Help! iPad calendar sync issues with Exchange server

Question

Level 2

395 points

Help! iPad calendar sync issues with Exchange server

Hello, I've googled this issue and haven't come across with any definitive answer so I'll put it up here to see if anyone have any idea(s).

iPad 3G/Wifi working fine for over a month (firmware 3.2.1) synching with MS Exchange server (only Mail account on the device), over the weekend, calendar entries have disappeared. I've deleted the mail profile and reset it up again, here's what happens, email starts to pull down, same with contacts and Calendar entries, then while Calendar App is open on Month view I can see that the appointments are also being sync then after about a minute, all the entries will just disappear, if I wait a few more minutes, the appointments will start to repopulate again then disappear again after about a minute! Email and contacts are fine, just this Calendar issue.

More background data: User is using an iMac with Entourage 2008, his EA has full email rights to his mailbox and have his email profile on Outlook 2003, both are showing correct Calendar entries on desktop, have also checked the account on OWA and it looks fine there as well.

I'm guessing a corrupt calendar entry (possibly re-occuring appointment)... Does any one have any other thoughts?

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!!!

MBP 13",iPhone3G/iPad3G-Wifi/iPhone4, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 16, 2010 2:11 AM

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Answer 1

Massi71

Level 1

5 points

Aug 16, 2010 4:09 AM in response to Imola

I'd like to echo your issue, i have a very similar one whereas though the issue is limited only to a selection of items on e calendar, not all of them. Not sure what the pattern would be, maybe it happens only with calendars which are created in the MacBook Entourage versus the ones which are created or accepted on the iPhone/iPad. Really annoying issue as I ended up double booking myself in time slots where I thought i was free, and indeed i wasn't.
Help help please!

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Answer 2

Aug 22, 2010 7:58 AM in response to Imola

I have exactly the same problem as described this weekend. Did you find a solution? Are you still experiencing this problem?

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Answer 3

Imola Author

Level 2

395 points

Aug 23, 2010 3:45 AM in response to Imola

After checking the Exchange server active sync logs, the issue was caused by a meeting request where by the meeting organizer sent the request with a 40mb file attachment!!!

All sorted now. Unfortunately, I work for a very large organization and calling the Exchange admins is not something I/we can easily do. 😟

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Answer 4

Mitzr

Level 1

1 points

Sep 28, 2010 8:08 AM in response to Imola

I'm having a somewhat similar issue using my ipad:

I have two email accounts set up on my ipad, my yahoo email and my work email on Microsoft Exchange. Both work well, except for some calendar items.

My mail folders at work have my email and folders and my boss' email and folders. Some of his meeting appear on my ipad and some don't. There are no attachments in the meeting notices?

My default account is my yahoo email account. My goal is to see his calendar and all the meetings from Outlook on the ipad.

Any insight on this would be so appreciated.

Message was edited by: Mitzr

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Answer 5

ghoovler

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2010 9:57 AM in response to Imola

Thank you for this thread... my calendar has been loading half of the appts, blanking and reloading half the appts, over and over. I was very frustrated when I found this thread, then went into Outlook, loaded my calendar in list view, sorted by size, and there was a 7MB attachment on a recurring meeting request... when I deleted that request, everything worked fine. This is clearly a bug that Apple needs to fix - the iPad should clearly make it past an obstacle like this. Very frustrating.

Guy

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Answer 6

Noladave

Level 1

20 points

Feb 22, 2011 5:45 PM in response to ghoovler

WOW! a definte life saver (not really, but a huge help). I had 3 calendar appointments that had a 2MB, 4MB, and 5MB attachments to them. Once I cleared those attachments, all problems disappeared.

For what it's worth, my Calendar had been syncing flawlessly prior to the latest IOS upgrade. It's taken me quite a while to find this. It wasn't a burning issue, as my iPhone calendar was working just fine.

Thanks again.

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Answer 7

BuddyE

Level 1

0 points

Feb 28, 2011 8:25 AM in response to Noladave

This is somewhat helpful but I'm having a similar problem with some events disappearing from my iPad calendar and it doesn't appear to be file size related. The events are still present in my Outlook calendar and on my Blackberry phone and at one time were on my iPad. Since they vanished from the iPad I don't seem to be able to get them to re-sync.

