iCloud calendar doesn't send invitations to Gmail users...

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Level 1

18 points

iCloud calendar doesn't send invitations to Gmail users...

To clarify on the above post title: iCloud calendar invites sometimes send calendar invites to Gmail users, but not always.

It appears that if the user's Gmail account is associated with an AppleID account, then that user will not receive an iCloud calendar event invitation email. I discovered this when I began looking into why my wife did not receive an invite at her Gmail account, which also happens to be her primary AppleID for iTunes/AppStore purchases.

I found that my own primary AppleID, also associated with a Gmail account, did not receive invites, either. However, a test Gmail account I have, that has never been associated with Apple/iTunes/iCloud/etc., receives invites just fine. Also, MS Exchange mailboxes receive the invites properly, as do Yahoo accounts.

Any ideas as to what the secret is here? I cannot believe Apple would decide to prevent invites being sent out to 3rd party addresses that happen to also be AppleIDs on their own system, as that'd be quite ludicrous.

Posted on Nov 1, 2011 5:22 AM

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Answer 1

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Brian.Black Author

Level 1

18 points

Nov 1, 2011 8:04 AM in response to Brian.Black

Okay, so I've found something:

Until now, there have been many, many Apple product users who've created AppleIDs associated with external email accounts, including Gmail. Now that iCloud has been released, many of them have turned on portions of iCloud or perhaps gone so far as to create iCloud email addresses/aliases under their primary AppleID.

Here's where it gets weird: there's a setting in iCloud calendar preferences turned on by default called "Use iCloud for incoming invitations". What this does is, if an invitation is sent to that primary AppleID (which is most often an external address) or its associated, newly-created iCloud address, it'll get routed to iCloud, preventing (blocking) the invite from being forwarded to that external address.

For example, a user's primary, pre-iCloud AppleID is john1234@gmail.com. iCloud is opened to the public, he enables it on an iDevice or Lion OS X and it asks if him to enter his AppleID credentials (john1234@gmail.com) and asks if he wants to create an iCloud address, which he does, john1234@me.com.

From now on, let's presume he's continuing to use his john1234@gmail.com account, because he's not really sure yet that he wants to make the switch to iCloud for email, etc. At this point, if another iCloud user sends him a calendar invite at his primary email, john1234@gmail.com, Apple has decided it'll route this invite directly to his john1234@me.com iCloud alias, never letting it send out to his Gmail account.

So, assuming he's not yet using iCloud email/alendar, he'll be clueless as to why he never received the invite OR, if he is using iCloud email/calendar alongside his primary Gmail account, he'll probably wonder how in the world an invite sent from a friend to his Gmail account is now showing up in his iCloud inbox/calendar.

Why Apple's enabled this by default is beyond me. At this point, it's preventing me from going to iCloud full-time because I can't be sure invitees will get my calendar events!

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Answer 2

b-RadN

Level 1

14 points

Nov 29, 2017 10:17 AM in response to Brian.Black

Friends, I found this solution (in iCloud.com, change Calendar Advanced Preference to send Invites to your Email Address than "In App Notifications"): http://ternarylabs.com/2015/01/30/fix-missing-ical-to-gmail-invites/

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Answer 3

DavidATX

Level 1

5 points

Nov 20, 2011 4:47 AM in response to Brian.Black

Brian,

This is now working correctly for me. I went to icloud.com, selected Calendar, Preferences, Advanced, and unchecked "Use iCloud for incoming invitations". Now it works perfectly - I now get an iCloud users calendar invite to my gmail.

Thanks again for the troubleshooting. I'll have AppleCare update my ticket so they have record of this solution.

Dave

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Answer 4

DavidATX

Level 1

5 points

Nov 20, 2011 4:14 AM in response to Brian.Black

Brian,

Great analysis. I'm having the same problem and spent 3 hours with AppleCare level 2 & 3 support and they couldn't pin it down like you did, but this is exactly what is happening. Have you been able to find a work around?

Dave

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Answer 5

Brian.Black Author

Level 1

18 points

Nov 20, 2011 8:15 AM in response to DavidATX

Glad that did the trick for you.

Personally, I don't believe this is truly a solution, though, as Apple has enabled the "Use iCloud for incoming invitations" by default on the unwitting masses. It's really unfortunate, as there will likely be slews of people unaware of this, left wondering why a friend on iCloud/MobileMe sends them calendar invites that never make it to their own Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/etc. account because it's being sent directly to their iCloud-activated AppleID-Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail account.

Interestingly enough, I found a Google Calendar help article (which I can't seem to find at the moment) while researching this problem, and found that, somewhat similarly to iCloud's-primary-AppleID-as-external-3rd-party-account, you can associate 3rd-party email accounts with your primary Google account and use those to login to Google services. In this Google help article, they said that their previous behavior when another users would send a calendar invite to this 3rd-party email address associated with Google, like iCloud's default behavior, it would "intelligently" forward that invite instead to the primary Google account, leaving the recipient, who was not necessarily using Gmail as their primary provider, wondering where the invite was/went.

