iCal suddenly a jumble of last 10 years

Question

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

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Answer 1

DDWiz

Level 1

15 points

Mar 19, 2009 9:26 AM in response to ray-gunn

This happened to me this morning, also, after downloading and installing the new upgrade to iTunes 8.1.

I got a message that there was a new version of iTunes (8.1) to synch my Mac with my iPhone.
I downloaded and installed the upgrade.
Then I synched my iPhone.
I did note that iCal took a long time to synch in the synch message window, but did not think anything of it other than noticing it.

After finishing synching my iPhone, opened iCal to enter a new event and it went CRAZY.

All dates are filled with old items -- a jumble of many years as Ray Gunn notes. It appears that the end dates on all repeated items have been reset to NEVER, and items that only repeated a few times are now on every recurrence for the rest of eternity!

How can I reverse this and restore the deleted end dates on repeated items to clean up my calendar?

I depend on my iCal and no longer have a paper organizer (for several years) but this renders all my data useless!

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Answer 2

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 19, 2009 11:43 AM in response to DDWiz

The exact same thing happened to me as DDWiz - upgraded to iTunes some days back and did a couple of syncs with no problem. Then suddenly after syncing today, iCal went haywire - every single day is filled with old entries with a event time of 05:30, repeating forever.

(I note that all three of us having the problem here are on OS 10.4.)

Can anyone please help, is there any way to fix iCal? Unfortunately I dont have a back-up....

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Answer 3

Mar 19, 2009 4:46 PM in response to ray-gunn

Same thing happened to me today. For the past couple of days, each time I synced with iPhone, I got an alert that syncing would change a large number of dates in iCal, so I had pressed "cancel". Today I pressed "continue" and got the same problem as ray-gunn.
I do have a Superduper clone of my whole disk on a Firewire external hard disk, but I don't know where to look to delete the bad iCal database and copy in the good copy. Furthermore, how do I avoid this happening again, the next time I sync my iPhone?

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Answer 4

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 19, 2009 7:22 PM in response to ray-gunn

Thanks for pointing out the iTunes 8.1 update.
I also updated the following a few days before the problem:
2009-03-13 08:01:44 -0400: Installed "AirPort Utility Software Update 2009-001" (5.4.1)
2009-03-13 08:02:19 -0400: Installed "iTunes" (8.1)
2009-03-13 08:02:22 -0400: Installed "Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 8" (1.0)
2009-03-13 08:04:03 -0400: Installed "Security Update 2009-001 (Intel)" (1.0)

Maybe this info can help?
Thanks in advance.

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Answer 5

Mar 19, 2009 9:03 PM in response to ray-gunn

OK, I have fixed my problem as follows, but it requires that you have a reasonably recent backup of your hard disk, and also an alternative startup disk. (In my case, the backup was also bootable thanks to Superduper.)
Fortunately, I had recently backed up all the files from my internal hard disk onto an external disk. However, I had never run iCal's own "File > Back up Database..." routine.
First, (This did not work.) I tried opening a backed up copy of iCal.app that was on a Firewire backup disk, while still booted from the (corrupted) internal HD. It however, gets its database from the boot disk, and so the same garbage appears in the calendar.

The following did work:
(1) I restarted with the "option" key held down, and booted from a backup disk.
(2) Then I launched the backed-up iCal.app, and it looks fine.
(3) Next, I ran "File > Back up Database..." in the backed up iCal, and saved the iCal backup in a file accessible to both disks.
(4) Next, I restarted again, this time from the usual internal hard disk, which contains the corrupted iCal.
(5) I started the corrupted iCal residing on the internal disk which had been problematical. Of course, the garbage still shows up on the calendar.
(6) Now I went to the "File > Revert to Database Backup..." and pointed to the newly created iCal backup file.
This worked! However, I was fortunate in having had a recent backup of my working disk, and I had a boot disk.
For the near future, until Apple fixes the bug, I will run iCal's "File > Back up Database..." each time BEFORE I sync with iPhone. (Or, if the iTunes sync tells me that it will change more than 5% of my calendar items, I could click cancel.)
I will also post this on the other two threads related to this subject.

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Answer 6

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 20, 2009 3:34 AM in response to DevBiology

I intend to inform Apple about this problem (in case they are not already aware of it). So lets gather some facts here before I write to them:

*Mac OS:* I see that all of us here having this problem are using OS 10.4. Is anyone of you out there using 10.5 also having this problem?

*Mac Hardware:* seems to affect both PPC and Intel Macs.

*iPhone model & firmware version:* Im using a 2.5G iPhone running firmware 2.2.1. What are you using?

Can you think of any other facts that might be relevant?

Message was edited by: firoze

Message was edited by: firoze

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Answer 7

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2009 5:41 AM in response to firoze

I'm using iPhone 3G Version 2.2.1.
I don't remember if I did an iPhone sync after I updated iCal.
My pre-iCal database was Palm Desktop (couple years ago).

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Answer 8

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 20, 2009 5:52 AM in response to ray-gunn

So ray-gun are you still in a fix? I mean is your iCal still jumbled while your iPhone calendar is ok? Have you not managed to get your iPhone calendar data across to your Mac?

Im trying to sort out my own problem - first i want to delete the corrupt data from iCal so I deleted all the iCal databases I could find in my User folder i.e. in Application Support and Caches but in spite of that, the data is still there in iCal when I re-launch it. Obviously the data is also stored in some other locations but I cant figure out where...

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Answer 9

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2009 6:14 AM in response to firoze

Yes Fireroze, I'm still in a fix. You are correct: my iPhone still has good data while iCal is a jumble. I have not yet figured out how to get the good data to replace the bad. I need to keep reading.

