Calendar - Exchange sync issue

TobyParnell wrote:

Same problem for me here too. Does anyone from Apple read these posts? It would be good if you could tag someone from Apple like in a Facebook post to get their attention! Oi, APPLE, what have you got to say for yourselves about this?

It would be nice to able to vote for bugs, so that Apple can prioritize their handling.

I have a few open bugs that I can live with, but this one is VERY ANNOYING (sorry for shouting).

Well, we know Apple isn't listening. Maybe it's time for us to build a petition on Change.org to get their attention and get this fixed. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of users afflicted by this problem. There are plenty at the university that I work at alone...

Here is the bug I submitted. Feel free to use whatever portions are applicable to your situation and submit away!

Ever since I upgraded my mid-2007 iMac from Lion (OS X 10.7) to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), I have been plagued by the following error message:

Calendar can't save the event "-----" to the Exchange server. The account "----" currently can't be modified. To discard your changes and continue using the version of your calendars that's on the server, click Revert to Server."

I can get the problem to go away temporarily (for a day or two) if I uncheck the Calendar / Reminders portion of my Exchange account in System Preferences --> Mail, Contacts, & Calendars, exit System Preferences, and then go back in and check it again. Unfortunately, after a day or two this error inevitably returns.

Furthermore, about the time when the Calendar error pops up, any tasks I have recently added (or add from that time forward) in Reminders will not sync up to the Exchange server either. I know this because they will not show up on either my iPad, iPhone, or PC laptop running Windows 7 and Outlook 2010. However, I have no problems creating, editing and deleting tasks via my iPad, iPhone, or Outlook 2010 on my laptop and then seeing those changes on any of these devices. Only my iMac, which for some reason is not able to sync changes to the Exchange server, is unable to see these task changes, or make any task changes that can be seen by other devices.

For that brief moment after I uncheck / check the Calendar / Reminders portion in System Preferences, I am able to create, edit, and delete events in the Calendar app and tasks in the Reminders app without any problems. It is like heaven when it works correctly!

However, removing and re-adding the Calendar portion of my Exchange account should not be a long term solution to this problem.

In order to rule out the possibility that this was due to old configuration files that somehow were corrupting the Calendar and Reminders apps in Mountain Lion, I recently booted into Recovery mode, erased my main hard drive, and installed a clean, unadulterated (as in non-upgraded) version of Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, this did not solve the problem. After perhaps three days, the "Calendar can't save the event..." error message began popping up again whenever I opened Calendar and it tried to sync an event I had recently created to the Exchange server.

I would love to use Apple Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Reminders on my Mac when working with Exchange data. I have no issues with Mail and Contacts. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with Calendar and Reminders.

I know there are many others who are experiencing this problem. Will you please help us?

Thank you very much! I appreciate any and all efforts made to solve this bug.

Just called Apple support on the issue. All they did to help was to read through the various forum posts and tell me that it must be a Microsoft problem and I should search Microsoft's web site and forums for a solution.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any help or mention of this problem except for here on the discussions.apple.com site.

Of course, the problem doesn't exist in MS Outlook, Outlook Web Access, nor on iPhone, nor for me on previous versions of OSX (had 10.6 and didn't have the problem - only have the problem on OS X 10.8). Seems to me a bug in OSX 10.8 Calendar.

That is really disappointing. Not even an acknowledgement that this *might* be an issue on their end. There are enough of us with problems (who, unfortunately, have not found solutions), that there has got to be a way we can escalate this through the ranks at Apple until someone will acknowledge there is a problem with the Calendar App in Mountain Lion and fix it.

Any thoughts?

magiclantern wrote:

Just called Apple support on the issue. All they did to help was to read through the various forum posts and tell me that it must be a Microsoft problem and I should search Microsoft's web site and forums for a solution.

Oh, and I'm sure Microsoft would love to help us with our Apple software when they could be selling us a copy of Outlook instead.

And since Apple would be happier if we did eveything through iCloud (which I do use for my personal calendars), nobody has an incentive to fix this. Blechhh.

I searched the office.com support site, and did a bunch of Google searches. I couldn't find anything from any Microsoft centric sites that addressed or acknowledged the specific problems mentioned in this discussion thread.

If someone else can find something, please share!

Pascal_Sartoretti wrote:

Randall Blank wrote:

Oh, and I'm sure Microsoft would love to help us with our Apple software when they could be selling us a copy of Outlook instead.

Microsoft would surely prefer us to use Windows + Outlook instead; but rest assured that they also make plenty of money with OS X clients, because :

Apple licenced the ActiveSync protocol from Microsoft, and certainly not for free.

I was not aware that OSX had added the ActiveSync protocol, when did this occur?

Csound1 wrote:

I was not aware that OSX had added the ActiveSync protocol, when did this occur?

I assume he was referring to iOS. Microsoft only licenses ActiveSync for mobile use — OS X is stuck with Exchange Web Services, and from what I can tell they don't earn licensing fees from that.

Ironically, Microsoft does have a support article for Current issues with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and third-party devices.

I'm looking around in hopes that some obscure article on EWS issues will offer a clue…

Randall Blank wrote:

I assume he was referring to iOS. Microsoft only licenses ActiveSync for mobile use — OS X is stuck with Exchange Web Services, and from what I can tell they don't earn licensing fees from that.

Sorry, my mistake, I thought that OS X used ActiveSync also.

Anyway, Microsoft surely finds a way to earn money on the server side for OS X clients using Exchange Web Services...

Randall Blank wrote:

Microsoft only licenses ActiveSync for mobile use

Well, I have to qualify that now — it turns out that Exchange ActiveSync is used by Outlook 2013 (and the Windows 8 mail client for that matter). So even Microsoft recognizes that the desktop/moble distinction was an artificial one.

(So perhaps OS X 10.9 will support ActiveSync and this problem becomes moot. We can always hope.)

I found a workaround that works fine for me (the procedure in the other answers didn't worked):

- go to Calendar Preferences and delete de Exchange Account.

- close (Calendar->Quit Calendar) Calendar

- go to Terminal and delete "rm -rf *" all the files inside username/Library/Calendars/

- open Calendar

- go to Calendar->Preferences->Advanced and Turn on time support (if it is already enabled, disable it, close calendar and then re-enabled it)

- in the upper-right-corner of calendar, select your Timezone (very important to select your timezone before adding the Exchange account)

- close (Calendar->Quit Calendar) Calendar

- open Calendar

- go to Calendar->Preferences->Accounts

- add the Exchange Account

Problem solved.

vicko.arocha wrote:

I found a workaround that works fine for me (the procedure in the other answers didn't worked):

OK, I'm game. We'll see how long it lasts.

Note that deleting the contents of ~/Library/Calendars also removes your iCloud calendars. After reactivating iCloud and Exchange in System Preferences, nothing appears to be missing…

Oh, and back up your calendars first (File > Export > Calendar Archive). Just in case.

As Randal implied, these "fixes" usually last only a couple days before the error returns. I'll be interested to see if it holds up for a week. At least Viko is still trying for a solution...

I've already spent a lot of time moving my calendar entries to Gmal so I'll let others report back before spending the time to experiment. Please check back in with updates on whether this works!

After this fix, I have been using the Calendar for 2 weeks without mayor problems.

The identified issues:

- with a Calendar entry that I made before this fix for testing purposes using a different timezone. I deleted this entry to fix the error.

- I always use the Create Quick Event function without problems, but if I use the "double-click in the date" method, the problem appears. Just stick to the "+" button to avoid problems.

Regards,

Victor