How do I find old events on my Calendar?

I found out how to get the old events back!

1) Open iCal

2) Go to "Calendar">Preferences>Select the "Accounts Tab

3) Check the box for "Enable this account"

4) Now just close that window and Viola! All your events you EVER entered will be back in your calendar!

Are you talking about on the iPhone? There is no "Preferences" or "Accounts Tab" that I can find.

I don't have this same problem on my Macbook. I can search my entire calendar since the beginning. However, my Mac is about 8 years old and the OS is Lion (can't upgrade to the newest) so that may be why.

I didn't read every post in this feed so maybe you are referring to something else.

The workaround you have suggested would be acceptable, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. I can go to past dates, but searches still display results straddling the current date. I'm running iOS 9 on iPhone 5s. I guess you're running OS X 10, and that works for you?

Its an old post but still a current and frustrating issue, one that seems to have come in with either the latest OS or OS update. I'm using an iMac Retina 5K (late 2014) running MacOS Sierra version 10.12 and Calendar version 9.0 (2155).

If I search for "Jury Duty" which I know I've added to my Calendar before and which is synced with my iCloud account, nothing more than 1 year old shows up. Same for "Dentist", etc. Appts that I know are on my Calendar won't appear in the Calendar's search results. Manually searching for them does show they still exist and are still associated with the same iCloud calendar.

Here's my simple workaround:

Search for your past events using Spotlight. The Spotlight search results are categorized by type (pdfs, emails, and yes calendar events too). I can find the calendar event I'm looking for (only Day and Month displayed with no Year so a little tricky) but when I double-click the calendar result I want from Spotlight, the event is opened directly in my Calendar.

Ex: Spotlight search for "Jury Duty" pulls up a 2012 calendar event (4 yrs ago) and "Dentist" pulls up a cleaning I had scheduled around 2 years ago.

I have researched this & I can tell you that the iPhone & iPad CALENDAR SEARCH goes back a bit more than a year- approximately 1 year 6 weeks. Unfortunately, when Apple designed Sierra the SEARCH on the CALENDAR will only go back 2 years. This is NOT your devices- it is by Apple design. One should not install Sierra if you wish to maintain the functionality of the CALENDAR SEARCH that goes back. There may be a calendar app that searches as far as your Calendar, but I have no answer for the Calendar on iMac. Hopefully Apple will get enough pressure to make the Calendar a full-functioning one.

IF THE SPOTLIGHT SEARCH IN CALENDAR WILL NOT GO BACK OVER 2 YEARS, WHAT SPOTLIGHT DOES?

On my iMac, Spotlight goes back all the way to the beginning. Ex: I found a 4 yr old "Dentist" appt with Spotlight but I'm fairly certain it will go further back.

What's interesting is I also have a MBP that is still running iCal 5.0 and there the calendar displays ALL matching search results as far back as 2011 in a panel that opens up at the bottom of the calendar window. So this is definitely something in that was not considered (or worse was considered and just not a concern to Apple's devs or sales teams) for Calendar 9.0

As a small business owner with clients that come back every 2 yrs (I teach CPR), it is very useful/helpful to be able to find past appts so that they can be duplicated as current events. The address, event info, and even the list of students added to the Notes section tends to stay more or less the same from training to training.

Bottom line, by limiting the search functionality, Apple has also eliminated the usefulness of its native calendar app.

Thank you.

I agree that Apple has greatly diminished the usefulness of the Calendar app.

YES! Same problem...I thought I was going nuts when I couldn't find an event I KNOW happened 2 years ago....then I scrolled through the calendar and there it was...so irritating and seemingly stupid.

Yes, I've already moved to Fantastical.....it's very expensive though, to use on Mac/iPhone/iPad.....but it is by far superior to the Apple calendars.

very helpful thread. I too have come across the limitations of search on the calendar iOS app.

Go to Settings, Calendar and then Sync. Change Sync to All. Go back and search for what you wanted. The screen may flash while it loads past dates.

Hasn’t changed in iOS 11—unbelievable. Just got a call from my wife in the car (stopped by the side of the road). She had to call me to look up an old calendar event up on the mac.