iCal won't sync from iPhone to Mac

Thank you so much rorygilmore you have suddenly made my life SO much easier!

iSync doesnt exist anymore in 2013 on the newest system. However exporting the calendar, deleting everything from the (hidden) library/calendar folder, emptying the trash and importing it back has worked. Thanks!

Same problem for me: new mac mini mountain lion 8.2.1, iphone 3GS 10.8.1, so thanks for the solution. Having been a NeXTStep user from way back, followed by Mac, I can't say I've been too impressed with Apple over the past year or so. Maybe it's just me, but the platform doesn't seem as reliable as it once was. It used to be simple; plug it in and it just worked and interconnectivity worked perfectly. Now I've had to spend more and more time figuring out workarounds for issues; this issue is just one example, but I'd huge issues with migration assistant getting settings from my old iMac on to the new mini (shared drive issues, permission problems etc.), with other areas not working as expected, features dropping away/changing with no heads up, upgrades not working (still can't upgrade the mini to 8.2.2), wireless not as reliable under lion........

Not saying I'd ever convert to 'doze, but Apple are on watch for the time being.

Hi All,

I guess you're all going to be bored with this discussion, but I really need some help.. I received my iphone 4s yesterday, and I run a macbook pro, I cannot get ical to sync with my comp which runs. Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)

I have to be honest and say a lot of what youre discussing is going straight over my head, and I guess Im not as brainy as you guys, so sorry... but please can anyone anwer me

1) should I be able to enter an appt on ical on my phone and when I next turn on my comp it is on the ical on there?

and if so, how do I get it to do it?

and please use simple terms as some of the answers I simply do not understand.

I would be most grateful for any help... :-(

😕

Hi Pippa,

I have not replied to many of the posts here lately as I am not familiar with Mountain Lion (having opted to stay with the Rosetta compatiblity of Snow Leopard) nor with iTunes 11.1 (which is rubbish, sorry), so this answer may be a little different on your Mac, but the essentials will remain. I assume you do not normally connect your phone to your Mac? Is that right?

In case you don't, the regualr way to sync your iPhone4S with your MacBook is to connect it to your Mac with the cable supplied. Once done, start up iTunes. Select the iphone in the left hand menu where your music etc is listed. That will show you a whole new set of options within the iTunes application. You can then select the "sync" option at the bottom right corner. The first time you sync it might take some time so be patient. Then your iCal events will be in sync. As will a whole lot of other settings from apps such as Safari, Contacts, Music etc.

You have a whole lot of options under the various tabs when you have the phone selected in iTunes. One of those is synchronising via iCloud. iCloud will allow your iCal events to automatically appear on your Mac when you enter them on your phone. It will serve you well to familiarise yourself with those various options as there are quite a few settings you can make in there. Let us know how that goes before taking you further.

HI Rory,

It will sync if I connect it to my mac and itunes, however, I have then gone into the sub folders of iphone and in there under 'sync calenders' it says

"your calenders are being synced with your iphone over the air from icloud" but theyre not :-(

I guess somewhere Ive clicked a button or a setting or something and so it isnt happening... any more help would be great... I dont have the option of visiting an apple store as the nearest is a 120 mile round trip !! :-o

Pippa

Sounds like me Pippa... I'm about 3000 kms from the nearest Apple Store! 😟
Hmmm... OK so it sounds like you have conflicting settings so neither your iPhone nor your Mac knows which is the preferred way to do things. (ie via the cloud or via the hardware connections)

Have you tried changing the iCloud setting on the actual iPhone?

• On the phone, go to the "Settings" app.
• Then scroll down and select "iCloud".
• Then you will see a list of apps with on/off sliders allowing you to decide which apps will sync via iCloud.
• If you turn that off for Calendars you should be able to sync with your Mac.

Alternatively, you may want to activate iCloud in your Mac's System preferences so that everything syncs with the cloud. However, since I don't use OSX Mountain Lion (10.7.5) I am not familiar with iCloud settings. Let me know if that works.

