IPhone Calendar Changes not Syncing with ICal

I'm having the same issues--syncing has weirdly unpredictable results, and new entries never seem to get added. The old (deleted) iCal calendars still show up in the list of calendars to sync to in the iPhone pane of iTunes, also.

Thanks so much for posting the work around. Seems to have worked for me so far. Will update if anything go awry. I hope the fix remains.

Interesting additional information...my wife and I each have iphones and when we create an iCal event on the iPhone it will synch with the other iPhone but does NOT show up on the iCal application on the iMac. Same problem as described but interesting how the other iPhone is able to get the "hidden" iCal event. This may be useful to the problem solvers.

Also the problem didn't start occurring until I upgraded the iPhone to 1.1.3

I am having the same problem here. I tried resetting sync history, deleting calendars & re-import, etc., etc., but nothing works.

Even if I delete all of the calendars in iCal, and sync in iTunes (with the replace calendars on iPhone box checked), the calendars on the iPhone aren't even touched.

What a pain. This probably started when I upgraded to 1.1.3, but haven't noticed.... also, could have been 10.5.1... not too sure.

So... what now? Any suggestions??

I finally decide to restore my iPhone (and also reinstall iTunes before the restore).

Everything is working fine now.
Leopard 10.5.2 with iPhone 1.1.3

Good luck to you all.

Here's another fix.
Roy's fix gave me this idea, but from the errors I keep getting, I didn't think I had as much of an iCal problem as I did an SyncServices problem, so I wasn't sure his solution would work for me.

NOTE: For this solution, you need the Leopard dev tools. If you haven't loaded the dev tools on your machine, I would highly recommend it, they contain all sorts of goodies.

I had tracked my syncing problem down to an error in the console that read something like this:
2/23/08 3:34:46 PM com.apple.syncservices.SyncServer[3335] 2008-02-23 15:34:46.707 iCalExternalSync[3551:10b] SyncServices precondition failure in [ISyncConcreteSession clientAcceptedChangesForRecordWithIdentifier:formattedRecord:newRecordIdentifie r:]: you can't change the record identifier from 6A264937-0C62-4D95-85B5-2DE77EBB275D to com.apple.calendars.CalendarOrder: it is already associated with a different record.

The CalendarOrder error was acting like a roadblock. One error was blocking all calendar traffic coming out of the iPhone. I believe the CalendarOrder schema has to do with the actual order in which your calendars are listed in iCal, so if you don't have multiple calendars I don't know how this will affect your issue.

Anyway, there's a dev tool called Syncrospector (HD root > Developer > Applications > Utilities > Syncrospector). This is a testing tool that will, in effect, ignore normal errors, and force a sync.

1. Backup data. Or print it out. I only lost one appointment in the process.
2. Launch Syncrospector.
3. In the upper left corner, select "Clients" from the pull-down menu.
4. In the top display window, select "iCal" from the entity column.
5. There are three buttons below the top display window, click "Sync State".
6. The lower display window displays all the iCal entities. Select "com.apple.calendars.CalendarOrder"
7. In the upper right hand corner, select "Pull the truth" from the pull-down menu. This means you are pulling data from the iPhone and overriding errors.
8. In the upper right hand corner, click Sync.

This should be a very quick sync (unless you have thousands of calendar items). And you should your events appear in iCal immediately. afterwards, I performed some additional testing in real-life usage (using iTunes to sync) and events were synced back and forth as expected.

I don't know what caused the original problem, but so far this seems to have solved it. So, just another idea for everyone to put in their iPhone syncing toolbox.

enjoy!

herb

oddlystrange, I wish I had found your post 5 hours ago.
I have been struggling getting my Wifes iBook to Sync properly and I ended up doing pretty much what you wrote but only just found it now.
It's #2 that's the problem.
I looked on all my other Macs and that directory doesn't exist.
Worse, I went through the pain of iPhone Restore before this and was on the phone with Apple for 90 minutes. WTH don't they know this stuff?
Perhaps if they had people looking at these forums they might learn something.

I just got an iPhone, not sure if I will keep it. I figured it was worth the $40.00 restock fee to give it a try. I am a long time Treo user, But Mac user also.

The sales person told me that the iPhone would not sync back to the computer. Seems like one of the many things that Apple should fix on the iPhone. It is cute though.

Under Mac OS 10.5.2 (installed 2/11/08) this fix does nothing. I've traced all problems back to the 10.5.2 Leopard upgrade on 2/11/08. That's when I suddenly was no longer able to sync iPhone events to iCal. When I deleted the User/library/iCal folder and the other folder under application support, then sync the iPhone.....nothing comes back to iCal except a blank calendar (you are right to backup the iCal first by exporting). I've read lots of fixes and tried them all, to no avail. I am certain this is a real bug made by Apple that needs to be fixed by Apple. I now carry a pocket calendar to write stuff into, then transcribe these into iCal to send to iPhone (syncing events from iCal to the iPhone mysteriously works fine). Not good....!

Herb,

I had/have both .mac sync and iPhone. I tried fixing the .Mac by resetting based on the "best" of my calendars on one mac. I have yet to see if that worked. No other fix has worked yet on my iPhone. I will try yours tomorrow, after loading the Leopard tools, and see what happens.

I'm anxious to hear if this works for other people.

I've read a couple of times now that people are being told by Apple employee's that the iPhone doesn't sync data back to the computer. That's really just ridiculous! Try purchasing a song with the iPhone iTunes store... you'll find that it transfers the song to your computer during the next sync. Same with any photo you take (provided you have the sync box in iTunes checked). As will a contact that you add on the iPhone.... et cetera.

I did some tech writing for a company that was developing software for the Palm Pilot back in the late 90s, so I know this concept of syncing/merging/co-mingling data isn't necessarily as simple as it sounds (especially when you throw in the .mac component). But I do know that this was working a whole lot better with 10.4.11! Something big obviously changed with Leopard and I think they must still be scrambling to reign in all the loose ends.

I throw away the ical preferences in the home library and it works fine again, quick and easy

I am having the same (frustrating!) problem. If I enter events in iCal on my desktop or laptop, they show up in my iPhone after syncing. However, if I enter events in my iPhone, they don't appear in my iPhone. I need a bi-directional iPhone-iCal sync! Has anyone figured this out...hopefully with an easy solution that doesn't require deleting calendars, etc.
Thanks, Sandi