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Answer 10

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 20, 2009 8:37 AM in response to ray-gunn

Well ray-gunn, if we can figure out how to get the corrupted data out of iCal permanently, then syncing the iPhone should transfer the data from the phone to iCal. However the danger is that if the corrupt data is still on iCal then it would get transferred to the phone as well. Thats why its so important to make sure iCal is well and truly cleared of data before syncing. As I mentioned in my previous post I cant seem to be able to get rid of the data from my iCal. Am investigating this.....

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Answer 11

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 21, 2009 6:32 AM in response to firoze

First let me say thanks for all the input. My problem is still not solved though.
I did a closer examination of my symptoms. This additional info might be helpful:
Date Hand Held Device Desktop Program
1998 Palm Palm Desktop
Nov 2007 Palm iCal
Sep 2008 iPhone 3G iCal

Transferred data from Palm Desktop into iCal in Nov 2007 and started using iCal (with iSync). Looks like any Daily Repeat events previous to that date have lost their end date. In other words the Daily Repeats imported from Palm Desktop start on time but never end. This is the "jumble".

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Answer 12

DDWiz

Level 1

15 points

Mar 21, 2009 9:52 AM in response to ray-gunn

As I mentioned earlier (or possibly in the other related thread), I had done a full HD backup the day before the problem occurred, so was able to restore a good calendar with just a couple of the most recent entries missing, that I had to re-enter.

Yesterday, I did my daily sync and was careful to do both a full "Backup Database" (from the FILE menu) and copy the iCal Library "Sources" folder, but when I did the sync, there were no problems.

Again today I did my daily sync and there were no further problems in either the iPhone or Mac calendars. Not to minimize how catastrophic this is for those like Ray-Gunn who did not have a recent backup, but so far it does seem to be a one-time occurrence, perhaps hitting on the first time the calendars are synched after the upgrade.

Still, it is a problem and Apple does need to fix it.

In the meantime, I will continue to make both kinds of backups ("Backup Database" command from FILE menu as well as full copy of the SOURCES folder that contains the original data).

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Answer 13

firoze

Level 1

49 points

Mar 22, 2009 11:21 AM in response to ray-gunn

Ok, I solved my problem thanks to Austin Kinsella1's help in this Post:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1949244&tstart=0

ray-gunn, you might want to try the method I used:

1) Delete all the iCal files and also the User/Library/Application Support/syncservices/local/ folder. Of course first make a back-up of this folder as you will need to restore it at the end.

2) Next launch iCal and let it run for at least a minute to make it sure it does not load any data. Then, once you are sure there is absolutely data in it, quit it.

3) Now launch iSync and in its preference panel, select the "Reset History" option.

4) Now launch iTunes and in the iPhone window click on the "Info" Tab. There, select the "Sync iCal calendars" option. Make sure you DO NOT select the "Do not sync events older than xxx days". Also make sure you DO NOT select the "Replace information on this iPhone" options at the bottom of the iTunes window.

5) Now sync the iPhone. It should copy all the data on the phone to iCal.

6) Lastly restore the User/Library/Application Support/syncservices/local/ folder that you had earlier backed up.

Hopefully the above method will work for you. However there is a slight risk that syncing may delete the data from your iPhone, +so proceed at your own risk+!

I hope this helps...

Many thanks to all of you who wrote to help me.

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Answer 14

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 23, 2009 5:49 AM in response to firoze

Thanks Firoze, I will try this on Wednesday (my first opp). I exported my iCal data in vcard format and think I can see why the events are being repeated forever. Somehow the repeat rule (??) has lost (?) its "until" value. Here's an event that repeats properly:
RRULE:FREQ=DAILY;INTERVAL=1;UNTIL=20071202
This event repeats forever (but worked previously):
RRULE:FREQ=DAILY;INTERVAL=1
I don't yet know what this line was like before the sudden problem, but I'm going to try to look at it from an old backup.

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Answer 15

ray-gunn Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 26, 2009 5:37 AM in response to firoze

I must have a strange problem with iCal/iPhone. I tried the process from firoze / Austin Kinsella1 but it did not fix my problem. I was able to delete all old data from iCal using the procedure. I ran iCal for about 30 minutes, Quit and relaunched hours later and it still had no data -- great, I thought, now all I need to do is sync from my iPhone and everything will be hunky-dory. After the sync the same problem reappeared. Maybe this version of iCal cannot handle repeating all-day events. I selected two of the offending events and attempted to manually update them, one updated from the iPhone and one updated from the iCal program. Both had an effect, but neither fixed it.
The problem is worse than I originally thought. While the iCal data is a horrible never ending repeat of the daily all-day repeating events, the iPhone data is not entirely correct. That is, the iPhone data all-day repeating events wind up repeating until the end of their original current month. For example, an event:
"Lara to Tampa with Amy" starting 11/17/2000, repeat daily, end repeat 11/19/2000.
winds up repeating until 11/30/2000.
A closer look at the iPhone event shows the end repeat date as 11/19/2000 on each of the entries 11/17, 11/18, 11/19 which seems correct. But it also has the same event on 11/20 thru 11/30, each with an end repeat date of 11/19! There is no event on 12/01.
This same event in iCal shows correctly (after being corrected in iCal) until I delete the iPhone events on 11/20 (after the end date) and do a sync. Then iCal changes the event to a never ending repeat (again). Next, as a troubleshooting aid, I'll try to make this all-day repeating event into a single non-repeating event that spans the entire 3 days. (It should work without doing that gyration).
Getting tired.

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