Hi rorygilmore,

I've been having a similar problem except it's with my iPod. I need my calendars to sync with the iPod via cable when I charge my iPod by connecting it to my iMac. But, since I recently upgraded iTunes on my iMac I can no longer get this to happen. The box under info for my iPod in iTunes is different than before and states that my calendars are syncing automatically over the air, which they are not. I tried your steps but discovered that everytime I tried to delete the calendar info in my Library under my username it ends up back in there. I'm beginning to feel a bit lost! Have you or anyone else got any advice for me?

Hi Stiffs, yes, I'm not sure what OS you're using, but iCal automatically recreates a set of calendars when you delete your old calendars and reopen iCal. However, once you re-import your 'archived' iCal file (the back-up one that you saved earlier in the process) it will replace those. You will get a warning to that effect. You can say yes to that, and your previous iCal archived files will re-appear. Make sure to keep your archived iCal file until you check your calendar entries to make sure they are what you wanted just in case there is some anomaly we are not noticing.

I must stress that I am still on Snow Leopard because of it's ability to open certain older software that I need, so i don't know Mountain Lion. And although I downloaded iTunes 11, I didn't like losing coverflow and a few other features, so I went back to iTunes 10.7. So bear that in mind when acting on my solution.

OK, thanks for responding rorygilmore, much appreciated. I'm not a long time Mac user, but I'm on Snow Leopard and I have a Mac OS X version 10.6.8. I downloaded the latest version of iTunes 11.0.1

I have no idea how to revert to a previous version of iTunes, but I have a feeling that that may be a solution for me, although `where to' after that? I read somewhere else that uninstalling iTunes and then reinstalling again helped. But I have no idea how to uninstall a programme (and would like to figure that one out as I have a couple of other unwanted programmes anyway).

I'll try your steps again (maybe I missed something out) as your reply cleared a few things up for me. I'll let you know if it worked or not.

If you can help me with reverting to the older version of iTunes and uninstalling a programme I would be most grateful.

I have now tried your steps again rorygilmore. It's not happening for me. The part where everything goes wrong is point no.6 iTunes> iPod> info> advanced> check the box the overwrites/replaces the Calendar data on the Apple iPhone. There is no such tick box for me.

I’ve looked up some ideas about uninstalling iTunes 11. And reinstalling 10.7 so I downloaded 10.7 but I’m concerned that I also need to delete 11. using Pacifist & use TimeMachine to back up all my music etc. Pacifist isn’t cheap if you live in Africa & there’s no guarantee that it’ll work (plus there is some speculation about damaging your computer). And according to what I’ve read I’m quite put off by the thought of using TimeMachine to re-instate all music etc, except in desperation.

Hmnnn!! Frustrating. There must be a simpler/easier way to solve this problem. Any other thoughts?

p.s. I did discover that uninstalling is painfully simple, as long as it's not factory installed. Just drag & drop into the bin. Who would have thought? 😁

I was having this problem and ******** and moaning about how Apple had screwed stuff up by changing from Mobile Me to iCloud (not that I had a Mobile Me, but my iCal on the computer is too old to recognize iCloud)... and I just KNEW my iPhone had synched before and why the **** was it not doing it now!

There is an easy fix. Plug the iPhone into the computer with its USB cable, open iTunes. Go into your iPhone settings and turn OFF over-the-air calendar synching, and the calendar sync option returned. You can then use the check boxes to sync calendars with no issues. Hope this helps, Pippa!

Thanks john10423, that was it. I followed your idea on my iPod & mac, and it worked immediately. Such a simple solution after all. The lengths I was about to go to seem so silly now. :)

Glad it helped, Stiffs... I was trying to follow someone else's more convoluted suggestion and one of the steps was "turn off cloud sync" and the light came on at that point... Either I accidentally turned it on somewhere along the line or the iOS 6 update changed it by default. Seems to work fine, now.

john10423 you might well be right about the iOS 6 changing how you sync. For me, I'm sure iTunes 11. did something because that's when my trouble started. I don't have a mobile me account, so I'm thinking that iTunes tried to simplify things for us, but some of us "problem children" got caught out. Thank you for getting me out of a week long spiral of irritation.