ICS Calendar Attachment Workaround
I have found a work around for blackberry .ics file integration. Skip to the end for the work around, what follows is my journey to this revelation.
It started when I noticed that meeting requests sent from our zimbra calendar at work as ics files were properly imported into the blackberry calendar, but if I forwarded the same meeting from the calendar to my blackberry it would show up as an unreadable attachment. This puzzled me greatly, so I googled and found nothing useful except reports of ics not working with the blackberry. I knew this was wrong because the meeting requests were in ics format (I received the emails on my pc as well). So I searched the forms here and was met with the same disappointing reports of "no ics support", and unanswered threads.
I knew there had to be something different between the forwarded ICS files and the ones generated with meeting requests, so I inspected the raw source of the emails and the raw ics files. Eventually I discovered the problem.
The Solution
Basically, in order for the blackberry to import the appointment the ICS file must contain a "METHOD:REQUEST" line. That is it. Normally forwarded ICS appointments will have METHOD:PUBLISH. Here are the steps to fix an ICS file.
1. Download the ICS file to your PC
2. Edit the ICS file using a text editor and add METHOD:REQUEST (or replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REQUEST)
3. Forward the modified ICS file to your blackberry.
4. Success!
This process is tedious to do for each and every ICS file you receive, so it may just be easier to import the file with outlook and sync with your blackberry. I don't sync with outlook so this was not an option for me.
This would seem to be a bug/omission in the blackberry software. ICS files with METHOD:PUBLISH should have the option to be imported into the calendar. Does anyone know the best way to take this up with RIM?
Method:Replace or Request?
Originally Posted by
codemaker 2. Edit the ICS file using a text editor and add METHOD:REQUEST (or replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REPLACE)
You want to say to replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REQUEST ?
Can you tell me if this works also if you try to download the ics file from internet using the browser?
I tried but I cannot make it work using download or email attachment.
Thanks in advance.
ICS work around even easier
Thanks for the tip on the REQUEST verses PUBLISH section. I took this a step further and created a quick way to get a properly formatted Black Berry meeting request ICS file.
If you get an ICS attachment on your blackberry that you cant open then just forward it to [email protected]
You will get an auto reply back asap with a modified ICS file that you can open on your blackberry.
The only thing modified is METHOD:PUBLISH is changed to METHOD:REQUEST