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Q: Duplicate birthdays at icloud.com

I have a problem with 2 of my birthday's from contacts.

 

I have searched for similar problems but not sure if they are the same, so hope someone can help.

 

I have my contact birthdays to display on my calendars and I have my calendars on icloud. On my iPhone and iPad all the birthdays are shown only once, which is great. Yet when I log into iCloud.com, 2 of those birthdays are dupliacted. This was puzzling as I said, on my iPhone/Pad they are only shown once. I tried deleting the birthday in the specific contacts. This only deleted the duplicate and left one entry. I then deleted the contacts completely thinking this would remove the birthday in calendar but it was still there. I added the contact back and put the birthdays back in and again, it created a duplicate entry on iCloud.com.

 

Now I don't know how to remove the 'stuck' entries as they don't seem to be linked to the contact entries they relate to. And of course I can't just delete them from iCloud.com.

 

Any suggestions as to how to remove the duplicates or even reset icloud.com to re-sync with my devices?

 

Thanks everyone in advance for your input.

 

P.S. I am a lowly Windows user so I can't do anything that will be specific to a mac.

 

Thanks.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Aug 9, 2012 11:27 AM

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Q: Duplicate birthdays at icloud.com

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  • Helpful answers

  • by withitnow,

    withitnow withitnow Nov 6, 2012 5:37 PM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 6, 2012 5:37 PM in response to withitnow

    Anyone at all have any advice on this? An Apple bod perhaps?? It's driving me crackers

  • by klein_m,

    klein_m klein_m Nov 10, 2012 12:35 PM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 10, 2012 12:35 PM in response to withitnow

    no advice but the same problem here:

    everything is fine in ical and on my iphone.

    however, in the icloud birthday calendar i have a few duplicate birthdays ...

    i already tried deleting the associated contacts but still one birthday remained for each of them.

  • by jrosson,

    jrosson jrosson Nov 14, 2012 11:37 AM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 14, 2012 11:37 AM in response to withitnow

    I am having the same problem. I think I have done everything I can think of to get rid of the stuck duplicate entries. If you turn off the icloud calendar, they disappear and then you can't create any events.  I don't get it.  It sortof makes me think they are forcing you to use Iclould to use the calendar.....

  • by jrosson,

    jrosson jrosson Nov 14, 2012 12:52 PM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 14, 2012 12:52 PM in response to withitnow

    I signed into Icloud.com and deleted some calendars and created a new calendar, of course all the birthdays are gone and I will have to start over but they are not duplicate.  I noticed that it somehow synced with Google contacts and when you put the birthdays in the individual contact it filtered to the calendar on the Ipad.  I had all the birthdays on the Ipad manually and when I added them to google contacts, i believe that is when they duplicated.  It appears to be two fold.  I took all of those birthdays out of google, which did not delete the duplicates from my ipad. The down side is that is seems you won't have access to your calendar without Icloud once you do that.  I haven't figured that part out yet. Also, nothing matches my iphone.  just my 2 cents.....

  • by Schmalejandro,

    Schmalejandro Schmalejandro Mar 3, 2013 1:25 AM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 1:25 AM in response to withitnow

    The same is happening here. I access iCloud on various browsers, and what I see is up to three duplicates per birthday calendar entry. I have imported and removed multiple contacts in the past, and that is when the duplicates appeared. The calendar on my iPhone is fine. It is just iCloud that is showing a heap of duplicates.

  • by Jerome.Serpenti,

    Jerome.Serpenti Jerome.Serpenti Mar 3, 2013 1:43 AM in response to withitnow
    Level 1 (65 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 1:43 AM in response to withitnow

    Hi!,

     

    In the same calendar web app on icloud.com, click the action menu in the upper right corner (bolt icon), go to preferences.  Turn off birthdays, press apply, logout, log back in and check whether the birthday reappears when turning on birthdays back on in the calendar web app preferences.

     

    Kind regards,

  • by Schmalejandro,

    Schmalejandro Schmalejandro Mar 3, 2013 2:57 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 2:57 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti

    Thanks for your tip, but no such luck. Things remain as they were.

  • by Jerome.Serpenti,

    Jerome.Serpenti Jerome.Serpenti Mar 3, 2013 3:07 AM in response to Schmalejandro
    Level 1 (65 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 3:07 AM in response to Schmalejandro

    Hi,

     

    So if I understand you correctly, the duplicates do not show up on any of your devices but only on icloud.com.

     

    There's not a whole lot that can be done to troubleshoot issues on icloud.com beyond what we've already done -- it's strange that this has not resolved your issue.  You could contact AppleCare Phone Support with this issue.  Mention the troubleshooting steps you have performed.

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

     

    Even if they can't immediately help you with troubleshooting, they may be able to escalate the issue so your account is looked at.

     

    Kind regards,

  • by Schmalejandro,

    Schmalejandro Schmalejandro Mar 3, 2013 3:08 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 3:08 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti

    Thanks, Jerome!

  • by klein_m,

    klein_m klein_m Mar 3, 2013 3:40 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2013 3:40 AM in response to Jerome.Serpenti

    just to give you an idea of how helpful apple support is:

    • i opened a ticket regarding this in november 2012 at http://bugreport.apple.com/
    • they did not reply for weeks
    • generally, every update in response to my updates takes at least a couple of days
    • they sent standard mails regarding availability of icloud servers saying no problems are known
    • only in feb 2012 they started to understand the problem, suggesting "deleting the birthday calendar in the support app. Then on the next web login, the birthday calendar will re-generate"
    • since I do not know "the support app", I disabled the birthdays calendar, logged out and back in - with no effect whatsoever :-(
  • by Schmalejandro,

    Schmalejandro Schmalejandro Dec 15, 2013 4:31 AM in response to klein_m
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2013 4:31 AM in response to klein_m

    BTW, Apple seems to have cleaned up their calendar database. All of my loathed and dreaded duplicates are now gone. Yay!

  • by Jerome.Serpenti,

    Jerome.Serpenti Jerome.Serpenti Dec 15, 2013 7:29 AM in response to Schmalejandro
    Level 1 (65 points)
    Dec 15, 2013 7:29 AM in response to Schmalejandro

    Good to hear you've found a resolution to your issue!