Cannot duplicate Events, cannot Import ICS file.
Hello
My TB data spans decades, for emails, tasks & events [oh, & also contacts]. I've lost count of however many TB iterations / versions it's lived thru. It began life yonks ago in Win7, & lives now, for many years, in Linux.
For at least a couple of years, my Calendar has had this annoying problem. For many Events, but not all, it is just impossible to directly duplicate them. Both Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, & RMB-Copy RMB-Paste, simply do NOTHING [for it seems like the majority (but not entirety) of my Events].
Research lead me to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2015334 [my distro is #Arch not #Fedora, but IMO that's irrelevant]. I was galled to see that bug report was closed without action or solution; also that it was raised only with Redhat not actually Thunderbird.
In exasperation, recently i conceived this inefficient albeit effective workaround: for the target Event, RMB-ConvertTo-Task, then edit said new task to desired date for the intended duplicate, then convert said task to a new Event... then correct all the text formatting that was lost by this silly indirect process.
I've wondered if possibly the database has become corrupted somehow due to surviving all the historical TB version changes, to cause this duplication problem. So last night i thought i'd Export the Tasks & Events ICS file, then Import it into a clean TB profile elsewhere [in some vague hope that this process might magically "fix" any putative data corruption]. The Export nominally succeeded, being an 81 MB file. The Import failed every time, with the error msg per pic.
What is a frustrated TB user now supposed to do, please? [btw, current version is 102.10.1 (64-bit), in ArchLinux KDE Plasma].
MsDropbear மூலமாக திருத்தப்பட்டது
All Replies (6)
Hi MsDropbear
I don't see this issue on my Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu 22.04 and Thunderbird 102.11.0
1) I can import .ICS files exported from Google Calendar. I just tested this and it worked fine.
> 2) For at least a couple of years, my Calendar has had this annoying problem. For many Events, but not all, it is just impossible to directly duplicate them. Both Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, & RMB-Copy RMB-Paste, simply do NOTHING [for it seems like the majority (but not entirety) of my Events].
When I right click on an event all I see is: "Open", "ConvertTo" and "Delete Event". I am (not yet :-) ) a TB calendar expert but I don't think there is a duplicate event menu item
Not sure what steps you are following for 2) ? Could you please give us a detailed list of steps you are following here?
Please try Thunderbird Troubleshoot Mode (if you haven't already): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-mode-thunderbird
If that fixes the issue please let us know!
If it doesn't:
Please provide the following troubleshooting details to help us help you: Please let us know: your email provider e.g. gmail, your calendar provider e.g. google, what 3rd party software like add-ons, anti-virus or firewalls you are using
Cheers! ...Roland
Hello Roland, thanks for replying.
Pls correct me if wrong, but from parts of your post i sense a possibility you might be thinking that i'm alleging some global TB coding bug/s causing my problems, ie, that in such case logically other users would also experience the same problems. In fact, i'm absolutely not. I am specifically, & only, suspecting that my TB database might be somehow partially corrupted, & thence causing the problems documented in my OP.
Thus, your...
>I can import .ICS files exported from Google Calendar. I just tested this and it worked fine
...is, with respect, nice for you but irrelevant for me. Of course you can import, because i never alleged any global coding error, ergo as long as your ICS file is not corrupt, then naturally it imports. As my OP showed, including pic, my ICS file clearly is a problem. I would love to know how i can troubleshoot it, & ideally fix it.
Regarding your...
>When I right click on an event all I see is: "Open", "ConvertTo" and "Delete Event". I am (not yet :-) ) a TB calendar expert but I don't think there is a duplicate event menu item
...that's most surprising to me. Btw, i never asserted TB had a `Duplicate Event` context-menu item. What i said was...
>Both Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, & RMB-Copy RMB-Paste, simply do NOTHING [for it seems like the majority (but not entirety) of my Events].
...ie, the way to duplicate an event is to copy it, then paste it on the target day. Here's a pic of the context-menu, attached. I cannot understand how your context-menu is missing some of these options. Now, in preparation tonight for replying to you, i did more tests, & realised that i need to edit part of my OP. The now-wrong part is pasted immediately prior to this paragraph. The corrected replacement is...
>Both Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, & RMB-Copy RMB-Paste, simply do NOTHING [for it seems like only some of my Events, & those being older than several years].
In other words, it now seems that duplicating any of my events from the past few years works fine, but frequently fails for old events [eg, ~5 or 10 years ago].
Re your...
>Please try Thunderbird Troubleshoot Mode (if you haven't already)
...yes i have done this, but it makes no difference, ie, more recent events still duplicate, old events still often fail silently to duplicate.
Re your...
>Please let us know: your email provider e.g. gmail, your calendar provider e.g. google, what 3rd party software like add-ons, anti-virus or firewalls you are using
...with respect, how is any of that relevant? We're talking about my ICS data, not my email data, & [you did not know this before, but from my current reply you now do] the fact that `Troubleshoot Mode` [ie, disables all AddOns, `user.js` etc] does not help, logically eliminates any of those extraneous factors as being causal.
