an email, but i am seeing the attached ics file with a date and time different from what is shown on the text of the email…very confusing! This is only happening from meetings scheduled on a particular apple device (not on my other devices). Thoughts?

[colegs]

@Itsolutionz how far off is the time in the .ics file?  I thought that it was in UTC time, but if you only see this on 1 device, that would not make sense.  

[Itsolutionz]

See the attached PDF file which shows an screen scan of both the meeting invitation and the .ics file--the times do not match (ics shows 8:13 AM while the meeting is scheduled for 5PM . Really weird!

[colegs]

Ok, that is very bizarre!  Can you please go into your friend's iPad's setting, and under General > Date & Time, can you verify that the time is set automatically, and the clock is showing the correct time? 

I could see it being a time zone thing if the minutes were the same but the hours were different, but it is not a computational problem if the minutes are off.

[Itsolutionz]

Yes, that is the logical setting to check, and I did call them...we are both on the west coast, and the Automatic setting is chosen with the default 'Cupertino' displayed in the Time Zone field. So, all is copacetic as far as time and date settings. It almost appears as if the ics file is presenting the time she physically set up the scheduled meeting (clicked the Save button) rather than the actual scheduled meeting time. Bizarre is an accurate word!

[colegs]

Have you ever watched her as she scheduled to see if she is doing anything weird?  If the clock is right, then your thought that it is using the create time sounds possible, but I am not sure how Zoom or the Calendar would confuse the booking time with the meeting time...

[Itsolutionz]

I have actually scheduled meetings on her iPad as a test. On one occasion, I was able to create an invitation with a calendar reference that agreed with the start time, but on another occasions I was able to verify the issue with conflicting times. I can only imagine that there are physical gremlins crammed into her device (I don't think it's the Russians, this time). Unless I can find someone else who has seen this same behavior, my advice to her will be to delete the accompanying ics file from her invitations! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Saul.

[colegs]

Yeah, only other option would be to uninstall and reinstall in case there is a problem with the application, but I definitely have not heard of something like this before.  Would be interested if anyone else comes up with ideas.

[Itsolutionz]

Okay, I have it figured out! The issue...my friends were scheduling a meeting properly, after which they 'Saved' the meeting in the normal way. Then, to create email invitations, they selected the 'Meetings' icon and immediately clicked on the  'Copy Invitation' button WITHOUT selecting the Scheduled meeting from the upcoming meetings pane to the left. This attaches an ics file to the email with a time set to the minute that they clicked the Copy Invitation button rather than the time for a scheduled meeting. The solution for them is to first click the scheduled meeting from the upcoming meetings list and then (only then) select the Copy Invitation button. Now all is copasetic. I guess I had to watch them thru the entire process to see what was happening. Thanks for your patience in all this, Saul.

[colegs]

So glad you found it!  As frustrating as it was for you, I am sure the satisfaction of finding it is huge!