Synching Outlook w/iCloud sent invites to everyone

Wow, I wish I had seen this thread before today. Copied an Outlook invitation to my iCloud account and a new string of emails was sent to the entire group. What an absolute nuisance, not to mention embrassing. This needs to be fixed.

I posted here Oct 20 with the same problem. I deleted the icloud calendar and had to wait for the invites to stop. After all were sent, it did stop (450 emails later). Today, out of nowhere, it started again.

I contacted customer service, and they sent me through to "a higher level." They still had never heard of the problem, but at least went to check the details of my icloud account. Their final conclusion was to blame yahoo for sending the emails, because it definitely isn't apple or icloud.

I sent the information to yahoo to ask for their side of it.And of course, there is no way to delete the icloud account. At the very least, I created a new email account to link to icloud - applecansuckmyballs@yahoo.com. I can't wait to see it send invites to everyone from that email address when it all inevitably starts again.

Yes me too - I shut my account down in November 2011 and the invites have just started again!!

I am amazed, and appalled, that this has never been dealt with properly. I was helped in the UK by 2 guys, last November, who also said that had never heard of this happening before (they blamed Outlook). Perhaps if we all write to them they will get a grip of this!! Afterall, if their inbox gets filled up with this issue then at least they may escalate this to someone who will actually fix it!

They are Stuart Keating - IOS UK T1 Team Manager - keating_s@apple.com

and Rory Jennequin - jennequin.r@apple.com

Come on if you have suffered (wherever you are in the world) lets get onto them!!!!

Simon

There is no way Apple doesn't already know about this. I have had an open case with Apple on this issue since November 2011, and I call and email weekly. They stopped responding to my emails long ago, and when I call they always say that engineers are working on it. Obviously no-one is working on it. I have forwarded a link to this discussion thread to 5 or 6 tech support people at Apple after they implied I was the only person who was having this problem. I think the only way this would become a priority to Apple would be if a large corporate account complained. As long as it is just a few individuals like this, I don't think they will deal with it. However I will keep calling and I hope everyone else does too.

In reply to everyone, since iCloud doesn't work with Outlook 2011 Mac I think it is safe to say that we are all using Outlook on Windows, and like the other major problem I have had, elimination of the To-Do Bar list of upcoming events, I think this may be more complicated to solve since it has to do with Windows Outlook.

I think the first step is to connect the right people at Apple and Microsoft to solve it, which may take a long time (hopefully not when **** freezes over 🙂).

Like it or not Apple has been a success partly because they put iTunes on Windows, and Steve Jobs recognized in 1997 that 95% of the world's computers ran Windows so he went to Gates for help. So many people have to use Office for Windows that it is in Apple's interest to fix this problem. I hope they see it this way, if they can figure out what the cause is. I'm still trying to figure it out.

It seems there is nothing to figure out here, at least from my discussion with Apple support. They know why it works the way it does and see it as working correctly. It would be very easy to parametrize iCloud to not send invitations in conjunction with Outlook. No idea why they do not do it.

Cheers, Robert

I can share with you what I learned from talking to various Apple support people over the last few months. In the early version of iCloud, when a user transferred their calendar items from Outlook to iCloud all invitations were automatically copied into iCloud with the user as the meeting organizer. Obviously we weren't the meeting organizers, we were only attendees, but that was an error in the code. iCloud then recognized this as a "new" appointment with the user as organizer and sent out "invitations" to all the other attendees. Similarly, if the user tried to change or delete the appointment in iCloud (either directly from the iCloud web interface or using the Outlook iCloud calendar tab), the change or cancellation notice was sent to all attendees. Unlike Outlook, iCloud does not give you the option NOT to send notifications to all attendees. Like many others I was only one of hundreds of attendees on some of these meetings which were set up by my clients, and many of the attendees do not know me.

Apparently in later versions of iCloud this problem was resolved. However for all those of us who have these toxic appointments on iCloud, there is no way to delete them without triggering meeting cancellation notices.

The last advice I received from Apple was to deselect the iCloud calendar tab in Outlook so I couldn't see the iCloud calendar and therefore I would not accidentally try to change or cancel one of those toxic appointments. Obviously this is not a solution. All those appointments are still on iCloud and I am sure that at some point in the future they will cause a problem. Also whenever you restart Outlook the iCloud calendar is redisplayed and you have to keep remembering to deselect it.

