100 Watt Walrus

Q: How do I find old events on my Calendar?

I have several years worth of events in my calendar. iOS seems utterly incapible of doing a basic search system-wide to find content that's older than, apparently, one year.


Today I got a jury duty notice, and I tried to search for the last time I had jury duty. iOS tells me there's no occurance of "jury" in my device. This is 200% BS. I went to my old Palm Z22, did the same search, and got four hits. When I manually hunted for them on my iPod Touch, I found them.

 

How do I find old events in iOS? Apparently Apple hasn't bothered to make this possible. Anyone know of any 3rd-party apps that correct this seeming oversight?

iPod touch, iOS 4.3.3, iOS 4.3.5

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 12:57 AM

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Q: How do I find old events on my Calendar?

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  • by G from Holywood,

    G from Holywood G from Holywood Nov 1, 2011 11:20 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 1, 2011 11:20 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

    Thanks for raising this topic again; I see it has been raised numerous times over the years.

     

    There is no change in IOS5.

     

    This week I ditched my old Windows smartphone and now have an iPhone 4S. into which I imported my entire calendar successfully.

     

    I'm mostly delighted with the new phone, my first Apple experience, but I am greatly disappointed that I cannot search for events older than a year or more than a year ahead.

     

    I'm a pilot and my rosters are all in the calendar.  If I want to find out on which dates I flew to a particular destination or with a particular colleague, my very old windows phone or my 10 year old Sony Clié PDA could list the relevant events easily.  When was my last dentist check up?  When did I get the boiler serviced last and by whom etc etc.  With all other phones this is easy.  I have sent feedback to Apple requesting an enhancement.

     

    In the meantime, any suggestions anyone?

  • by 100 Watt Walrus,

    100 Watt Walrus 100 Watt Walrus Nov 8, 2011 3:39 AM in response to G from Holywood
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iPod
    Nov 8, 2011 3:39 AM in response to G from Holywood

    Hey G. I still haven't found a way to do this very basic and obvious search that was a standard feature on Palm devices 10 years ago.

     

    But since you have a 4S, have you tried Siri?

  • by G from Holywood,

    G from Holywood G from Holywood Nov 9, 2011 7:00 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 9, 2011 7:00 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

    Thanks for the suggestion, which have now tried.

     

    Siri works astonishingly well, recognising some very esoteric words and rare names.

     

    Perhaps not surprisingly however, it seems to use the same search function which would otherwise be accessed from the screen.

     

    Today, I wanted to know when I last worked with a colleague by the name of Nash.  I asked Siri, "Find Nash in my calendar."  Siri dutifully replies, " I don't see any appointments about 'Nash.'"  Yet there are several apointments over a year ago with that name, so no change I'm afraid.

     

    Keep trying!

  • by 100 Watt Walrus,

    100 Watt Walrus 100 Watt Walrus Nov 9, 2011 1:13 PM in response to G from Holywood
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iPod
    Nov 9, 2011 1:13 PM in response to G from Holywood

    Well, no surprise there, I guess. I've just started keeping records of things I need to track over multiple years in SimpleNote instead of in the Calendar.

     

    Pity Apple seems to not care about including simple, basic functionality like this — and in fact go out of their way to limit such functionality. I mean, they had to actively and deliberately limit iOS search capability. What's the point?

     

    Oh well, I guess Apple knows better than I do what's important for me to access and how I should be using my own device to read my own content. Thanks guys for relieving me of the burden of being able to find information on my iPod.

  • by MGimenez,

    MGimenez MGimenez Aug 2, 2012 2:17 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2012 2:17 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

    I completely understand some people's frustration with the half-baked Apple search function that is limited to one year's worth of information.  A little over 12 years ago, since the glory days of the PDA, I have used my calendar like a diary.  The search function on my Palm was flawless.  I moved to a Treo and the search function was flawless.  Then I migrated to a BlackBerry and the search function was flawless.  I took a leap of faith and switched to an iPhone and $&#*!  Why can't I search the way I always did?  I was so angry that even went so far as to switch back to my BlackBerry for a while since I could not deal with this aggravating calendar "problem."

     

    After an extensive google search, I finally found an app called calvetica 4.0.  It allows the iPhone to "limit" the calendar search to within 3 months, 6 months, one year, five years, and EVERYTHING.  Voila!  Success!  Well, almost.  The search function is slowwww.  It can take up to 10 minutes to search for an item that is 12 years old.  Clearly, it's not perfect and it's not comparable to the ease of the Palm, Treo, or BlackBerry, but at least it's better than the native calendar in the iPhone.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the iPhone 5 will incorporate this simple search feature.  Please. Pretty please.  

  • by 100 Watt Walrus,

    100 Watt Walrus 100 Watt Walrus Aug 2, 2012 5:11 PM in response to MGimenez
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iPod
    Aug 2, 2012 5:11 PM in response to MGimenez

    I also discovered Calvetica while trying to just find a better calendar in general. This was a feature I hadn't even explored yet, and I'm tickled pink to hear about it. You're right, it is slow to search old data. But it's faster than going to my computer, opening it up, launching iCal, and searching there. And it's a lot nicer reading notes in Calvetica than in iCal anyway.

     

    I've switched over 100% to Calvetica because of all the other things it does infinitely better than the native calendar app:

    - The UI is much nicer

    - You can read more of the names of events

    - You can see the first few words of the notes on events (or the Location, your choice)

    - You can see which events have notes and alarms

    - You can delete events right from the list-like view

    - You can set and change alarms right from the list-like view

    - You can set just about any alarm period you want, not just the 5 or 6 periods Apple thinks you need

         - (my default alarms are 2 days before and 2 hours before — can't do that on Apple software!)

