Q: iCal shows blank alarm!

Rich,

with iCal closed, try moving ~/Library/Application Support/iCal/alarmsCache.plist to the desktop, and see if this cures it.

..k

I have the same problem. Here's to hoping to suggestion works. Does anyone know if Apple actively monitors these lists?

Nope, didn't work for me. Any other ides? Apple?

OK, I just had to post what I've found out about this issue with iCal.

My scenario: Tiger 10.4.2, 1.25Mhz 15" PowerBook G4, SonyEricsson T610, and .Mac service, all synchronized through iSync.

It was while using Panther that I also started getting these empty alarm pop-ups from iCal, first only when opening iCal, later every few minutes even with iCal closed. Later I installed Tiger and hoped it would take care of the problem. It didn't. I kept getting the same stupid empty alarm regularly.

Then one day I mistakenly erased all my data from iCal, calendars, to-do's... everything. I lost it all on all three my iCal, my cell phone, and .Mac. It literally vanished forever. But this tragedy did something interesting: I stopped getting the empty alarm! So I figured out it wasn't iCal per se, but something in one of my calendars or To-Dos that was doing this.

I restarted putting my daily schedule on iCal again. Time passed by and everything was fine. Then two days ago, while I was in bed at night I remembered some important phone calls I had to do in the next few days. Being already in bed, I grabbed my T610, added these new To-Dos to the phone thinking all I'd do next morning was sync everything with iSync and my To-Dos would be in iCal with no problem.

So next morning I sync phone, iCal, and .Mac through iSync. The new To-Dos appeared everywhere as they were supposed to, but guess what also started appearing again? The empty alarm window! So this shed some light on me that the problem came from the new To-Dos added to iCal from my phone!

Here's what I did: I opened TextEdit, typed all the information in every field inside every To-Do in my iCal, saved the document to my desktop, and then I erased all my To-Dos in iCal (but ONLY MY TO-DOS AND NOT MY CALENDARS). Closed iCal, then I synced everything with iSync, opened iCal again and guess what? NO FREAKING EMPTY ALARM!!! YES!!! All I had to do was re-enter my To-Dos as new with the information I had previously saved onto the TexEdit document.

Try it and maybe it'll also work for you.

Yes, I assumed it was a rogue alarm attached to either an event or a task, and that it could be found through a process of elimination. Just the same, the problem needs to be solved by Apple.

Hi All,

I called Apl Care today about this, They basically wanted me to try to narrow it down, so I did.

Here is what I did:
1) Either sync to .Mac, or export all calendars to shared folder
2) Created a new user and opened iCal
3) Either sync from .mac (be sure to sync from and not to) or import all calendars from shared folder. If syncing, turn off auto sync. (very important as you don't want to destroy your originals)
4) Starting at the bottom calendar, delete a calendar then quit and the launch iCal.
5a) If the blank alarm appears then repeat step 4
5b) If the alarm has gone away then reset from iCal or reimport the calendar you just deleted.
6) Delete all other calendars. Quit and restart to confirm the blank alarm.
7) Now do the same thing for each event and To Do (delete one by one and quit/launch iCal until the alarm is no longer.

I hope that's enough info. Use another User to help prevent the deletion of calendars. And be careful not to sync back to .mac as this could eliminate wanted data. If you don't follow this then you might want to not try this.

This will let you find the rogue alarm. My rogue alarm came from a To Do item that had a due date and alarm set earlier and then I had unchecked the due date. Don't know if this is relevant or not. If you go through this process, it would likely be helpful to publish your results here, and to save a copy of the rogue calendar (perhaps stripped to the rogue event/to do) to send to Apple.

I have a return call to Apple to share results and hopefully they'll be able to squash this bug, and even provide a fix that kills whatever rogues that exist, that folks are just putting up with.

They are now aware of this thread.

I can now replicate to the point where I think Apple will be able to sort this out.

It seems one sets a To Do with a due date and an alarm "Message" (w/ or w/out sound) for "the same day" at a time later than the present time (mine defaults to 11:45 PM but setting it differently as long as it was later than present time showed the same problem).

After all is set, uncheck due date, quit iCal then relaunch. Viola, another blank Alarm message. I can't think of an easy way to find these but maybe some one can. And I don't know why it also pops up at other times (besides at launch) but I suspect it has to do with some internal repeat frequency set by Apple for when you just close the Alarm with out dismissing it.

Hi folks
I had the exact same problem. I found that the error could be corrected without erasing your todos or calendars in this way: simply go thru your todos and check the "due date" box an and off on each todo, one by one. You will most likely find one that has an errant alarm still "on". Remove the alarm and restart iCal... the error should be corrected.

I was also having the same problem, but I reverted to a backed up system to resolve it. I figured I'd add some info to the post. On startup the console message for ical was:

"iCalAlarmScheduler[213] invalid date string in ical alarm scheduler settings"

when i launched ical it read

"iCal[6165] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: * -[NSPlaceholderMutableString initWithString:]: nil argument"

Hope that may help.

I just wanted to chime in that this worked for me...

Thanks.

i'm having the same problem here too...

i have the same problem. so far nothins has worked. (deleting prefs and turning of old todo alarms). im afraid it might be an event that has the alarm set. what a pain.