I have sent several suggestions to Apple on how they could support their users in cleaning up this bad data that they created. I even mocked up a screen and some code logic they could use - at a minimum it does not seem very difficult to add an option to NOT send notifcations when you change or delete an iCloud appointment. I would be quite happy to manually delete all these appointments if I believed it would not send notifications.

As I said, this is based on discussions with several tech support people at Apple. It seems logical based on what I've seen, but I don't know if that fits with everyone else's experience. If anyone else has any other suggestions or solutions, it would be great to share them. Thank you.

Similar items are happening on the mac side. Did some looking and found this article that appears to apply directly to the PC side. Hope it helps...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4204?viewlocale=en_US

Many thanks gtotnvols, it does look as though someone has managed to make Apple aware of the problem, and they've fixed it. Is there any brave user out there who wants to give iCloud Control Panel 1.0.1 a go, synch calendars, and let us know what happens? I'm not putting my hand up after what happened last time. Yes, it'll be a while before I go back.

Hi,

Yes I'm planning on setting up a dummy account & try and replicate the issue this weekend. I'm not taking the chance! Was very hard to send out 1,000 appologies! :O

I'll post my results here: http://burrowingsnowowl.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Burrowing Snow Owl. 😉

Hi,

I was able to test & everything appears to work well now! No more mass emails regarding calendar events.

Great, enjoy the cloud!

Apple tells you not to sync with outlook if you are using version 1.0.0. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4204

Use 1.0.1 and that should fix the problem.

There is a new update of 1.1.0 that just came out with some bug fixes..Didn't get a chance to copy and past it.

Hmm.. I've got som bad news. Well for me that is. I've tried it last night but the problem is still there. 😕

Extra info: At home my work account name is not known to my private outlook. In other word there is no account in Outlook with my email adress from my work.

What did I do?

• I exported a calendar file from work to a *.ICS file and mailed it from work to myself at @me.com
• I double clicked it in Outlook
• It made a calendar in Outlook.
• I moved it by dragging it to iCloud
• iCloud made an calendar and started syncing

After a short time it started to mail everyone from iCloud (from de @me.com account) informing about meetings etc...

Maybe I did something wrong but this is very normal that you drag a calendar to somewhere because you want it there... Well I think that is normal. 🙂

On one hand this is normal since my work account is not the same as @me.com account so iCloud sees everything as new and starts mailing everyone. Inluding myself at work. On the other hand it would have been so nice if your import (drag) a calendar to let me decide wether or not iCloud should sent invitations. Outlook sure doesn't sends mails with an import (drag) or double click. It just makes a calendar as it should do.

Sure when I change an appointment it should send an update to the receipiants of the meeting but ONLY IF I WANT TO.

I use iCloud to share my work calendar so others can see my workschedule. I do not want it to send out mails to everyone every time.

I've thought they've fixed it in 1.1 but obviously not completely. It is not Apple's fault, it is not Microsoft's fault. They should get there head out of there ***** (Job's words during a meeting with the music companies) and start talking to each other about making this cooperation with calendars GREAT and not just ****. Now it's like **** and it doesn't just work as it should do. Don't start that crap about all Apple stuff and you got no problem. If that is so don't make Windows software. If you make Windows software make sure it works GREAT.😠

So I've got that off my chest and I hope somewhere along the line Apple and Microsoft will fix this. Including letting me delete my (useless) calendars without emailing everyone that the appointments have been canceled..

Tnx everyone for listening and if anyone has got a solution I would like to learn it...

I hate it when it just doesn't work....

1.1.o didn't really fix anything since you cannot alter a meeting without sending an update like you can on your personal calendar not iclouds. The only thing I did to solve the problem which is a work around is:

1. Create the meeting or invite on your personal calendar

2. Copy the above to your icloud calendar so that it can sync with outlook.

Now if you need to change a meeting you can do so via your personal calendar and chose to update people or not. Then you can go to icloud.com and log into your account. You will see your meeting. You can then click on that event and take out the person or persons you invited. That will now remove that feature from your icloud event and the icloud calendar in outlook.

This really doesnt take to long to do, but its a problem solver at the moment. If you import many events with the initial install it will suck..At this point I am passed that and am in the process of added items slowly and I have finally have gone passed the dates that were automatically imported.

Hope this helps.

All that really needs to be done is add the feature to update your invites or not..Pretty simple I think.