iCal won't sync from iPhone to Mac

Hi DCMommy13,

I think you may be looking in your Macs 'global' hard drive library folder (ie the same place as your "Applications" folder and "System" folder). In that location go to the folder called "Users". Open that and double click your username. In that folder will be another "Library" folder that refers to your own specific user settings and... hey presto.... there's your "calendar" folder! 🙂

Thank you so very much!! Steps 1-3 seem to have fixed it! Do I need to follow through with the rest? Many thanks!!! 😁

Nope. Depending on the problem it is often fixed by step 3.

Rorygilmore, you're a digital angel winging your way through the mangled mass of stupid and frustrating little glitches that can send most intelligent people round the bend 🙂 Thankyou for enlightening the rest of us 🙂 I too have bookmarked this thread for future reference.

Apple, take note and be grateful for people like Rory. By my reckoning, a show of appreciation in some form wouldn't go astray....

PS My synching problem disappeared after Step 3 also- Woot! Woot!

PPS Rory, it sounds paranoid but may I now delete the back up I made in Step 1?

Thankyou again 🙂

Hi nightowl_5, As long as everything is working fine again you should be okay to delete that back up now. When you sync via iTunes it will back up your iPhone anyway. I deleted my back up from step one after about a day or two without any issues, Thx for the comments! 🙂

Following your ideas, I just applied a Reset Sync History under iSync Preferences, and worked fine for my case. (I did my backup of iCal completely but didn't have to use it in the end). I simply quited iCal, reseted Sync History, restarted iCal and synced again using iTunes and problem was solved. (Attention: I had do reconfig a few of the iTunes sync settings, such as wich mail accounts to sync between computer and iphone). I didn't have to desactivate syncing in iSync before Resetting Sync History (besides, I've noticed that it automatically desables during every sync, because I had the iSync preferences open while syncing in iTunes, although this is irrelevant for the matter), nor did I have to do any manual cleaning on iCal folder, cache files and other things.

Besides another little issue I had for some time seams to have been solved. It was nothing important but just annoying. Whenever I synced computer (mac book pro, btw) to iphone, the ruller in iphone main page (in iTunes) that shows what type of data is filling your iphones disk (and extimates free space) would allways jump up for more than a Gb at Sync start and after it get to it's normal dimension. It was like iTunes would sudenly consider a lot of new files occuping iPhone's disk (probably content form the History data, that iTunes should not consider while calculating effective occupied space).

For some moments I thought that this could probably have also solved another stupid error on syncing Notes between Mail on Mac and Notes on iPhone. (I sync notes thrugh a gmail account to work since i have this iphone, because direct sync of notes on Computer never worked fine. I would allways find all the older and oldest notes from the past, so to avoid that confusion I started syncing all notes only through Gmail). Now after this History cleaning I can't even sync at all Notes on Computer with iPhone (nothing happens or shows on iphone, ie, i can't bring the Notes on computer to the iphone). Since I was already living fine with the Gmail alternative, I didn't look anyfurther for causes or hints.

Thanks to all who helped finding this solution. Good luck for the others.

Thank you thank you RoryGilmore! I have gone to the computerly-challenged trouble of figuring out how to sign into the apple site here just to thank you! I did all the steps you laid out and things sync perfectly now! YAY! I wish it had not taken me so long to look up this problem, but I sure appreciate it! Thanks again,

Meredith

Hi,

I had the same problem. I sorted it without any great process described in this discussion.

I hadn't tried to tranfer information from my iphone to ical on my mac since ios 6 was downloaded to my iphone. (long time I know!)

On the imac, from the Summary Tab when iphone is selected I saw "Back up to icloud" was ticked so I ticked "Back up to this computer". This produced no result. I thought the same might be present on the iphone. I went to "Settings", "icloud", "Calendars" and turned "Calendars" Off.

I synched again and it transfered all the information successfully!

I don't have mobileme set up so that road wasn't an option.

I think ios6 linked me up to icloud (without asking, Apple please note!) and maybe it is necessary to do the two steps described above i.e. switch to "Back up this computer" on the imac and turn "Calendars" off in icloud on the Settings menu on the phone.

I am not much of a techie so I would appreciate to hear whether this fix works for others.

Good luck!

Terry

Well, bless your sweet little heart, rorygilmore! You have solved my issue as well. Only had to go through step 3 to get to where I have tried to get for weeks now! Thank you, thank you, thank you from a busy mother of two who relies heavily on her iPhone and MBP calendars!

Hi, I am having this sync issue also and everything used to work just fine. My problem seems to be that I cant find "isync" anyone on my macbook! I am sure I have seen it before but i looked for it and it is not appearing anywhere. Did Apple do away with it with the new software update or am I missing somethign?

Hi harbinger7,

If you are looking for "iSync" then that application will be in your Applications folder (or perhaps your Utilities folder) unless you have moved it. If so, then try using spotlight to find it (the magnifying glass icon at the top right of your screen (in OSX Snow Leopard).

If you're looking for the "sync" function then you will find that within iTunes. If so, do this: Connect your phone to your MacBook with the cable supplied. Launch iTunes. You will then see your phone listed in the iTunes menu on the left hand side (where your music library is shown). Click once on your phone's name in iTunes to highlight it. Then you will see, (kinda miraculously!) the main iTunes window will change from listing music etc to refelecting the contents of your phone and a variety of menu options. As long as you have highlighted your device on the left hand menu list the Sync button will appear down at the bottom of the iTunes window, on the right hand side. It is just called "Sync" (not iSync). Click on that and everything should be as good as gold! 🙂

Good luck!

Hi Terry,

Your method worked for me. On my iphone I went to "settings", icloud", then turning off "calendar". I then tried

to sync again and my data transferred to my computer. Thanks so much 😀

Hi Marcia

Glad it worked. Let me update.

On my iphone when using NOTES, things I wrote there kept disappearing. The Apple store backed up my iphone in icloud then did a restore.

I tried synching with Back up to icloud now turned on on the imac and Calenders in icloud now turned on on the iphone, which was the reverse of what I did before and it synched fine. Strange!

Apple said the back up and restore may fix a software issue, if so this might allow the synching to work properly with these things ticked. It remains to be seen whether my NOTES issue is fixed.

By the way I think we only have ios 5 not 6!

Terry

Rory,

I am having the same problem. I had all of my events on my phone, and thought it'd be great to back them up by syncing calendars in iTunes. I though that it'd collate both my blank iCal calendars and my FULL iPhone calendars, but instead it just synced the blank calendars, wiping my phone ones. I have re-typed all the phone ones, luckily having written them down in a separate diary, but I was wondering how to actually get this working.

I am using OS X Lion 10.7.4

I have an iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1.1

I followed the steps that you listed, yet I couldn't find Library in my user folder (Macintosh HD/Users/samjones/)

There IS a Library folder however at (Macintosh HD/Library/) This folder does NOT have a folder called "Calenders" or anything of the sort. I also could not find "iSync" in my Applications folder, or my Utilities folder.

Help greatly appreciated 😉

Thanks

Sam

Woah! I just disconnected and created a new event, I then reconnected and pressed sync in iTunes. The new event is successfully showing in my iCal calendar! Oh Apple, you so random!

Sorry for the time waste!

Sam