iCal Alerts/Notifications not working for items with same start & end time

Interesting. I had similar problems, and thought that it was something to do with the Mountain Lion equivalent of iCal Helper not working - but now that I look, it does seem that it specifically affects items with the same start and end time, so I'd be happy to hear from anyone who's solved this too...

Some more odd behaviour with iCal alerts.

Even though iCal alerts are turned off on the Mac running Mountain Lion they sync to both my iPad and iPhone as having an alert at 00:00. The events on the Mac are definitely showing up as having no alerts set! Entering events on the iOs devices works as usual. It's driving me mad. Every event on my Mac entered since Mountain Lion shows up with an alert on my iPad, taking up two lines instead of one in the day view! Nothing I have tried seems to make any difference.

Same here. On Mac Calendar all alert are set to None, but when it syncs all day events with my iPhone I get an alert for 00:00.

I have a iCal event set up for a all day event and have a notification to let me remind me 14 hours before that day. It used to work fine with Lion, but since i updated to mountain lion, it reminds me every 5-10 mins. Even after i closed it (not snooze). This is getting very annoying to have a notification alert every 5-10 mins for a event that is 14 hours away.

In short I am swamped with notification and want to know how to disable this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I experienced the same frustration after upgrading to Mountain Lion. I have to manage many medications and use iCal to keep track of when I take each dosage. These dosages can vary from day to day, so a repeating event isn't really helpful in my situation. Until this latest OS release, I was able to create an event with the same start and end time - with no alert - and it would stay that way when I synced with my iPad & iPhone.

Now that I'm using Mountain Lion, however, my calendar on my iPad and iPhone are cluttered with those double-lined "At Time of Event" alerts that Gary 1401 mentioned above. And just as he described, if I create an event on either of the iOS devices everything works as usual.

I suppose the best work around is as leatherdog suggested, i.e. creating events that are ten minutes in duration. As a detail-driven, organization-loving VIrgo, however, I am driven nuts by this sort of bug.

I run Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) on a Mac Book Pro because I need Rosetta to compile my medical diagnostic database from a PPC app. I also installed Mac OS X 10.8.1 (Mountain Lion) on another new MBP.

I was a MobileMe customer and moved to the iCloud when it rolled-out. Now, every time I try to open iCal on the MBP running Snow Leopard an alect says:

The server is busy or unavailable

The server is currently unable to handle the connection due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. If this continues you should contact the server administrator.

You may try to connect to the server again or take the account offline.

It it supposed to work after migrating to iCloud but it is not working anymore on the machine running Mac OS X 10.6.8 snf has not run well since the introduction of Mac OS X 10.8.1

You cannot sync calendars or contacts with iCloud using Snow Leopard: iCal is trying to connect to the MobileMe server which is closed, and you need to remove it from Preferences>Accounts.

You may be able to sync your calendars to iCloud by means of an unsupported hack, and there is a convoluted hack which has been reported as working for Address Book (and as not working by others - I've not tried it), but iCloud's other facilities will not work. This page outlines the situation with Snow Leopard and iCloud, including a link to the calendar hack:

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/icloudSL.html

There are a couple of third-party solutions which may be of interest.

• BusyCal is an iCal-like calendar application with extra facilities: it can sync with the iCloud Calendar while running on Leopard, Snow Leopard or Lion. A single user licence (two machines allowed) is $49.99.
• Soho Organizer can sync Calendars and Contacts with iCloud on Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. A single user licence (multiple machines allowed) is $99.99.

(I have no connection with either firm.)

That's a brilliant find, leatherdog. There is a bug in Mountain Lion's Calendar App where an alarm will not sound if the appointment's start and end times are the same. Thank you. It explains the exact problem I had.

Therefore:

1. I told Apple about the bug here to encourge a fix:http://www.apple.com/feedback/ical.html.
2. A work around for me is to ensure each appointment lasts at least a minute.

Good news, everybody. Today I installed iOS 6 on my iPhone (developer account) and the problem is gone. So, in a week, when it's officially released, you won't have troubles any more 🙂.