You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

galeu Author

Level 1

15 points

iCal restore from Time Machine backup

I accidentally deleted some iCal appointments, does anyone know how I can restore them from Time Machine? It seems a bit cryptic in the Library files

iCal-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 3, 2012 5:25 PM

Top-ranking reply

MadisonP

Level 5

4,838 points

Posted on Apr 3, 2012 5:31 PM

Greetings,

When you restore your calendars from Time Machine you are restoring the entire set of calendars. There isn't an easy way to pick and choose specific events as all the events live together.

Open iCal
Go to Calendars > Go Offline
Go to iCal > Quit iCal
Restore your Calendars folder from Time Machine from Home > Library > Calendars from a point in time when the information you wanted was present. Be aware that any data added after that point in time will be lost.
Open iCal
Highlight each calendar one at a time on the left hand side and go to File > Export > Export and save the resulting calendar to the desktop.
Go to Calendars > Go Online
If the calendars delete themselves (which sometimes happens when syncing is involved) you can reimport them from the ics files on your desktop.

Hope that helps!

View in context

34 replies

Jun 3, 2016 5:15 AM in response to dbserious

I've run through these steps:

After logging out and back in my iCal is still blank!?!

Looking at Library I see that upon restarting some new files (other than those I restored from TM) have been created including a .calendar file which I assume is the current one as it contains no events!?!

There are still all the other .calendar files that I restored and they contain all the events, but how do I get them to appear in iCal?

Yosemite 10.11.5

Please HELP!?!

Sep 19, 2016 3:09 AM in response to Peter Best1

0 down vote Like you I found that the Library Folder referred to is invisible on the desktop. This had kept me baffled and angry for an hour. You can't find it - either on your Boot Volume or on Time Machine - unless you search for "Calendars" with Find File and select the right one. Then, on the desktop you can force Library to reveal itself by selecting "Open enclosing folder". In Time Machine you search for "Calendars" and get a whole heap of items, you just have to keep checking inside each one until you find one that looks something like the old one you've already inspected on the desktop. Time Machine hung repeatedly while I was doing this, which made me even happier! But finally I just restored "Calendars" and it worked. This was on a MacBook Core2Duo 2GHz 3G/500G OS10.7.5

MBP-2015

Level 1

19 points

Nov 3, 2016 12:53 PM in response to MadisonP

How about with Time Machine and macOS 10.12.1?

MBP-2015

Level 1

19 points

Nov 4, 2016 12:55 AM in response to MadisonP

What are the new directions for macOS Sierra? I don't see the "Go Offline" option anywhere

iCal restore from Time Machine backup