How do you restore iCal calendars in Time Machine

Enter Time Machine/Click on your Home Folder/Library/Application Support/iCal. Restore the iCal Folder

If you upgraded to 10.7.2, then you will need to make the Library visible again.

what the...

I just went to that folder in my TM (which backs up every hour, and has not reported any errors recently) and there is a version from an hour ago (too recent) and the next one is from July 21??!!

Crap!

Any ideas??

Must be coincidence that Lion came out July 20th😉

Is your TM connected permanently and do you have Snapshots enabled in TM preferences? I suppose you do, if you are expecting hourly backups. Then I would check exactly what normal backup schedule you have. Is the automatic backup option on?

Here are mine, but for an MBP with snapshots disabled. The automatic backup is off because I plug the TM disk once a day and then need to click on "backup now" each time.

Ha, actually that is a (weird!) coincidence, because I didn't update this computer to Lion until last week, after updating to iOS5.

I don't know about 'snapshots' (what is that? I don't remember ever seeing that in settings or anything) but yes, this computer is connected permanently and backs up every hour. And if I "enter time machine" I can find multiple backups from the last several hours, so it certainly seems to be working.

I thought maybe it just meant that iCal folder hasn't changed since july 21, but that doesn't make sense... these aren't old static documents. they're calendars! they change all the time!

Fortunately, I found the ical backups I'd made before upgrading to lion (but then deleted), and I was able to recover those, and now i'm re-importing them into ical. Seems to be working. They're a week old so I'm losing a little data, but, better than July 21...

I'll be interested in your success at restoring in this way.

The old .icbu files do not work with the new iCloud system and all that happens is the iCloud dataset syncs back down and replaces them again.

Imports now need to be by using .ics files , one for each calendar. These are not calendars as such, just lists of events, so first you need to have , or create an empty calendar to import them to.

Well, that's my understanding of it, so let us know if you get your data, pre-iCloud, to work.

Then I'd use File>Export>Export to make backup .ics files for each of your calendars, just for safety.

Well, I guess they're not really ical backups, per se.

When i went to migrate MobileMe to iCloud, it said "make sure you back up your calendars first" and I almost didn't do it because I figured I have TM if I need it, but decided just to be safe...

so I did file>export>export for each calendar.

Then after the migration seemed to go smoothly, I deleted them.

Then got into this snafu.

Fortunately, was able to TM back to the desktop from right before I erased them.

so I restored them, then imported them one by one, and so far it looks like everything is good. Knock on wood.

It's still frightening to me though that an accidental deletion from the cloud turns into a day of screwing around to restore things!! It shouldn't be that easy to just permanently erase so much important data. I shouldn't have to manually export all my calendars every day if I want a backup...

I agree that you should just be able to restore from TM. Maybe it works for post 10.7.2 backups. I take it they synced back up ok? I'd heard that you need to logout (or even close iCloud) before the import, to get them to go up and not back down again.

yeah, so far so good. I think because they were basically imported like new calendars, icloud didn't immediately overwrite them.

I can see you're just the man to test a TM restore😁

funny- this whole thing started b/c I had just gotten my MBA back from the apple store, b/c it had to have the HD replaced, so I had just finished a complete restore from TM. which worked perfectly. except after the restore, that seems to erase the backups or something?? after I restored, my only option was to start over with a whole new backup- it couldn't 'find' the old one anymore. weird.

.icbu backups don't work with the iCloud system. I too tried importing them into iCal and they just got wiped and replaced by the iCloud data. Post 10.7.2 TM backups should work if you replace the folder. I was just worried about how the sync would go, if the iCloud dataset is more recent than the restore dataset.

Thanks for posting your (encouraging) results.