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Delegate calendars won't sync with iPhone

In gmail I have 5 calendars so as to color "categorize" my appointments: Uncategorized, Work, Play, Appointments, Misc

In iCal I could setup the Uncategorized calendar, and had to set the other 4 as "delegate" calendars. They seem to show up fine in iCal this way.

But, when I sync with my iPhone I can only sync the main "Uncategorized" calendar. I cannot sync any of the delgate calendars.

Any idea how to do this? Is there a better way to "categorize" appointments?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.7), NA

Posted on May 17, 2009 7:49 PM

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66 replies

Jun 25, 2009 11:53 PM in response to WebDevGuy

*OKAY I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION!! *
I was having a similar problem and after some good bit of trial and error, I've had a few findings. I thought I'd post this suggestion which may help other people.


THE PROBLEM: I'm using Google calendar as a way to sync another calendar (Pocket Informant) to not only iCal, but also the native calender on the iPhone (3.0) so that I can have alarms and a backup.
I got my default Google calendar to sync to iCal as well as the iPhone's calendar, but the "delegates" won't show up in iTunes for me to sync.

SOLUTION: Looks like iTunes won't recognize the delegates, so we are going to have to set up a new "account" for each delegate through iCal, not Google. Here are the steps:

1.) Open iCal, go to Preferences, Accounts tab, click on the "+" sign at the bottom to add an account for a delegate calendar. (Basically, the same instructions when you added your Google calendar)
2.) Type in your same Google username & password. (For description, this is where you probably want to type in the name of the delegate calender you are adding. Remember, we can only add one calendar at a time).
3.) Click on the Server Options arrow and this is what you have to type in the box:

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/<CALENDER ID>/user

4.) Now, you have to replace "<CALENDER ID>" with your delegate calendar's ID. How do we find this? Go to your Google calendar main page. On the left-hand side under "My Calendars", click on the down arrow next to the delegate calendar you wish to add and find "Calendar Settings"
5.) Now that we are on the Calendar Settings page, scroll down where you will see
(Calender ID: ___________) on the right and yes, it is in the parentheses. It should look like a bunch of jibberish followed by "@group.calendar.google.com" This is your calender ID.
6.) You need to copy & paste this in to the URL that I put up above, starting with the first letter of the jibberish and ending at ".com"

Now, you are ready to add this calendar, and it should show up in iCal as a "separate account" and in your iTunes!

To avoid what looks like repeating events, make sure to uncheck your delegate calendars under the Delegation tab under your original default Google calendar.

It's not a perfect solution, but it works for me. And sorry for the longgg post, but if you're anything like me, you need a step-by-step, idiot proof instructions lol.

I hope it works for everyone! If you need any help, send me a message on my Twitter first before following so I won't deny you. Twitter.com/ayo_Kayo

Sep 9, 2009 5:57 AM in response to ayo.Kayo

Thanks for figuring out this solution. I'm sure Apple's iCal developers will now do this properly in the next update now that you've shown them the procedure. Then we can be back to a one step configuration.

When I tried to add another account, it complained that all the Google accounts were set up and would not do another. I'm using Snow Leopard. So I had to change the account type from Automatic to CalDAV (not Google either), enter my userid and password and the server address on one screen.

Oct 3, 2009 3:29 AM in response to ayo.Kayo

I'm trying to sync the 'contact birthdays' delegate calendar. The problem is the calendar ID doesn't exactly look like gibberish: (Calendar-ID: #contacts@group.v.calendar.google.com)

So, following your logic, the full URL becomes:

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/#contacts@group.v.calendar.google.com/user

Apparently iCal freaks out on the hash character (#). After pasting this address in the 'server path' field, it trims everything after '/calendar/dav/'. I tried replacing the # character with the URL-encoded version (%23) but that gives the same result.

Any ideas on how to get iCal to recognize this URL?

Oct 19, 2009 3:30 AM in response to ayo.Kayo

ah, works GREAT! thanks. Couple things to point out:

yes you will have to do a sorta manual install, choosing CalDAV, not Google, and then fill out all the info and go from there.

The calendars are not editable on the phone, but they are in iCal and of course anywhere on the web.

This means you can't create anything to the google calendars from the phone.

the suggestion about using m.google sync is not valid if you dont want google to take over your phone as that requires google acting as your exchange server. So for now its not perfect, but its as close as we get.

we can view all our calendars on our phones and get reminders, no matter how many google calendars and/or ical native calendars we have. But we can only edit the gCal via the web or on the computer.

Delegate calendars won't sync with iPhone

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