Android: Calendar items set to tentative

Yay, I got myself a Samsung Galaxy SII. Great phone running Android!

There's just one thing that annoys the shit out of me: When I create a new agenda item in my google agenda, it shows up in my thunderbird as "tentative". These items will have a lower opacity, which makes the agenda harder to read.

I've google'd around, and found a lot of complaints about this problem, but there's no solution to make appointments confirmed right away. And I'm definitely not opening all items in thunderbird to confirm them by hand.

There's a simple solution to this problem: I made Thunderbird render the agenda differently. Using the file userChrome.css, I set opacity to 100%. (If you don't know what userChrome.css is, read this page at mozilla.org.) The actual CSS is:
calendar-event-box[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
calendar-editable-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
calendar-month-day-box-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
calendar-event-box[status="TENTATIVE"],
calendar-editable-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
calendar-month-day-box-item[status="TENTATIVE"]
{
opacity: 1 !important;
}

Restart thunderbird and you're done.

This "solution" does not set any appointments to "confirmed". It just renders tentative appointments the same as confirmed items, so that you don't see the difference anymore.

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20 comments on “Android: Calendar items set to tentative”

  1. Thanks - as I don't use the status function - good enough for me as well. Just one question. What calender app are you using. I'm trying to figure out if this happens with all apps or just a few?

  2. Thanks for that great tip, it works great! I don't use either the status of my calendar events so as long as the tentative events appear similarly to the confirmed ones, it's fine for me.
    For the info, I use the "Business Calendar" app on Android. I read on a different forum that it's not due to the app itself but to the Google servers: apparently, they only have 2 statuses internally - free or busy - but for compatibility reasons, they mark new events as tentative. I can't find the forum on whoch I read that but this should be checked...

  3. AMAZING!!! I've been looking for a "fix" for this for a long time!! I don't care that it's tentative or confirmed, I just want to see my events, and I don't want them dimmed. This worked perfectly. Thank you very much!

  4. Very nice, thanks. I'm trying to work out the CSS selector for Thunderbird's Today pane, as tentative appointments are still displayed in gray there. Using the DOM Inspector, I tried

    .agenda-event-start,
    .agenda-event-title

    but had no luck.

    Any ideas?

  5. Worked. Thanks! These calendar programs have so many bells and whistles. I would love to see a power user in action! For me, vanilla is fine.

  6. AWESOME!!!

    Works like a charm!

    Now, can anybody actually either force Thunderbird to select 'Confirmed' or 'Not Specified' for every event, or just DISABLE the status feature completely?

    Thanks again David!!!

  7. Actually, after much research and experience, this seems to be an android/google bug. Even before I started using Thunderbird, when I created an event on my phone's android calendar, I am actually 'INVITED TO MY OWN EVENT' on the web-calender (google calender). I always wondered why I received invitations to my own events; now after seeing it also happen in Thunderbird, and through tons of research, I have concluded that it's an android calender bug.

    ps. After 3 years, still can't believe I am invited to all my own calendar events. Come on Google!!! Fix this.

  8. Hi,

    great work!

    To display events in the today pane correctly, add two lines:

    agenda-richlist-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"]

    so overall, the section in my userChrome.css looks like this:

    calendar-event-box[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-event-box[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"]
    {

    opacity: 1 !important;

    }

  9. I see this solution works, but I have never customized Thundebird and am not a tech geek... Sooo... could someone be so kind as to "walk me thru" the steps to edit this and configure my calendar to show these events at 100% opacity???

    The referenced page at Mozilla.org just confused me all the more.

    My email is [deleted-to-prevent-spam]@msn.com - please send steps... I would greatly appreciate it!

  10. I just tried adding this code to my userChrome.css file and it doesn't change the color of the android-generated calendar entries..

    Does anyone else have any reccos on what to do?

    Thanks

  11. This is brilliant. Many thanks for that. For the people looking for a walk-through I will give it a shot:

    Firstly exit Thunderbird.

    You need to locate your Thunderbird profile folder (where it stores all your information). This varies depending on your OS version, so follow the instructions at

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_Configuration_Files#css

    In Thunderbird 17.0.2 you can also go to Help > Troubleshooting information and there is a button about 8 lines down which you can click to 'Show Folder' which is very quick and easy.

    Go to that folder, and see if there is a folder inside it called 'chrome'. If there is then open that folder. If there isn't then create a folder called 'chrome'.

    If there is a file in that folder called 'userchrome.css' then open it with Notepad (right click the file, select Open With > Notepad).

    If the file isn't there then open Notepad (not Word). It will start a new file. Click File > Save As. Click through until you're in the 'chrome' folder which you found / made earlier. Then at the bottom of the window change the 'Save As Type' from 'Text Documents' to 'All files'. In the file name box type 'userchrome.css' and click Save.

    Now go to the end of the file (you're already there if you've just created the file), return a couple of times so you have a new line and paste in the lines from the post above:

    calendar-event-box[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-event-box[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"]
    {

    opacity: 1 !important;

    }

    Save the file (either Ctrl+S or File > Save) and close Notepad.

    Start Thunderbird up, go to Lightening and marvel at the simple efficacy of the solution suggested by David. If it's not working then check that the profile folder you've found is the right one, and that the text you've copied in has all its commas and curly brackets and is on lines of their own.

    Cheers, Dave

  12. UPDATE April 2013
    The file you have to edit is now called "calendar-views.css"
    There are three of it ... I checked/edited all three just to be sure.
    Just search inside each file for a paragraph that refers to TENTATIVE items
    and change the opacity specified at the end of any such paragraph from 0.6 to 0.99.

  13. In my case the file "calendar-views.css" was located in my profile folder under \extensions\{random string}\chrome\calendar\skin\calendar\common
    Thanks a lot, worked perfectly :)

  14. UPDATE 24-April-2016

    TB 45 is now packing all calendar CSS resources in a chrome.jar archive, preventing direct editing.

    Proceed as follows.

    1/ Exit TB

    2/ Locate the original
    chrome.jar
    archive, decompress it (it works as a ZIP file) to a temporary
    chrome
    folder, then rename the original archive to
    chrome.backup.jar
    for backup purpose.

    3/ Within the temporary chrome folder, locate and edit calendar-views.css eg. as follows (the § works as an undocumented in-line comment in CSS files)
    calendar-event-box[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[invitation-status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-event-box[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-editable-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    calendar-month-day-box-item[status="TENTATIVE"],
    agenda-richlist-item[status="TENTATIVE"] {
    §opacity: 0.6; /* [FL_Hack] fix S-Calendar bug */
    opacity: 0.99;
    }

    4/ Rebuild the chrome.jar archive. WARNING!!!! This must be done with a special switch!!!
    Under Windows this is
    path-to\zip.exe -qr9XD chrome.jar *
    to be launched UNDER the chrome folder, eg. after a
    cd path_to\chrome
    so that the * argument collects all files within this folder to rebuild the new chrome.jar.

    5/ The new chrome.jar should stand side-by-side to the original chrome.backup.jar.
    Delete the temporary chrome folder.
    Launch TB and carry out a test.
    If anything goes wrong restore backup.

    Greetings from France
    FL

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