Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How do I find old events on my Calendar?

I have several years worth of events in my calendar. iOS seems utterly incapible of doing a basic search system-wide to find content that's older than, apparently, one year.

Today I got a jury duty notice, and I tried to search for the last time I had jury duty. iOS tells me there's no occurance of "jury" in my device. This is 200% BS. I went to my old Palm Z22, did the same search, and got four hits. When I manually hunted for them on my iPod Touch, I found them.

How do I find old events in iOS? Apparently Apple hasn't bothered to make this possible. Anyone know of any 3rd-party apps that correct this seeming oversight?

iPod touch, iOS 4.3.3, iOS 4.3.5

Posted on Sep 30, 2011 12:57 AM

Best reply

100 Watt Walrus Author

Level 1

74 points

Posted on Jan 18, 2017 3:39 AM

Original poster here, writing in reply to the most recent activity.

My current solution for all of this is Fantastical. The iOS app, by default, searches all dates no matter how far back. I don't even remember the last time I opened the supremely inferior native calendar.

The Mac app, while pricey is very much worth it to me for several features not offered elsewhere — #1 being that it's easy to quickly switch between set of calendars, so you don't have to always be looking at one cluttered UI splattered with the colors of multiple schedules. (Hey Apple, where are the "tabs everywhere" in the Calendar app?)

Having said that, I just opened my Mac's Calendar.app for the first time in at least a year or two, and I was able to search for older events. (Screenie below.)

Running 10.11.6. Your mileage may vary.

View in context

58 replies

Oct 4, 2013 5:29 PM in response to unfrostedpoptart

I have both Calvetica and Fantastical, and each are infinitely superior to the native calendar in countless ways. I also use Fantastical on my Mac, and it's great!

Hawgny

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2014 11:26 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I just purchased the two dollar fantastica-2. It runs a search all the way back to the beginning of time. The program uses and synchronizes your calendar data from the Apple iOS application. Too bad Apple can't make the search function work in their own calendar. I tried Calvetica and it doesn't appear to search any further back than one year, just like the Apple calendar program. Too bad because it seems like a good program.

Jan 19, 2014 7:38 PM in response to Hawgny

Calvetica can search your entire history. When in the Search screen, tap the gear to the left of the search field, and you can choose the range of your search.

Fantasical is pretty good. I have both that and Calvetica. But the way Fantastical leaves out dates with no events from the scrolling part of the screen makes me nuts, and there's no preference for that. Plus, in Calvetica its easier to choose and change reminder alarms, which is really important to me.

I actually use Fantastical for some calendars and Calvetica for others. I wish somebody would make a tabbed calendar app (for desktop too), so I could quickly and easily switch back and forth between various views.

Apr 11, 2014 3:41 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I am from Brazil and have the same terrible problem not be able to search for old eventsin IPhone calendar. Do uou think Celvetica is the final solution for while? Can we sync easily with IPhone calendar?

Apr 11, 2014 10:43 PM in response to Ligia Kogos

Yes, Ligia, as far as I know Calvetica is your best option for full-calendar searching in iOS. Almost all calendar apps (including Calvetica) use the same calendar database as the native Calendar. There's no separate syncing. Calvetica will be getting its info from the same place.

Apr 12, 2014 6:11 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Thank you very much , I will folllow your advise! I don't know how people are doing without this so important function , search for old events, that I had working perfectly in my old Pocket Pc HP ...

May 10, 2014 6:43 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I can't believe that Apple can't facilitate old event searches. I used to be able to do this on my Palm Pilot years ago. I feel like I've gone back 10 years. Come on Apple, please sort out something that surely is quite basic, or allow some search options, search all, as suggested. Does anyone from Apple ever read these? Or do they just leave it to their users to try and sort out Apple problems as best they can!!

May 10, 2014 8:45 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Scroll up then click the day it was on. 😉

May 10, 2014 9:32 AM in response to Alana McD

But, unless I'm missing something, I can't scroll up further than about a year! So no good for events older than this. Was trying to find out the last time I attended a course. Couldn't on iphone because it was in 2010. So had to wait till I got back home then easy search on the PC! As I said, I could have done this on my old Palm Pilot 10 years ago.

