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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

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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.


User uploaded file

58 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jan 18, 2017 3:39 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

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.


User uploaded file

Jan 9, 2017 12:16 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Just ran into the iPhone calendar search limitation. I, like others, I need to search for old events. I also have a need to search for future events more than a year away. I had thought it would make sense to save magazine expiration dates in my iPhone calendar (some expire even 3 years in the future). And, then when I get a "renew" notice, I had thought I could search to check the actual expiration date, but no, there also seems to be a 1 year search limit for future events. I am aware that I could keep track of future events in a different way; however, the calendar seemed appropriate. If I go to my computer and log into iCloud the search works for past and future as expected; however, I almost never have the computer with me. I guess Apple considers these limitations a feature, however.

Feb 16, 2017 6:33 AM in response to Ligia Kogos

Ligia Kogos, thank you so much for recommending Week Cal! I too need to go back and forth on my calendar for work. My first Palm Pilot from way back searched the native calendar completely. When I switched to my first iPhone, I was shocked that apple didn't include this function. I posted to apple a few times about this and kept hoping it would turn up in an update. I finally started searching here and tried a couple calendar apps then saw your post. Week Cal is an absolute winner. I was afraid it wouldn't sync with my work calendar but as soon as I set it up, BOOM. There are my appointments! Custom set-ups and very easy to work with. Looks like apple should've hired these guys!

Thanks again!

Oct 5, 2017 4:31 AM in response to DueBaci123

DueBaci, what iOS are you running?


I'm still on iOS 10.3.3 and that doesn't work. The search function on the i-device inside Calendar remains restricted to one year! The old calendar entries are there, it just doesn't find them!


Sync All Events -- combined with iTunes replace events on this i-deivce with those on the Mac -- brings over all the events, they just can't be searched for!


Has this changed in iOS 11?

Sep 30, 2011 3:07 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Did you try to increase the number of days in info pane/Calendars/ -> don't sync events older the xxxx days?

Compare your calendar on your computer and ipod, the one on the computer will still have all events, that are older than the number of days that is selected in the info pane/calendar section.

Deselecting the day option should sync all events ever mentioned on your computer's calendar to your ipod.


Message was edited by: Ingo2711

Sep 30, 2011 1:48 PM in response to Ingo2711

Thanks Ingo, but you misunderstood the problem. My iPod Touch already has my entire calendar, going all the way back to the early 2000s. Within the Calendar on my iPod I can go to, say, December 25, 2005, and look at events from that Christmas, for example, in an attached note on that date, I have a list of all the Xmas gifts given and received that Xmas.


But if I search the iPod for the name of one of those gifts, using either the Homepage search or the search within Calendar, nothing is found. As near as I can tell, this is because Apple apparently hasn't bothered to make its search tools capible of searching events more than a year old.


Again, when I go to my old Palm and do the same search, I find exactly what I'm looking for. But in iOS, this search is impossible. You have to go date-by-date to find anything in the calendar more than 1 year old.


So I'm looking for a solution — either an app that someone created to bridge this oversight, or something I've overlooked in the OS.

Oct 4, 2011 5:18 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

100 Watt Walrus wrote:


... "Don't worry your pretty little head about that. If we didn't include it, you don't really need it."

Which is kind of true, at least for me, I can't remember when I used spotlight to search for entries older than one year.


But I might have workaround. I just tried to find events older than a year using iCal on my Mac, and I had no problem finding what I was looking for.

So maybe this would be a solution until we know more about iOS5.

How do I find old events on my Calendar?

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