Calendar subscription does not refresh

Question

In outlook.com I subscribed to my TripIt calendar feed. In outlook.com I went to Import > Subscribe, and entered the ical feed URL that I got from TripIt. The URL looks like this (redacted for privacy reasons): https://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/private/<<long id here>>/tripit.ics. The initial import worked perfectly and all the events from TripIt show as expected in my outlook.com calendar.

However, outlook.com has not tried to refresh the feed for two days now, and, consequently, changes are not shown in outlook.com. Now, other software in which I imported the exact same feed, e.g. the OS X calendar app and my Google calendar, do see the updates just fine. Only outlook.com does not refresh the feed, at least not in over 48 hours now.

Answer 1

Hi Alix Xedjhidee,

thank you for your offer to look into this. In the meantime I realised that I am not the only person who has this problem. This seems to be so common and so obviously related that the "related threads" feature on this site now picks up multiple threads that describe my problem.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/mail-calendar/how-to-change-subscribed-calendar-refresh-interval/15a8a0d1-368e-4efb-92ba-c1012eef5792

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/hotmail-calendar/subscribed-calendar-refresh-time/54cb097e-47c1-4c39-a1ec-758d988e8122

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/hotmail-calendar/subscribed-ical-refresh-issue/2e18f58e-a3b6-4a62-9733-70aeaa32612a

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/mail-calendar/subscribed-calendar-is-not-updating-on-outlookcom/4b7484f1-a9b1-4e66-9cda-f4a7c7e1daca

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/hotmail-calendar/not-able-to-manually-refreshsync-a-bookeocom-ical/6f067444-a3a2-4ab5-aad4-558e1046d46c

My understanding from reading these threads is that this is a general problem for a basically all third party subscriptions in Outlook.com. Also, my feed is a private feed of my personal travel schedule, and I am not inclined to hand it over for diagnostics. I will send you a screenshot that shows the calendar settings, with the feed URL blurred, so that you can see what I am doing. The screenshot also shows that the last refresh was on May 11 8:32pm, almost 4 days ago, and that there is no button to refresh the calendar manually.

Please, before you now respond along the lines of "well, if you don't share your feed we can't help you", do consider how many people have encountered this problem. This is not a problem with a specific user or feed. In fact, in some of the threads mentioned above users say that they did share their feed details in response to similar requests, and nothing came of it. I think it is pretty clear at this stage that there's a problem with Outlook.com itself.

And to be specific, the problem is that Outlook.com is retrieving updates from third-party feeds only very infrequently, on the order of hours or even days, when other systems that subscribe to the exact same third-party feeds can and do retrieve updates within minutes.

At this stage, it would be greatly appreciated if somebody from Microsoft could confirm the issue exist, rather than assume/pretend it's all the users' or third-parties' fault; it is not. It would also be fantastic if we could get a indication of whether a fix is planned. And, lastly, failing all that, it would be nice to know at least how often we can expect that Outlook.com retrieves updates from third-party feeds.

Answer 2

Thank you. And, yes, I do need further assistance. You write that "Outlook.com Calendar is not responsible for the updates on a third party subscribed calendar". This does not make sense to me. With such feeds, the third party system that provides the feed is passive. It sits there and provides the feed upon request. It is up to the calendar applications, like outlook.com, to actually retrieve the feed at regular intervals. So, if not outlook.com, who else should  be responsible that updates on a subscribed calendar are reflected on an outlook.com calendar?

I hope that we can agree that outlook.com must retrieve the data from the third party system. And, as I stated above, it can actually do it. However, outlook.com only does request the data very infrequently. My question is whether you can please let me know what kind of refresh rate I can expect on outlook.com? How often does outlook.com pull calendar events from third party feeds? Is it normal that it only requests data once in 80 hours?

Answer 3

Hi MSTeam,

Any update on a fix for this?

I found it is possible to sync internet calendars via Google Calendar, is this the only option open to us i.e. moving to Google or IS there a fix in the pipeline from Microsoft?

Many thanks

John

Answer 4

This workaround is successful for me.  I use Office 2013 and am syncing my gmail / google calendar.

To trick Outlook into refreshing an Internet Calendar, go to

File:: Account Settings:: Account Settings (button):: Internet Calendars (tab)

Then choose the calendar you wish to refresh, click "Change...", stick a space in the description (or remove a space), then click OK.

Your calendar should now be refreshed.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Hello ErikDoe,

Let me help you further with your concern. I understand that you have tried re-adding  the calendar but it seems that this does not make any difference. You also noticed that it will take some time to have the subscribed calendar refresh on Outlook.com.

Please be informed that Outlook.com Calendar is not responsible for the updates on a third party subscribed calendar. What I can suggest is you contact the calendar publisher and inform this to them.

Let us know if you need further assistance.

Thank you.