Very strange issues with .ics meeting invites

Question

Level 1

0 points

Very strange issues with .ics meeting invites

I bought a new MacBook Pro a few weeks ago and had no end of iCal issues. Several hours at the Genius Bar led to the conclusion that my three-week-old iCal application was corrupt. So they reinstalled my OS, leaving me to restore all my files overnight. I also completely eliminated iCloud from the mix; what a ridiculously borked piece of malware that is.

This onerous fix solved all but one of my issues, and it is the most vexing.

When I receive a .ics meeting invitation and double-click on the email attachment to open and deal with it, iCal adds a completely unrelated meeting to my calendar from more than two years ago! I have to acknowledge that meeting request in some form, which then causes an email to be sent to the person who invited me to that two-year-old event!

On the other hand, if I receive the invite on my iPhone, and click on the .ics email attachment, the proper event gets added to my iPhone calendar and, when I synch with my laptop through iTunes, adds the proper event to my iCal calendar.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. My clients are getting tired of my random acceptances and declines of meetings long past.

Thank you.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 8, 2012 1:37 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 9, 2012 12:39 AM in response to Tigrrreyes

Hi Tigrrreyes or anybody who had that issue!

Did you find a solution to that? I have exactly the same issue and get pretty annoyed that I cannot import events any more. I thought it might be due to the fact, that outlook invitations are usually called "Mail Attachment.ics" and there is an issue when they are reneamed in the mail attachment folder to avoid duplicate names.... I am using apple and ical since 6 years now and there must be houndreds of these ical files in my mail folders.

Reply

Answer 2

Tigrrreyes Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 9, 2012 12:11 PM in response to Yu Haining

Hi, Yu Haining.

MyMac tech support guy was able to do what the so-called Genius Bar at the Apple Store was not.

We traced the issue to redundant .ics archive files, from which iCal was apparently drawing randon .ics events.

To solve the issue, we:

1. Make a copy of your /Users/username/Library/Calendar folder as a backup

2. Go to iCal; export all of your calendars, by selecting them one at a time, then File -> Export to a .ics file

3. Quit iCal

4. Delete the contents of that initial Calendars folder (/Users/username/Library/Calendar)

5. Open iCal

6. Import Calendars one by one by going to File -> Import

7. Delete the iCal preference files in /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ical* (multiple files starting with com.apple.ical…….)

I am happy -- and relieved -- to report that incoming meeting invites now behave properly.

Good luck.

Reply