Can't search event in iCal Leopard

I have the same problem after installing 10.5.1 on my iMac G4,1,25, it is really a problem, because I have to use this function for my work. Why doesn´t apple respond to this? Where can I get help?
Harry

Just noticed this fault and this forum, funny that iCal seems to sometimes work and sometimes not. I tried removing the INDEX files but that didn't work.

However I only seem to be able to search in the future, its not just events I created before upgrading to Leopard. Recurring events appear, birthdays even if they are in the future but nothing from the past unless its a new addition.

This is ridiculous really, thanks for the hints but seems like we'll have to wait for an Apple patch

I found a cute little program called CaliBrate by Wooden Brain Concepts that searches and lists Event according to many criteria. That was the solution after searching desperately to make iCal work.

If you have a corrupted iCal database no patch will work short of deleting your calendars and starting over.

Leopard iCal works but again if you have an older iCal database that you cannot search you have to clean it up. The problem usually shows up after upgrading to Leopard.

I am not an expert at software just a desperate user. I'm telling you that if really want your older database you can fix the problem.

We shouldn't have to be going through this but it happened. I fixed the problem and didn't lose any calender that I didn't permanently delete.

I had no search what so ever and I can now search some older calendars with appointments logged in from 1996.

After I fixed this I have never had the problem again.

I've also found that even though applications such as Bento and Contactizer Pro search these older calendars, if the calendars or the spotlight database are corrupted the data shown is still inconsistent.

Remember this is also directly related to Spotlight data as well as iCal calendars.

We used to be able to use iCal without Spotlight that is no longer the case. The new sync system Apple uses is awesome but the changeover is what I think started this problem.

I am now syncing and searching appointments,reminders and important dates from and to any application including my phone with no problems.

How did You do this?
I tried all kind of things but did not succeed.
sincerely

If you look back through this thread you'll see the agony I went through to figure this out.

I resolved to get to the bottom of this problem one way or another.

It ended up being another.

After all I did the only loss I suffered was my E-mail archive which was lost to my impatience rather than any system problem.

What I would do to start is export each of your calendars to a separate file and store them in a safe place.

Do not export a complete iCal archive, export each calendar as a separate file.

Go into system preferences and exclude your system drive from Spotlight searching via the privacy settings

Delete all of your calendars from iCal.

Delete all data from ~/Library/Calendars

Run a utility such as Onyx to clean up the system.

Reboot.

Do a spotlight search to see if it finds any iCal calendars.

Delete any it finds except the calendars you exported and saved in a safe place.

Reboot and open iCal to see if contains any data from older as well as new dates.

you might try Bento or Calibrate as well there should be no data showing.

Delete any calendars you find except those that you exported and saved in a safe place.

When no calendars are showing reboot again.

Open iCal and import each of your saved calendars under a different name.

Verify that you have your calendar events back in iCal. reboot.

Open Spotlight in system preferences and allow it to once again search your system drive via the privacy settings.

As Spotlight reindexes your hard drive you should start to see events in your searches from Spotlight and in iCal.

After complete reindexing all should be well.

If you still get no or partial searching you may have what I had, a corrupted

.Spotlight-V100 file that wouldn't delete. more on that if you still have

problems can be found here <http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html>

which is where I found the info to finally solve my problem for good.

Let me know. Also thanks for the tip on Calibrate.

P.S. I've also found that after I got everything working properly that I had many events in my calendars with very odd dates (1913?).

Make sure to check for them in one of the other programs as iCal won't find them unless you tell iCal to go to that year and manually search for them.

It still works but I think it slowed the program down when they were there.

Thank You for this explanation. It sounds too complicated for my abilities,I am afraid I might ruin more than I already have with all my tries.
thank You anyway

Apple,

PLEASE bring back the preview pane in iCal and the ability to show all related search results in the search results pane when you click on any particular iCal entry. This helps when iCal and Entourage screw each other up by creating multiple instances of entries. The only easy way to delete multiple entries was to use the search results pane to see them by clicking on an entry in the calendar.

To a larger issue of duplicate entries, please change the way iCal deals with them. If the same named event is happening at the same time on the same day with all of the data the same, please consolidate them into one entry. Don't make the duplicates. It doesn't make any sense.

Thanks

Hello Fellow sufferers, glad Tidings
I used Onyx 1.9.2. with which You which can start spotlight and Lo it works after spotlight having finished re-indexing.
Onyx is freeware and works fine
Greetings to all
Harry

Hello fellow sufferers. Glad Tidings
Use **Onyx 1.9.2** with which you can start spotlight. I did that and Lo it works fast and fine.
Be of good cheer. Onyx is freeware
Harry

I have not been able to search iCal on my laptop for several weeks, even after trying everything I could think of to delete/rebuild/reindex the Spotlight Index.

I stumbled across something interesting today about Spotlight indexing. If there is an invisible file called ".metadata neverindex" at the root level of the boot volume, Spotlight will not index anything, ever!

I looked for invisible files today with Show & Hide, and discovered that I actually had this file! Where it came from, I will probably never know. I deleted it, waited for Spotlight to create a new index, and now I can search iCal (not to mention, everything else on my laptop!)

I had a similar problem. The symptoms were:
Search in iCal did not work at all (no result, what so ever, returned)
Search in Spotlight worked (the same search that did not return anything in iCal would return To-Dos and events in Spotlight)

I started by backing up and restoring, but this did not work.

I then read a lot about potential solutions involving quite extreme things (such as reinstalling Leopard). I then found out that I could solve this issue by simply exporting each calendar and then reimporting them without deleting anything.

For example, I had a "Home" calendar that I exported. I then chose "Import" then picked the exported "Home" calendar and chose my "Home" calendar in iCal as destination calendar. I feared that I would end up with duplicate events and to-dos, but no, iCal is smart.

Once this is done, my search in iCal started to work again and searching items on this calendar would return correct results (as did spotlight).

I then did the same with all my other calendars, and voilà!

The only drawback I have found is that the events with invitations display a question mark even when all invitees have accepted them. The good point though is that clicking on the even shows that invitees have accepted.

Hope this helps

Message was edited by: Thierry R.

HI, I have the same problem too. One thing that worked was to perform the search in Bento. The data shows up correctly. Unfortunately, it costs $49. to use...

I agree with Thierry R. I bought a new Macbook with Leopard/ical3 to replace my ibook G4 running Tiger and ical2, and entered my old data into the macbook's ical by doing a 'restore' to a backup from the ibook's ical. On searching for events in the macbook ical, I found only recent and future items showed up - I suspect those that were entered on my iphone since the last synch with my ibook, and were synched with the macbook. I was alarmed at all the steps suggested in previous posts, and did suspect it was a problem with indexing the items from the back up rather than the whole macbook - hence I was very pleased to see Thierry's suggestion. I did just that - exported individual calendars to desktop and then reimported them without deleting anything and it worked! Now all my events show up in a search. Many thanks for the tip!

By the way, like others I really miss the notes / information panel from ical2 and have sent a feedback form to that effect!

Mine's been acting up, too. Either search wouldn't produce anything or it would produce unrelated events. Tried terminal commands suggested in these Discussions........ that didn't work for me. Tried exporting/importing the calendars again ........ that didn't work. I decided to trash the com.apple.iCal.plist located in Users:home:Library:Preferences. That seems to have worked ...... so far. 🙂 Searches are functional and accurate.