Long story short, Google changed this behavior so that now, in that scenario, even if the email account is associated with the user's Gmail account, Google will graciously forward the invite to the original recipient, as it should.

So, I'd sure love Apple to step up to the plate and to the right thing here.

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Answer 6

Nov 21, 2011 4:42 PM in response to Brian.Black

Thank you so much for your hard work in figuring out what exactly causes this problem.

What can we do to alert Apple's engineers of the issue and find out if they intend on changing the default behavior?

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Answer 7

Brian.Black Author

Level 1

18 points

Nov 21, 2011 4:50 PM in response to GasMan320

I'm not exactly sure, save for submitting a suggestion to their feedback page here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

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Answer 8

djstates

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2011 2:00 PM in response to Brian.Black

I tried changing my preferences as you suggest, but no luck. My wife has a MobileMe account and uses a Mac that she does not want to upgrade to Lion (app compatibility issues). No matter how i try to send her invitations to events, she never gets them, even after "use iCloud for invitations" turned off. Spent 45 minutes on the phone with apple support including promotion to senior manager. They say that an iCloud invite can only be sent to her if she upgrades her MobileMe to an iCloud account, and even then she won't see the invite on her mac, only her iphone running icloud. If true, this is unacceptable and I am going to have to drop the whole iCloud calendar system.

Apple is repeating the 1st gen MobileMe debacle with iCloud. You would think that they would learn to accommodate user requirements instead of trying to use iCloud to force upgrades of other products.

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Answer 9

Dec 4, 2011 11:29 AM in response to Brian.Black

Brian - Thank you for this post...I thought i was going batty. I plan to talk to an Apple Genius and will let everyone know what I found out. Pls dod the same.

cd

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Answer 10

Dec 14, 2011 6:47 PM in response to Brian.Black

For me, iCloud never sends ANY event invitations to ANYONE, regardless of what email address they're using. No emails are ever sent to any of the invitees, and I also never receive invitations from other iCloud users (friends with whom I've been testing this issue). The events do not show up on anyone's calendar, nor in the "event invitations" area in iCal, the iOS Calendar app, or the iCloud.com calendar.

As far as I can tell, the invitations feature does not work at all. Used to work fine with MobileMe, but has never worked once with iCloud.

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Answer 11

Andrey

Level 2

336 points

Dec 14, 2011 9:23 PM in response to Jason Sims

I'm in the same boat. Last night all of a sudden I stopped receiving invitations and am no longer able to send out invitiations (reguardless of what email i'm sending them to). It's like the feature is completely broken.

My main iCloud account is associated with a @gmail.com email address and has worked perfectly in the calendar invitation department since launch. When someone sent me an invitation it would pop up in my calendar on my iPad, iPhone, iCal on my Lion machine, and on the iCloud website. Now, if i receive an invitation I get an email from iCloud in my gmail inbox that allows me to respond to the invitation, but the event never shows up in my calendar. It seems as if iCloud has decided to uncheck the option for "use iCloud for incoming invitations." I have unchecked it, logged out, tested. Checked it again, log out, test again. No luck whatsoever. The weird thing is that it stopped working when I had not made any changes to any configuration on any of my devices!

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Answer 12

ollip

Level 1

0 points

Dec 22, 2011 9:43 AM in response to Andrey

Same problem here, but it never worked from the beginning, #fail iCloud!

Honestly if you can not use iCal with calender requests and iCloud, it useless!

I am frustrated why Apple is not picking this up!

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Answer 13

Dec 24, 2011 10:17 PM in response to Brian.Black

Pretty much the same issue..

Wife has an iCloud account associated with a Gmail address, as do I.. No matter what the settings, she is no longer getting calendar invites from my anymore.. Was working a month or so ago but not anymore..

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Answer 14

djstates

Level 1

4 points

Dec 25, 2011 11:39 AM in response to Andrey

Similar issue my iCloud account is associated with Gmail account I receive an invitation from my wife in my email inbox, but it never gets to my calendar. I can even open the .ics attachment in the calendar view it but I cannot save it. Even tried forwarding the invitation from gmail to my iCloud email. Still no luck. This getting frustrating. I can open the email in MS Outlook, open the attachment and save it to my Outlook calendar no problem. Amazing that Apple has let bugs in this critical function slide for so long. Is anyone at Apple reading this forum?

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Answer 15

stteve

Level 1

19 points

Jan 7, 2012 8:26 AM in response to Andrey

I'm having the same problem. The invitations on my iCloud calendar just stopped working on all my Apple devices (Mac, iPhone and iPad) without me making any changes in setting or the hardware. My account is associated with my @me email. I have no idead why this feature just stopped working.

iCloud has been a complete failure. Also, deleting galleries and iDisk seems like such a bad idea. #Fail

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