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Level 1

8 points

iCal suddenly a jumble of last 10 years

My main calendar is suddenly a jumble of the last 10 years of schedules and events. The information itself is not scrambled, just in the wrong dates. Other calendars to which I've subscribed appear to be ok. It's only my main calendar as far as I can tell. Each day in any month now has 20, 30 or more events (both timed and all-day) showing. They are all things from the past, no garbage.

My laptop unexpectedly shutdown earlier today, although iCal was not running at the time.
The calendars on my iPhone seem to be OK.
Does anyone know a fix for this?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Mar 18, 2009 9:18 PM

21 replies

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 26, 2009 5:53 AM in response to ray-gunn

Sorry to hear you're still stuck ray-gunn...
Can't think of anything else that might help, except fixing the entries manually. Very tedious I know, but does'nt seem to be any other way out.
One long shot, which probably won't work is to download an app/Utility that removes duplicate entries. Do a google search for such apps. I tried "iCal Cleaner" but it didnt help me.

Good luck!

Mar 30, 2009 7:14 PM in response to ray-gunn

I have the EXACT same problem. Recently updated iTunes 8.1 (big mistake!) and after sync my iCal has dates from the last 10 years on current calendar days. It seems that all the events have been changed to 2009 with "repeat" with "no end date". My calendar has 30 or so dates on every day from the past 10 years. My iPhone is fine, but I'm scared to sync. I'm wondering how I can safely delete my iCal on my computer and transfer my good iPhone info back to the iCal on my computer. Help!

Mar 31, 2009 12:49 AM in response to bigdaddytx

I have the same problem but only on the two recently purchased 15" mac book pros we also sync ical on 3 20' imacs and an ipod touch all are on the latest leopard OS two imacs are pre intel, calendars are fine on the touch and imacs

ical on both laptops are alway asking to update ical and when we click ok they come back with the message "Calendars could not be synced due to inconsistent data"

This has occured following the itunes 8.1 update.

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 31, 2009 4:13 AM in response to bigdaddytx

Well Bigdaddytx, too bad to read that you are another victim. On my iCal, it was not every event that repeated forever, only those that were already repeating events. A quick look at the data indicated that events that spanned several days but were not originally repeating events were ok (did not repeat forever).
Also I'd like to know if you had been using Palm desktop prior to iCal as I was. The offending events were those recorded prior to my migration to iCal. It is important to note that these were all ok for a long time in iCal -- until the latest iTunes update.
One other thing I noticed is that not all the data on the iPhone was ok. Old repeating entries were also found to repeat with no end date. However these did bot carry on beyond the end of the month in iPhone!
The bottom line is that not all your iPhone data may be good.
The solution(?) I used was per the above entries from Firoze to clear the database of all info. Then correct the iPhone data manually by referring to old backups of iCal and Palm (a bit tedious). Then make sure the iCal data is really gone by relaunching and monitoring for many minutes (15 to 30 or more) to make sure it doesn't re-find the old bad data. Next is to Sync the iPhone per the previous instructions -- don't let the iCal overwrite the iPhone or everything will be gone. Also make sure you let old entries sync. These are both options in iTunes. The you may need to go through an manually correct the many errors that may still be present. It took me a while but I think I fixed most of mine. The next step is to make a backup -- and do that often afterward. Good luck

Mar 31, 2009 8:44 AM in response to ray-gunn

Now that I look at the calendar, yes, the old dates were from a PalmVx that I had before the iPhone. Those dates had been living in my iCal with no problems until the iTunes 8.1 update.

I don't have iCal backups. I'm going to the Apple Store tomorrow to have a "genius" help me replace my iCal info with my iPhone info. I'm crossing my fingers.

I am very good about backing up, I just naively assumed that I had a backup since my iPhone and iCal live in different places. I am kicking myself for not backing up the iCal separately and I will once this is over.

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 19, 2009 6:06 AM in response to ray-gunn

Thanks to everyone who responded. My problem is resolved. I used a combination of a really old backup, and then manual corrections to each corrupt event (mostly finding the first entry and changing its end date from "never" to the correct date) to match those in my old Palm Desktop data file. I am using iCal 2.0.5.

Thanks again!

iCal suddenly a jumble of last 10 years