Is There a Workaround for lack of Olsen TZ TZID Format in ICS File

Question

I recently had a problem with an ICS file that I received in email. My copy of Outlook 2010 would not recognize the timezone correctly. Here is the way that the start time o

Answer 1

Instead of adding the timezone definition to the ics file, it would be better to mention the event start/end times in UTC itself. And then, the consumer of the ICS file - outlook in your case - should be able to do the timezone conversion from UTC(from ics file) to the preferred timezone setting of the end user, just before rendering the meeting event on their calendars.

Pros: This way you dont have to take care of adding the correct timezone offsets (VTIMEZONE component) yourself. Plus, the ics file is much smaller, cleaner, easy to read.

References: Even google seems to be handling timezones in ics this way itself - Google timezone handling

Hope this helps.