May 10, 2014 10:41 AM in response to katharinesim

I have fantastical and my calendars set to sync all events but I can't see any events beyond April even though all birthdays and past reminders show up. Any idea why it's doing this?

May 10, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Alana McD

Alana McD

Scroll up then click the day it was on. 😉

And if you don't know the date it was on? Or if it's more than a year old?

Heyitzmoni

I have fantastical and my calendars set to sync all events but I can't see any events beyond April even though all birthdays and past reminders show up. Any idea why it's doing this?

I assume you mean April 2013 — 13 months ago.

Can you see those events in other calendar apps? If not, connect your device and in iTunes > [Device name] click on [Info], scroll down to Calendars, and see if you have a check next to "Do not sync events older than [] days."

katharinesim

I can't believe that Apple can't facilitate old event searches. I used to be able to do this on my Palm Pilot years ago. I feel like I've gone back 10 years. Come on Apple, please sort out something that surely is quite basic, or allow some search options, search all, as suggested. Does anyone from Apple ever read these? Or do they just leave it to their users to try and sort out Apple problems as best they can!!

Many years ago Apple stopped caring about flexible usability. Apple's entire UX philosophy is now, "You'll be fine if you just do it our way and don't worry your pretty little head." If Apple thinks you don't need to find events older than a year, then they're not going to enable it. Period. Even if the ability to do so is 15-year-old technology.

Another example of this: In Mail, it's impossible to do an "unless/except" search — as in...

FIND all emails from joe@joe.com

EXCEPT where jane@jane.com was CCd

Of course, that's no possible in almost every mail client made anymore (this functionality seems to have died with Eudora).

And no, nobdy from Apple reads these forums. Or at least, they never participate.

May 11, 2014 6:32 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

No, I don't have a check next to "do not sync events older than x days" in iTunes. It does look like you just can't search, or have list views for older items.

Still my search problems pale into insignificance compared to my husband, who having been a PC user for over 20 years, has just bought a mac, but is thinking of ditching it because he then has to use iCloud, which won't sync with the Outlook client. He doesn't have any useable calendar at all now, rather than just having a search problem!

May 11, 2014 1:48 PM in response to katharinesim

I cannot duplicate the problem you describe in Fantastical for iOS. Caveat: I'm using iOS 6.1.6 (my iPod Touch can't upgrade to iOS 7).

My Fantastical for iOS shows events back as far as my calendar goes, and I can search events in the past as well. Just found one from 2009-06-04 via search.

Maybe something changed in the newest version for iOS 7? Contact Fantastical for help!

As for the problems your husband is having, you don't have to use iCloud. I don't. Has he contacted Apple or gone into an Apple Store to get help setting up a calendar that syncs with Outlook? I haven't used Outlook for years, so I can't offer much insight, but I know many cross-platform people who don't have this problem. 🙂

Jun 24, 2014 10:15 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I bought Calvetica and Fantastical 2 , that searches 25 years past, but Week Cal is the only one that goes very far behind in the past! . Week Cal can search and view unlimited events in the past, even 100 years ago, or more, if you like to add on your calendar, historic events or biografic data of your family, for example. You can search for key words that may be in the titlle, or notes and allows changes in past events that sync immediately with your IPhone calendar and ICloud . It gives the option to choose the range of uour search . It may take minutes to find the results depending on the amount of events and number of years to search, but works perfectly!

Jan 20, 2016 8:09 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Wow, sometimes Apple leaves me speechless. Just ran into this "bug" and found out that there is no search option for past events in Calendar.app in OS X 10.11.3 (2016).

I don't even know what to say. And I really wonder what apple was thinking when forgetting about this feature. PR probably was more important? This is ridiculous.

So please, if you are also affected by this missing feature, please head to http://www.apple.com/feedback/calendar.html and give some feedback to apple, so that they become aware that essential functionality in calendar.app was completely forgotten.

WORKAROUND: Go to a date in the past (e.g. 2007) then any event later than that will show in the search results. I guess that way, apple wants to always only show "the relevant" (TM) results. Still think this is pretty stupid behavior.

How do I find old events on my Calendar?