Snow Leopard: calendar contents lost

I too had this problem after updating from 10.4.11 to Snow Leopard. I tried the backup/restore approach, and the export from old iCal and import into new iCal. Neither worked (well, the export/import worked for one very new calendar category, but not the other ones, which the Snow Leopard iCal version said it couldn't read when I tried to import). I phoned Apple Support, and they do not yet have a fix (other than using MobileMe, which I don't use), nor are they yet noting it as a significant problem.

The syncing with my iPod Touch did work, though as a previous poster suggested. For those of you who still have your old iCal, or have everything from old ICal on your iPod Touch, just make sure the iTunes settings for synching the calendar doesn't have the "ignore events older than 30 days" box checked, bring your synch up to date on the old Mac to include all calendar events, then hook up and synch on the new Mac (again, making sure the "older than 30 days" box is not checked.).

You will get a warning message from iTunes about there being many events not on the new computer, which you ignore, and then everything will be imported.

Thanks to the original poster of this suggestion - it worked for me.

Rich Dean wrote:
I did the following 3 test, and I am curious if any one else noticed this. ...

Okay, I tried duplicate your results. Maybe there was a detail missing, because I couldn't recreate the error you got with step 3.

HOWEVER, based on that log you posted, I started searching within the .ics files of my Tiger calendars for the string "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER". Turns out every calendar that fails in Snow Leopard contains this string, and the trouble-free ones do not.

SO, as a test, I made a copy of one of the .ics's, and using TextEdit I deleted every single line that contains this string. Whaddaya know, it seems to load fine now! And as far as I can tell, all the events are still there, complete with repeats and alarms.

No promises, but so far it's working for me. One calendar down, sixteen more to edit. Hmm... maybe I could script this?

--flyleaf

flyleaf wrote:
HOWEVER, based on that log you posted, I started searching within the .ics files of my Tiger calendars for the string "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER". Turns out every calendar that fails in Snow Leopard contains this string, and the trouble-free ones do not.

AWESOME flyleaf. I will give this a try also and report back here. It would be great if someone wrote a script to do this, I am not so talented so I may end up manually deleting these lines if this works. I need my calendars.

Thanks for the information!
-Rich

flyleaf wrote:
SO, as a test, I made a copy of one of the .ics's, and using TextEdit I deleted every single line that contains this string("X-WR-OCCTRIGGER"). Whaddaya know, it seems to load fine now! And as far as I can tell, all the events are still there, complete with repeats and alarms.

Just got done doing the same things with both of my calendars. They both loaded like a charm into Snow Leopards iCal. I am going to give it a few days to see if I notice any thing not working but at first glance everything worked after deleting the "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER" lines. Alarms, repeating events, everything is there.

I will report back once I have a better chance to do a deeper review of my calendar, but I think we have a winner. Though it is a little disturbing that it could be that easy of a fix. I don't understand how a lot more people did not have this problem. Of course I have no idea what that "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER" string does.

Not totally sure, but those X-WR-OCCTRIGGER lines seem to relate to alarm times from the past. For example, an annual repeating event had a few of these OCCTRIGGER lines, one for every alarm I've dismissed in the past, but none for alarms that will appear in the future. So I'm optimistic that we haven't deleted anything critical. Nice to be in business again!

But as you go forward with Snow Leopard, let me caution you about the next potential bug you could run into. If you snooze an alarm on a repeating event, it's going to overwrite the alarm time on all future occurrences of the event, so that they will ONLY have alarms for this week, and NOT on the proper future dates. I found a thread about this yesterday, but now I'm having trouble finding it again. But I've verified this on my system already, so be warned... snoozing will muck up repeat events big time.

Apple seriously needs a more competent team working on iCal. Nasty bug city.

--flyleaf

George Priester wrote:
I upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard (purchased the "Mac Box Set" which included Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09). Although the calendars I created under Tiger are still listed, their contents are no longer displayed. Any chance I can recover the contents of these calendars? No, I do not have a back up (part of the reason of moving to Snow Leopard was so I would have time machine to recover from such problems).

George, this fix seems to be working for me. No promises, but it might work for you too. Your original calendar data may still exist in this directory...

/Users/(your username)/Library/Application Support/iCal/Sources/

In there is one cryptically named folder for every calendar you had. In each of these folders is an Info.plist... open that in TextEdit or PropertyListEditor to find out WHICH calendar it is. Then go to the associated Corestorage.ics file and make a duplicate of it. (You can rename this duplicate with a more descriptive name, just keep the .ics at the end. Open this duplicate in TextEdit. Do a find for the text "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER". For every line that starts with this text, simply delete the entire line. Make sure you find every instance of this. Once they're all deleted, save that copy (make sure the file extension remains .ics).

At this point, in iCal you choose File>Import>Import... and select this .ics file you just edited. When asked which calendar to import to, you may as well import directly into the corresponding one that already exists (albeit without any data). Or you can choose to create a new one, your choice really, but then there's the hassle of a new, random color assignment.

It should load without complaint. And as far as I can tell, alarms and repeats and all other details are fully restored, as they appeared back in Tiger. Good luck! I hope you have the same luck I had. If you do, please come back and mark the thread "solved". Thanks!

--flyleaf

Well, since I updated my Leopard to Snow Leopard, iCal is a mess.
The header on month list (like, September 2009) disappear with some of the content everytime I try to change the month.
I already tried to empty all the data backing up (exporting) all my calendars and then it works fine. But when I add some event, it blanks everything again.
A friend from work had exactly the same problem. And his computer is brand new.
Don't know what to do. Wish I had a space here to post my screen.

i know several solutions have already been put forth but an easy one i've found is to import calendars from 10.4.11 into a 10.5.x system, export from there and import into 10.6.1.

just find a good friend with a leopard system, backup their calendar, import/export yours, and restore theirs.

