Mac Calendar "Server responded with an error" message

The suggestion by the Community Specialist is useless. It doesn't address this very specific problem we all have.

Yesterday, I called AppleCare. Spoke to Luis (online chat). He sent me instructions to:

1. Refresh the NVRAM
2. Start in Safe Mode
3. Delete those cache files and cookie files (which I think are mentioned in this article and are definitely in other articles which I found online).
4. I also removed the gmail account, re-loaded it. And, I toggled calendars on/off several times.

Guess What? (Play TPIR losing horn here)

I'm not sure if this problem is with Apple or Google or both. But, obviously they (i.e. their systems) don't want to play nice with each other.

I hope that Apple and Google both jump on his quickly. I'm going to redo my calendars using my iCloud account (which is, I'm sure, exactly what Apple wants me to do)...but I have no choice. Price for being a fan-boy I guess

Sorry if this offends, I just think it is best to tell it like it is.

I had the same question as you one week ago, but I am sure that mac occurred this question before the Big Sur update.

But now I can sync my google calendar with my mac successfully!! Not sure if you are in the same situation, maybe you can try.

Here are some tips I did:

1. Open your Google Calendar on the web.
2. [Setting Menu] > [Settings]
3. Click the calendar you want to sync on mac on the left side section, below the title "Settings for my calendars".
4. [Access permissions] > [Make available to public]
5. Refresh or reopen your mac calendar.

If these still can't help it, keep following below...

1. Open Mac Calendar
2. [Perference] > [Account]
3. Change [Refresh Calendar] to [Manual]
4. Refresh or reopen your mac calendar.

If you are sure that it syncs successfully, you can change [Access permissions] to the original setting.

Hope you guys can solve the problem like me.

Okay here's how I fixed it, this assumes you have no On Your Mac calendars, so back those up ahead. Also backup any Mail account settings like extra email address aliases. Try this at your own risk.

1. Close calendar
2. Go to activity monitor and end the process CalendarAgent
3. Delete your Google account in System Preferences
4. Go to your Google account and revoke MacOS permissions from your 3rd party app access. https://myaccount.google.com/permissions
5. Go to ~/Library and outright delete the Calendars folder
6. In ~/Library/Preferences delete com.apple.iCal.plist
7. Reboot your machine for good measure
8. On reboot re-add your Google account
9. Start-up Mail, Contacts, and Notes to get the resync started.
10. Calendar should startup like it's a fresh install but will sync.
11. I then used Caffeine to keep my Mac awake and left it to sync my massive Mail/Contacts/Calendar overnight (it was late but I had no errors so I figured it would take time).

After doing this, everything worked.

Ok this is not actually working. The calendars are not updating and the "!" is back.

Something is wrong with Apple SW division.

Since High Sierra (when everything was working smoothly and I kept that for a long time) - now I see the following:

• Mail is dreadfully slow accessing Gmail on Google Apps (because it can't limit the downloads)
  • Result - switch to Postbox
• iMessage still never handled group messaging well cross-platform despite years of advance notice
  • Result - switch to Signal
• Reminders is not well integrated (except with Siri) and went through a nasty upgrade where you lose all your reminders (the iPadOS 14 upgrade so your family reminders are split between "old devices" and "new devices" so your kids and you can't share any more)
  • Result - switch to Trello
• iPhoto changed to Photos and became incompatible meaning file-structure backups aren't compatible any more and you can't use tools like Adobe Bridge to manage it
  • Result - switch to Adobe Bridge
• iTunes changed to Music and now forces you into Apple Music streaming even if you pay for Spotify streaming, and so long to your music library, it's not clear where it is or even if it is backed up, if you spent hours making sure it is high bit rate with lyrics, etc.
  • Result - switch to Plex
• And now - to top it off - Calendar stops working with Google - the calendar that everyone actually uses for work. I don't think anyone other than Apple actually uses iCloud for an office calendar!
  • Result - don't know, but I am looking at Fantastical and I need to do something quickly! My family calendar is on iCloud so I need to see both at the same time.

Look at this - I have a Mac and my most important daily software is not from Apple!

Wondering why I should even get a Mac next time...

This is happening to me too. I've force quit the CalendarAgent deleted all my accounts, cleared the calendar cache and preferences, and restarted. Searching for answers it looks like this menu used to have an option to revert a change to server but that button is gone. I wonder if this is caused by the recent MacOS 11.2.1 (20D74) update I did.

