Invitation Error: Only the Organizer can change this event

I'm afraid I don't have an answer - but I would really like one as well.

Its a really common requirement for me to need to edit details of events to which I am invited and I can't. Just now, I want to move some from one calendar to another, and again I can't. I can understand having a cautionary warning but you should still be able to override it.

I have found a way around this. If you drag the event to your desktop, it will create an .ics file. If you open this file in TextEdit, you can delete the line that begins with ORGANIZER:. Save the file and bring it back into iCal. iCal will now assume you are the organizer, allowing you to edit. You may also want to delete the other attendees in TextEdit, as iCal will also want to send updates if you make changes to the file (because it thinks you're the organizer making changes to your own calendar event).

This isn't an ideal solution, but it lets you make the edits. Hopefully Apple will change this in a future Leopard update or in Snow Leopard.

Thanks for the tip. I just had this happen when I tried to add an event that I exported from Facebook into a calendar that I sync between iCal and Google Calendar. When I imported the event file into iCal using that shared calendar iCal responded with an error message telling me I could not edit an event for which I was not the organizer. This is irritating and does not live up to my expectation that OS X usually does the "right thing".

A quick workaround is to click on the event and select Edit menu > Duplicate (or just ⌘D). You can move one of the two events and then delete the other.