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Answer 8

House!

Level 1

0 points

Mar 29, 2011 7:43 PM in response to BuddyE

I have an IPad 2, and my exchange Acct syncs great for mail and contacts, but the calendar leaves out some items. I tried to figure out if there are any common links to which events aren't syncing, but I haven't found anything. They show up in outlook, and on my android phone, just not on the iPad...HELP APPLE!

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Answer 9

Mar 30, 2011 1:18 PM in response to Imola

another thing to try is to turn off caching in Outlook. I've seen a number of situations where the cache file gets corrupted. You need to stop all outlook services, browse to the outlook.ost file, rename it to something like outlook.xyz, then turn caching back on ( if you want), or just leave caching off. I've seen thi fix a number of calendar consistency issues.

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Answer 10

Apr 13, 2011 11:38 AM in response to Imola

So we had this issue. Very large environment, 24 Exchange servers across the globe. Missing calendar entries and some just not showing up at all.

Ready for the fix?

Summary of the steps performed in order to fix the issue related to ActiveSync is as follows.

o The following MS hotfixes were applied to both front end and backend server:
 Kb963664
 Kb967046
 Kb971660

• On both, front and backend servers set the "Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync" virtual directory Authentication to "Basic". Also, the Exchange virtual directory authentication set to "Basic"+"Intergrated".

• In the IIS manager, make sure that the Exchange related virtual directories have the following permissions for all Exchange servers

Directory Front End Back End
Default Web Site Anonymous Anonymous
Exadmin Integrated Integrated
Exchange Basic Basic+integrated
Exchweb Anonymous Anonymous
Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync Basic Basic
Oma Basic Basic
Public Basic Basic

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Answer 11

Jun 29, 2011 12:50 AM in response to Imola

Looking at what has been said here, I was wondering, if anyone has tried to go through the recommended steps suggested by RobinBerumen? As we are a fairly large company as well, and it can be hard to convince the central IT to go through all of this for a few useres at the moment, it would be helpful to get some feedback on the outcome.

What we are seeing here is following behaviour:

Some appointments do not show up, although they are present in outlook.

Diabeling the sync for calendar in the ipad erases all entries of course, when switchting it back on, missing entries happen to show up. But it's not reliable. Shortly after, the same problem surfaces again.

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Answer 12

Jun 29, 2011 6:33 PM in response to quietwater

I too have an open thread here based on this issue - I've tired to be more specific to what was affecting me!

RobinBerumen's suggestions are sound and should be safe but I'm lower on the todem pole for IT here at my corporation and as such this request I'll have to wait until our administrator is here to confirm if this is implemented or not.

Let's try to keep ALL these related posts/threads up to date since there are so many growing each week and nobody is searching exiting threads.

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Answer 13

kaplanmb

Level 1

0 points

Jul 5, 2011 9:59 AM in response to Dark Heart

I have been having very similar issues to those described by Imola. The calendar appears to try to load, and a few appointments may show up, but then they will all (or almost all) dissapear. My company uses Exchange 2003.

Occassionally, deleting a large attachement has helped. But not always. Several times in the past, I have exported all my calendar entries as a .csv file, deleted all the calendar entries in Outlook, and then re-imported the .csv file. While this always works to re-populate my calendar, it also strips functionality (like recurring appointments).

This is very frustrating, and results in me havinging to rely on my Blackberry while traveling, when I would like to just trust the data in the iPad. A web search clearly shows that many people have this issue, but I have not yet seen any direct responses from Apple. I hope this is addressed soon.

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Answer 14

Jul 8, 2011 12:52 AM in response to Imola

Another addition to this post: I was mentioning before, that we have an issue with disappearing appointments... so far I have not found an answer to this either. In practice it shows, that it is not linked to a single Exchange Account, but can be reproduced on a different account as well.

We are using Exchange 2010, single account on the iPad2. The iPhone does not seem to have this problem though.

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Answer 15

Feb 8, 2012 3:42 AM in response to Imola

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I did this cleaned out the calendar and it worked. I have been searching this topic for three days with no success. Thanks for the help on this.

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