iCal picks wrong calendar for invites - how do I change that?

Same issue here. I have an Exchange account that i use as my primary work (email & calendar) account and I have a Gmail (calendar only) account. When i receive an ics file in my email, right click and open in Calendar it defaults to my Gmail account. I've gone through all of the suggestions in this thread and still have the same issue.

I have found a simple workaround though which seems to work well. I also have an iPad and also use that for my Exchange email and calendar. It appears that when you click on the ics file in mail on the iPad and click on the link Add To Calendar it gives you an option which calendar you want to add it to.. You need to have calendars deactivated from your iCloud settings on your iPad as well.

Its not ideal but the only other approach that I found (on my Mac) was to disable the Gmail calendar before clicking on the ics file which was a royal pain.

Eagerly awaiting Apples response.

Open iCal (or Calendar) Preferences, go to the General Tab and choose your default calendar (the one you want to be)

If that would be so easy, we would not discuss that in a thread. The problem starts, if you have more than just local or iCloud calendars. It is basically a problem with Exchange account. As I wrote before, it does not work if disable all calendars, but not exchange. You will not be able to add a new event from a .ics file.

I don't have any Exchange calendars (thankfully!) but am having the same issue. The scenario is:

1) I have one "on my Mac" calendar that I use because there are many reminders I only really need when at the home iMac; otherwise my phone is popping up annoying reminders when my Mac is already doing that (and if Apple had more "sleep" options I wouldn't even have to do this!).

2) In Mail, default calendar is "Work" (in iCloud)

3) Creating new invitations from iCal work fine: they go to "Work" calendar.

4) Any invitations auto-accepted by Mail, however, go to the On My Mac. Thus the suggestion of ordering the calendars won't work unless I can get "on my Mac" below the set of iCal calendars.

So if there's a way to move "on my Mac" DOWN I guess that would fix it. But really, a default calendar is a default calendar: why would incoming Mail ICS invitations not use it??

This works for me and is much more comfortable: If you have multiple calendars set up in Apple’s iCal application and you receive an invite from a friend, family member or client, you can easily decide which calendar you want the invite to be placed in. Simply hold down the Accept button, rather than just clicking on it, to get a pop-up menu which allows you to choose which iCal calendar it should be placed in.

(Original source: http://www.thegraphicmac.com/accepting-invitation-specific-apple-ical-calendar)

This isn't a good solution. I don't want all invites to go into the same calendar. I want invitations I receive in my exchange email (work email) to go into the exchange calendar in "iCal", and I want invitations that I receive on my personal email (Gmail account) to go into my personal calendar (also in iCal). Seems a bit pointless for iCal to allow for multiple calendars if it forces everything into only on of them.

This is also painful, because if I move the event form one calendar to the other, it sends a cancellation notice to the person, and a new invitation. This becomes very unprofessional for work. (Because all events are currently defaulting to the personal calendar).

You have to pick a default, 'selected calendar' is one of the choices, so pick that.

Hi I have similar problem.

When I get invitations they go in the default calendar. But for one person who sends me invitations they go in another Ical calendar and I see it imports and does not stay. It use to be that he was going in the default calendar, but no longer and can not understand why

How can I put it in the default calendar .

Kind regards

Thank you so much for this post, it helped A LOT!!

Not sure if this will help.

I opened the .ics file in textEdit. Saw a line that said "METHOD:REQUEST". Changed it to METHOD:PUBLISH

Saved and ran that .ics file again and now I can add to the Exchange account I have in iCal.

I have the same problem.
For me the best solution would be the following:
If I open a ics attachment from Apple Mail, Calendar should ask me what calendar account to use. In addition, Calendar should allow me to change the calendar account later on.

This is genius!

The MOO described in Tumum's post (i.e. always ask to add to which calendar unless user-chosen default settings specify otherwise) is the only sensible way. None of the other recipes worked for me, probably because I only have (about 5) linked google calendars (all in the same google account) and don't use iCloud. The default setting and the fact that it can't be changed is imho utterly ********. And that it has taken Apple about 4 years to not get fixed or mentioned in anyway.... well....

I will look into this to find a way to override the default handler (that one CAN be chosen) with some automator script that automatically replaces REQUEST to PUBLISH and then launches Calendar with the modified ics file. This can't be too hard I hope. (I'm versed in Linux scripting but not in Apple automation, hope I manage to get it done).

Cheers

This worked for me too. iCal was always selecting my Google calendar instead of the desired iCloud one. Still it's a pain and Apple should fix it.

Yet another work-around to this problem:

Accept the imported item into the wrong calendar. Once there, Copy the calendar item and paste it to the same date / time so that you now have 2 calendar items. You should be able to open the duplicate and change the calendar that it is associated with. Once done and saved, you can then delete the original item.

This is a horrible way to do this, but you are right, it works.

Apple, can you fix this?

We should all file an actual bug report.