restoring iCal from iPhone backup or other method?

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Level 1

10 points

restoring iCal from iPhone backup or other method?

Help!

My Macbook's HDD failed (for the second time 😟.....installed new HDD, restored from Time Machine backup...everything seemed fine excpet now iCal is totally f'd. I have two iPhones synced to the laptop (mine and my wife's). My wife uses iCal like crazy so I was hesitant to try and sync her phone when everything was back up and running...and for good reason as every time I sync with iTunes my iPhone's iCal seems to change (new entries (created on my phone) get deleted, duplicate entries created in iCal (both on my phone and on laptop's iCal).

What I REALLY would like to do is extract the iCal from my wife's iphone (without syncing to iTunes), delete all of iCal on my laptop, populate iCal on my laptop with my wife's iCal (from iPhone) and then save a back up of iCal on the laptop (so when I attempt to sync my wife's phone and it inevitably f's everything I'll have the iCal back up)

I have tried Phone to Mac, PhoneView and a few others - to no avail.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get iCal off of an iPhone w/o syncing?

thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!!!

For reference:

iPhone 4 (running iOS 5.0)

Macbok (running OS 10.6.8)

iCal 4.0.4

iPhone 4-OTHER, iOS 5

Posted on Nov 27, 2011 2:52 PM

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Answer 1

wjosten

Level 10

95,321 points

Nov 27, 2011 3:07 PM in response to ShomerMaster

On your computer: iTunes>Preferences>Devices...put a check in the box labeled "Prevent iPods/iPhones from syncing automatically". Then, delete every entry in iCal except ONE...make sure the entry you don't delete is different than any entry on your wife's phone. Make one up if you have to. Connect your wife's phone, right-click in the left device pane & select "Reset Warnings". Make sure that sync calendars is checked under the Info pane in iTunes. Hit the sync button. You'll get a popup regarding your calendars asking to merge or replace, select merge. Verify your wife's entries are now in iCal. If so, iCal>File>Export>iCal Archive...save to your desktop.

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Answer 2

ShomerMaster Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 27, 2011 3:43 PM in response to wjosten

Thank you wjosten for your quick reply!

However, I am SUPER nervous about syncing at all with iTunes. While your sugestion certainly sounds viable, the "Verify if your wife's entries are now in iCal. If so....." .... what if they are not and iTunes has deleted/changed entries on her calendar like it has done with mine? Restoring an iPhone from backup is not an option as I have had zero luck with that (with 4 attempts on 2 spearate iphones).....

Regardless, thank you so much for reading and offering the note!!!

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Answer 3

wjosten

Level 10

95,321 points

Nov 27, 2011 4:20 PM in response to ShomerMaster

Good luck.

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Answer 4

ShomerMaster Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 30, 2011 3:21 PM in response to wjosten

Thank you for the suggestion and the well wishes! I right clicked her phone, when it was connected to iTunes, and did a back up. I then used an app by iPhone Backup Extractor to grab the calendar data. Since we've had nothing but trouble with iCal, we then used the .ics file to populate Google Calendars and all seems well. Now that everything is safe and sound I'm looking forward to experimenting with your original suggestion. Thanks again!

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