Hi jeremy_v,

I'm having this same issue. I just purchased a new MacBook Air (M1 chip) and used Migration Assistant to transfer over from my old Air a little over a week ago. I'm seeing the same error message for my Google Calendar while inside the Calendar app. This isn't happening to any of my other e-mail accounts. I called Apple Tech Support, and they did not have a solution. I have removed and re-added the Google/Gmail account a few times now through System Preferences. This does not solve the problem; once the Google calendar populates and appears to be working again, the error reappears after some time. This does affect functionality; I added an event to the Google calendar on my Mac, yet the event won't sync/show on my iPhone. My iPhone also does show this error which leads me to conclude that this malfunction could be a glitch with the latest macOS 11.2.1 software as another commenter on this thread has suggested.

I did review your help articles, but I can't find the solution for this problem. Can you help escalate this, so it can be fixed for many of your customers? I'd love to use my new Apple device as intended!

Is weird, I found out this issue happens from time to time.

I found the following pattern for me, during the morning (UTC -5 time), until 19:00 hours it works well, afterwards at some point is broken and stop working. All my Gmail accounts (I have 4 added in the calendar) are affected and do not work until next day when I turn on the computer by 9:00 or so and starts working again.

This happened already for me 3 days in a row.

Hi jasonflying,

Thanks for contacting the Apple Support Communities!

We understand that you're seeing an alert within the Calendar app that the server responded with an error when using your Gmail account.

Here's a great resource to help you to troubleshoot and isolate this behavior further: Troubleshoot Calendar problems on Mac

We hope this helps.

Cheers!

1. There seems to be mounting evidence that this is a server-side issue at Apple and/or Google. I presume one of them applied a configuration tweak (authentication procedure, SSL certs, etc.) that the other is not aware of.
2. This issue affects multiple generations of OS X: 10.14, 10.15, 11.
3. The "master thread" for the same issue at the Google forums side is at: https://support.google.com/calendar/thread/98473879?hl=en
4. Google Calendar Platinum Product Expert Neil@GCalToolkit wrote today: "I have confirmation that the Dev team are looking into this."
5. I'm a sysadmin and we pay for Google Workspace, so I was able to chat with a human at Google about this, a "Calendar specialist" at the Google Workspace support team. After describing the steps I took, he didn't even try to have me go through any troubleshooting steps. I can't add much, except: "Indeed, I have received cases since around 2 weeks ago about this same issue. I found our engineering team has already investigated the technical issue. However they found limitations when trying to troubleshoot this because of the CalDAV protocol limitations when it comes to third party apps."
6. The more "noise" we users make about this in a concentrated way, the higher the chance it'd make its way to the handful of individuals among the two companies' 282,000 employees, and be analyzed and resolved. If you are a developer (especially a caldav coder) or have Apple Enterprise support, please use your channels since you can get further ahead than we can with tier1 consumer Apple support.
7. Lastly, I do suspect fault lies about 60% with Apple, 40% with Google - because I just installed BusyCal, added my Google Account, and it immediately worked like a charm - while Calendar.app is borked. This is the only workaround I have to offer.

Same thing is happening to me. Its extremely frustrating - I've been using google calendar on iCal for years and now suddenly this. It started about 2 weeks ago. I use iCal to plan all our jobs for months ahead and to have this suddenly happen is annoying and un-necessary. I tried the previous posters fix, which worked for about 18 hours before I got this message again.

• macOS Catalina 10.15.7
• iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)
• Processor 3.3GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5
• Memory 32GB 2667 MHz DDR4
• Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5300 4 GB

Google developers are taking a look at this issue:

• https://piunikaweb.com/2021/03/01/google-calendar-users-reporting-intermittent-sync-issues-across-several-macos-versions/
• https://support.google.com/calendar/thread/98473879?hl=en&msgid=99455779

I have this issue too ... happened today and nothing I do fixes it. Interestingly, I just got this error as part of setup (trying to re-add Google account into my profile) - wondering if it's related at all - looks like apple is trying to confirm the gmail calendar access but the link is broken?

I'll share this with apple now

Great to hear working (or partially working) for some as it gives me hope!

Still not working for me, I see the Google Account in the list but no Calendars showing underneath. I did the cache clear steps so I don't have the ! warning but in fact cannot see any Google Calendar (see attached pic)

I also created a blank user to test with but just get the same thing.

I am in Australia AEST. .

Currently 2pm here so that is 8pm PST

I read DinJapan's post about it working at 5pm JST so going to check at 6pm my time (which will be 12am PST)

This hasn't worked for me - The calendar shows up on the left sidebar, but it seems to get stuck and I dont get anything populated in the calendar itself.

Perhaps it is just re-building the cache? Its been a few hours but still no dice.

The calendars that work - all Microsoft. Should have never migrated to Google.

At least no error signal anymore.....

Hi - My workaround was to create a Chrome-based offline backup to use when Apple calendar goes down -- go to calendar.google.com on Chrome browser, then preferences, then preferences (upper right gear), then scroll to the very bottom and click on offline calendar.