ICS file in Outlook - Formatting

Also... seems like this feature doesn't work in the text version, or I'm doing something wrong. Will the ics token feature only work in HTML? Can't seem to get that to carry over in working fashion..

The ics file will only work in HTML, not text versions of the email.  Also, the formatting issue you describe seems to be a Microsoft formatting issue rather than an issue from Marketo.  You might try a new ICS file and ensure that you only copy/paste text from notepad (not Word).

Thanks Cheryl!

Figured the formatting was a Microsoft Outlook issue... just not sure what's causing it. If anyone has any ideas on how I might tweak what I'm putting into Marketo, so that Outlook doesn't auto-format it, that'd be great (just not sure what's triggering it on Outlook's end.) I realize that's not a Marketo issue, but if anyone has solved that on their end in the past, let me know!

Are you cutting and pasting the text from somewhere?  If so, have you tried just typing it in directly?

I copy/pasted from Notepad/plain text. Usually that does the trick, but to no avail this time around. I'll keep trying! :)

Just to be safe, I re-created it, starting from scratch in Notepad, re-typing everything in (not copy/pasting anything). Copied from here and pasted into the token. Alas, Microsoft is still auto-formatting it, making it look odd. In case it's helpful, what's specifically happening is that at the bottom of the ics file content I have listed contact information for the two people who will be at the event. It's taking only the first person's name, and making it large, blue, and in a different font/format. I've seen this happen before in Outlook ics files (doing this to people's names) - but always figured the sender was just being sloppy (I take back all of my previous "tsk-ing!" as I now can't seem to make it behave appropriately for us.) :)

Here's a quick visual example of how it's converting mid-text (all of the above is that black sans-serif... then it hits this section, and Robin's name turns blue, big, and a serif font):

The calendar appointment token is a great idea, but it's a shame it doesn't work very well.  I have the same problem as this contributor.  The description box, where we habitually put the Venue, Address and Agenda for our seminars has some weird, screwy formatting errors in it.  I get the same as Jen, the large, blue, Times Roman font not created (or wanted) by me.  I have spent hours stripping out html, retyping addresses, adding tokens multiple times, testing, retesting and checking.

The best result we can get is a very plain, badly formatted item.  The formatting can change with just the addition or deletion of a line break.  Because there are no formatting tools, it is impossible to see where this is coming from.

Two support people have individually told me that nothing can be done (although one did helpfully recommend the website http://www.striphtml.com/.

I'm looking into this.  I apologize for this poor experience.

Did anyone ever get a response on this as to why Outlook is formatting the calendar oddly? I've tried copy/pasting from notepad and retyping to make sure that there is nothing that could potentially be causing it, but I'm still getting random headers that are blue and increased font throughout my calendar file.

The only solution is to use an html stripping site.  This was the advice given to me by Marketo support, it was the only way he could find to fix the problem.  If you paste your text into www.striphtml.com and strip everything out, then cut and paste the results into your calendar file it works.  You have to put all the line breaks back in and test it thoroughly though.

If you then make changes you have to be very careful to type everything new manually, otherwise it all starts up again and you have to go back to the strip html site.