    - You can customize what fields you see in Event Creation, and what order

    - There's a quick-add feature where you can bang out a quick, alarmed event in about 5 seconds

    - You can have it ask at the end of creating an event which calendar to put it in (something I always forgot to do)

     

    My only beefs:

          - In Detail Week view (similar to List in the native app, but not continuous), today's date isn't highlighted

          - There's no continuous scrolling option

     

    But that second issue I've pretty much realized I don't need as much as I thought, since you can just swipe between weeks and months.

     

    I've tried about 15 calendar apps, and Calvetica is the best by leaps and bounds.

  • by JohnnyDawg,

    JohnnyDawg JohnnyDawg Oct 4, 2013 7:46 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Oct 4, 2013 7:46 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

    Looks like this is still an issue with iOS 7.  We still can't search the calendar more than a year back.  Unbelievable that something so basic as searching ALL past events is beyond Apple's capabilities.

     

    I really do miss the DateBk application from my old Handspring Visor and Palm devices.  It was the perfect combination of a calendar/reminder/ToDo app.  When I moved from the Palm world to Apple with my first iPhone so many years ago, I contacted Pimlico Software to see if they were going to port the DateBk application to iOS.  I was SO disappointed when they said it just was not doable. 

  • by JohnnyDawg,

    JohnnyDawg JohnnyDawg Oct 4, 2013 8:20 AM in response to JohnnyDawg
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Oct 4, 2013 8:20 AM in response to JohnnyDawg

    Just posted this feedback to Apple:

     

    I just discovered that when searching the calendar for old events, the search function will not find anything more than a year old.  After doing some research on this issue, it would appear this has been a limitation of the Calendar application on the iPhone/iPad for years.  Using iCal on my Mac, it will find everything I'm searching for, no matter how old.

     

    I can understand that this limitation may have been in place due to the time it would take to perform a search on a heavily populated calendar going back 10 or more years.  However, with today's hardware, that should not be a valid reason any more.  At least give us the option to search more than a year back, even if you have to show a warning that the search may take a few minutes.

  • by JohnnyDawg,

    JohnnyDawg JohnnyDawg Oct 4, 2013 11:00 AM in response to JohnnyDawg
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Oct 4, 2013 11:00 AM in response to JohnnyDawg

    BTW, I found an app called weekcal, which will allow you to set the date range to search.  I changed that range to 1/1/2000 - 12/31/2013 and did a search.  It did take 2-3 minutes, but it found all those old events.

  • by Ruud Kalberg,

    Ruud Kalberg Ruud Kalberg Oct 4, 2013 12:07 PM in response to JohnnyDawg
    Level 1 (7 points)
    iBooks
    Oct 4, 2013 12:07 PM in response to JohnnyDawg

    I agree that it is ridiculous that this is still not possible in the Calendar app from Apple. I discovered however that also the app Fantastical does search back in the past years: when I do a search it finds back events etc. dating back to 2003 (which is I believe the year I started to use iCal), and this all within seconds (I have an iPhone 4s).

     

    So I suggest you all switch to Fantastical or Weekcal, these are better Apps than the Apple app anyways.

  • by unfrostedpoptart,

    unfrostedpoptart unfrostedpoptart Oct 4, 2013 12:09 PM in response to JohnnyDawg
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 4, 2013 12:09 PM in response to JohnnyDawg

    Thanks for the pointer to weekcal.  I've been using cavetica, which can also do this.  The Pocket Informant (PI) guys have said they might implement the same work-around in the future. 

     

    Maybe some day Apple will even implement "duplicate event" which I use all the time in PI.  And, heaven forbid, "duplicate card" in Contacts!

  • by unfrostedpoptart,

    unfrostedpoptart unfrostedpoptart Oct 4, 2013 12:12 PM in response to Ruud Kalberg
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 4, 2013 12:12 PM in response to Ruud Kalberg

    Just looked them all up on iTunes.  If you just want to use one to look up old events, and not as your main cal app, then you can go by price:

     

    Calvetica: $3

    Fantastical: $5

    WeekCal: $2

  • by 100 Watt Walrus,

    100 Watt Walrus 100 Watt Walrus Oct 4, 2013 5:29 PM in response to unfrostedpoptart
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iPod
    Oct 4, 2013 5:29 PM in response to unfrostedpoptart

    I have both Calvetica and Fantastical, and each are infinitely superior to the native calendar in countless ways.  I also use Fantastical on my Mac, and it's great!

  • by Hawgny,

    Hawgny Hawgny Jan 19, 2014 11:26 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 19, 2014 11:26 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

    I just purchased the two dollar fantastica-2. It runs a search all the way back to the beginning of time. The program uses and synchronizes your calendar data from the Apple iOS application. Too bad Apple can't make the search function work in their own calendar.  I tried Calvetica and it doesn't appear to search any further back than one year, just like the Apple calendar program. Too bad because it seems like a good program.

  • by 100 Watt Walrus,

    100 Watt Walrus 100 Watt Walrus Jan 19, 2014 7:38 PM in response to Hawgny
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iPod
    Jan 19, 2014 7:38 PM in response to Hawgny

    Calvetica can search your entire history. When in the Search screen, tap the gear to the left of the search field, and you can choose the range of your search.

     

    Fantasical is pretty good. I have both that and Calvetica. But the way Fantastical leaves out dates with no events from the scrolling part of the screen makes me nuts, and there's no preference for that. Plus, in Calvetica its easier to choose and change reminder alarms, which is really important to me.

     

    I actually use Fantastical for some calendars and Calvetica for others. I wish somebody would make a tabbed calendar app (for desktop too), so I could quickly and easily switch back and forth between various views.

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