I have an iMac with OSX with a TrackPad and an iPhone4. I am also not a Mac genius or computer savvy person at all.
So I had the same question and finally figured it out. There might be a very easy solution which I could not find it anywhere.
My scenario was that my iphone calendar synced with my old work's Outlook Exchange 2007. On iMac, the Outlook Exchange shows up as the Express version which is not as useful as the regular Outlook Exchange. Figured it is a Microsoft thing but could not do anything about it.
I left that job and realized that if my access to the Exhange got cut off at some point, my whole calendar would go blank. Tried that by turning off iphone Calendar sync function under Settings and under Exchange. Poof: all calendar items evaporated. So I turned it back on and all of the entries appeared again. This showed me that the calendar items were not save on the iPhone but rather it only acted as medium to access the Outlook. Told you I was not savvy..
After alot of internet digging and finding a lot of solutions including shipping stuff to iCloud and Google etc etc etc: my my final solution was:
Go to iCal, and under Preferences: add the Exchange account. You will have to enter your username etc etc.
All those entries appeared on my iCal, The Exchange items appeared in purple color. Dont know why, but they did. This is helpful later on.
I went ahead and did a Select All under Edit button.
Then on the Trackpad did a two finger click on one of the calendar items (ie right click on a PC) and you see a new menu open up. You see Calendar with a flashmark guiding you to three different colors (blue, green, and shade in between) that represent Work, Home, and Calendar. I picked one color for everything to make it easier.
You will notice that all items for that month turn color from purple (exhange) to iCal color (blue or the other two). If any of those events are recurring, it will change them all for you as well in the subsequent months.
But you are not done yet!
I went thru the calendar month by month for the next 18 months and found items that were still purple since they were not a recurrent item. Those I inidividually changed to the iCal color as above.
Once you have done all of the above, then go ahead and take away the Exchange account by deleting it in the iCal preferences. Lo and behold, the iCal calendar items stayed!
Then in iphone, I turned off the sync calendar with Exchange under Settings/Mail etc etc. The entire calendar got erased. It becomes a blank calendar as far as Outlook Exchange items are concerned. For some reason, all my calendar items were OUtlookExchange items and I did not have another independent calendar. You might. Those dont go away.
Now you have to plug in your phone to iMac and open itunes. Click on the device name in the left hand column and you see a few options on the top and one of them (the second from left) is Info: you click on that and choose calendar sync function. This will sync your iCal calendar with your iPhone calendar.
The down is that you have to sync it via this wired way each time in order for you iCal and iPhone all show the same stuff.. Can it be done via Wifi: beats me but having spent hours to come up with the above solution, I am done for the day! That is a battle for the next time I have time..
I hope this painful but for sure way works for anyone else who has the same problem