TL;DR: I would love to know how i can troubleshoot my ICS data, & ideally fix it.
Oh, some possibly important new info. In my last post i said...
>old events still often fail silently to duplicate
...so i was wondering how to uncover the "silence". I closed TB, then relaunched it from terminal, so i could watch for any relevant transcript entries when the failure occurs.
I observed that nothing changes in terminal when i Copy either "good" or "bad" events, nor Paste "good" events [which do then duplicate], but... when i try to paste the "bad" events, a blizzard of text populates the terminal transcript. Here's one:
``` JavaScript error: resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm, line 153: uncaught exception: ParserError: invalid line (no token ";" or ":") "" console.error: Calendar:
ParserError: invalid line (no token ";" or ":") ""'ParserError: invalid line (no token ";" or ":") ""' when calling method: [calIICSService::parseICS] when parsing
BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Mozilla.org/NONSGML Mozilla Calendar V1.1//EN VERSION:2.0 BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Unnamed Time Zone 1 BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:16010325T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3 TZOFFSETFROM:+1100 TZOFFSETTO:+1000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:16011028T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZOFFSETFROM:+1000 TZOFFSETTO:+1100 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Australia/Sydney BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+1100 TZOFFSETTO:+1000 TZNAME:AEST DTSTART:19700405T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=4;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+1000 TZOFFSETTO:+1100 TZNAME:AEDT DTSTART:19701004T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=1SU END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT CREATED:20101010T050157Z LAST-MODIFIED:20101010T050157Z DTSTAMP:20160407T060336Z UID:AAAAAMPkLDVzpPdHjo5lI06uPxUElVcA SUMMARY:Drive to Airport, leave car at Valet Parking. PRIORITY:5 DTSTART;TZID=Unnamed Time Zone 1:20000811T053000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20000811T080000 CLASS:PUBLIC DESCRIPTION:\n SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE X-ALT-DESC:
<meta name="Generator" content="MS Exchange Server version 14.02.5004.000">
<title></title>
>
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1 X-MICROSOFT-DISALLOW-COUNTER:TRUE X-MS-OLK-AUTOFILLLOCATION:TRUE X-MS-OLK-AUTOSTARTCHECK:FALSE X-MS-OLK-CONFTYPE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR ```
Back then, i was still using Windows not Linux, & Outlook not Thunderbird, so this old event, along with all my other old data in my current TB database, was imported to TB a long time ago when i converted my OS & PIM. Though i don't fully understand all that i just pasted, my guess is that something went wrong during the import-conversion, & has lain in wait for me to trip over all these years later.
Hi again!
I asked who your email provider is in order to see who your calendar provider is since many email providers like Fastmail and gmail provide calendars too. You're right though; I should have asked you who your calendar provider is not email!
0) Is there some sort of pattern to the events that can't be duplicated?
I asked some TB developers and they suggested:
1) running the .ics file through a validator. I haven't tested but a quick google search found the following: https://icalendar.org/validator.html
You may have to split up the file to make it work I know you might not want to share your private data but perhaps running it locally using docker might be a way to avoid this? https://github.com/faph/icalendar-validator http://snoopy.zcontent.net/index.php?option=com_icalvalidator&view=validator&Itemid=242
2) a quick and dirty way to test the file would be to run to following to see which lines don't contain a colon or semi-colon: grep -v '[;:]' file.ics since the error message: ParserError: invalid line (no token ";" or ":") seems to indicate a line is missing ";" or ":"
3. There might also be a blank line causing the parser to fail
If you do find what caused the parser to fail, then perhaps the following will help you fix any errors: https://repairkb.com/file/ics/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
Hope that helps a bit! ...Roland
Hello Roland, thanks for replying again.
You've given me some interesting things to try to investigate, which i really appreciate, & so i will need to look into further... hence for now, i have no new progress to report.
My data is personal & private, so i certainly will/can not upload it online anywhere, nor share it with anyone. I realise that this principle might limit or even eliminate some possible diagnostic methods, but i value my privacy more.
Just to answer your:
>0) Is there some sort of pattern to the events that can't be duplicated?
i would say... Yes, as per my previous posts. That is:
- the problem only seems to happen for really old Events, not more recent ones.
- each time the problem happens, if TB is running in terminal, copious text is generated in the terminal that does not occur at all for "good" Events.
Once i have time to look closely at each of your diagnostic suggestions, i shall report back here again.
Thanks! :-)
Hi again
The pattern I asked about in 0) was just to be 100% explicit was: maybe something in the events themselves e.g. the time period? the title? any of the other metadata in the event. If there's no pattern other than really old oh well :-)
Yes please do let me know what you find!
Cheers! ...Roland