I found a work around to importing calendar contents from "within" Snow Leopard. Making the initial import from 10.5 was okay, however, making "export" backup files to migrate to another user profile within Snow Leopard was the problem for me.

The Fix - Export an iCal archive as usual, but export it to your desktop. Select the backup file on your desktop and "Get Information" (Command-I) and change the permissions on the file to Read/Write for "Everyone".

Once the permissions on the export file has been changed, you can copy that file wherever you like and import it into any user profile you like. Open iCal and import the backup file.

It imported the calendar, colors, tasks and everything (I have 50 calendars--I use it that seriously) and everything went smoothly.

I'll work with it over the next two weeks and see how things are going and to ensure events and appointments have not been damaged in any way.

I also (I thought) uploaded my calendars to MobileMe and it still erased random (most) things on my hard drive iCal and iPod Touch. Manually entered everything again (thank goodness I wasn't in need of anything in the past - 10 months of events into the future was bad enough...and so glad I had hard copy date book backup!). Found a fix online but now cannot get anything that I enter on my iPod Touch to transfer to my iMac (both brand new, Snow Leopard). So I have to write everything down on paper (even though I have the Touch with me) and enter it at home...haven't found a fix yet.

Apple - I have 6 employers and an active family - my calendar is my life. Would love to count on my iPod Touch, iMac, and MobileMe. Counting on paper at this point (was thinking you would replace my Palm Treo - guess not. Apps are alluring, but...). Hope someone from the company is looking into this.

Renato, sounds like there is an "order" that must be followed in your situation as it relates to synchronizing all your devices. Sounds like you have to start back from square one. The first thing I'd do is:

1 - Turn off Mobile Me Synchronizing and get all of your calendar data correct and updated on "one" computer first. Once that is all done, get your ipod Touch synchronized to the "one" computer if you have calendar data there that is not on your main computer. You may be able to synchronize "locally" with that computer via bluetooth or sync cable of some kind. I'm unfamiliar with the iPod Touch, but the goal is to somehow get everything on your one computer first and in sync with your iPod if there is calendar data that you require on that device.

2 - Once you have all your calendar data on "one" computer, and all the calendar data from your iPod touch is there, I'd create a calendar "export" archive so you have a place you can start from where you know your data is in tact.

3 - Once you have everything on one computer, and a backup, then you can "unregister" your devices from Mobile Me so it kills any relationship with your devices (start fresh). You may even have to delete the devices registered with Mobile Me so when you sync, it creates a brand new profile for your devices on Mobile Me.

4 - Re-Register your computer first with Mobile me, and get everything synchronized from your computer to Mobile Me. Everything should synchronize okay at that point.

5 - Check your Mobile Me calendar and see if everything looks correct between the main computer and Mobile Me. If all looks good at that point, then you can move to adding your iPod Touch via synchronizing via the cloud/Mobile Me.

6 - If you have all your calendar data backed up or copied from you iPod Touch, you should be able to add your iPod Touch to Mobile me Sync and have all the data in the cloud "overwrite" everything on your iPod Touch. As long as you have already captured your iPod Touch data (backed up) having it overwritten with all the information Mobile Me now has from your desktop should get you in order once again.

Hope that helps. I know its a lot to write in a forum, but there definitely is an order that has to be followed to ensure you've got a good clean set, while synchronizing your devices "in order". Very much like walking around a race track, 25% at a time until you complete a full lap.

I'm having the same problem: I "upgraded?" from 10.5.8 to 10.6 everything but my calendars came over. I do have to put my 1100+ contacts back into their groups but the iCal thing is killing me. I tried with 2 different AppleCare techs with the same negative result. Go into time machine and find a known working calendar and restore. Open 10.6 iCal, dialog says upgrading calendars and at the end, I got a message about alarm events and the upgrade failed (5 times). I was then instructed to drag the .ics events over to the new calendar. The titles were the .ics alphanumeric names. No Good. I asked if I could add the empty calendar names to the left pane and he said I could try this. This didn't seem to work and a lot of my .ics files have the same event (date and time) like they may be alarms. I instructed the dialog to remove possibly dangerous alarms. This doesn't seem worth the effort.
I looked for the "X-WR-OCCTRIGGER" and it's nowhere on my system. I also don't have iCal or iCal/sources or Calendar under username/library/aplication support/.
Under username/library/calendars/ i have the alphanumeric folders. Each has an Event folder and a info.plist not all of the event folders have contents and the ones that do have the .ics files. They are from before 10.6 but iCal in 10.6 only had the generic "work" and "home" calendars and Birthdays.

If Apple can't help can anyone else? 10.6.2? I use iCal for almost everything as I'm freelance. I can't get MobileMe set up until this is fixed.

Flyleaf, I had a similar situation, albeit not as much with the alarm situations and what not. I had challenges with both ical and address book when it came to moving the data over. Here is what I did to fix the problem for myself on both.

I went to my ical and address book (prior to the upgrade) and did an export backup of each. One for iCal and one for Address Book.

I then copied those export files into my Snow Leopard Profile on my desktop. I then "changed permissions" on both of those files so that my Snow Leopard Profile was the "owner" and Everyone had "read/write" access.

I rebooted the system, then imported both the Address Book archive and the iCal archive, then everything was okay (go figure) --who says 12 years of Windows Experience can't help you fix Mac Problems?.. hahaha...

That is what worked for me. I know what a pain it is to not have them work right out of the box, as I'm also independent and have 50 calendars I manage and 1,000 address book contacts, complete with "Groups". There was no way I was going to do all of that work by hand.

Please let me know if that solution works for you. It'd be great to post it as a known work-around.

-E