Deleting duplicate entries in iCal?

Question

Deleting duplicate entries in iCal?

How do I delete duplicate entries in iCal (identical entries on the same date)?

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 12, 2006 9:07 PM

Answer 1

Ferd II

Level 10

105,403 points

Apr 12, 2006 10:49 PM in response to Todd Berliner

Todd,

Click on whatever entry you consider to be the duplicate and press delete.

;~)

Answer 2

Apr 12, 2006 11:07 PM in response to Ferd II

I'm talking about deleting thousands of duplicate entries at once. Is there a feature in iCal (or a workaround), as there is in Apple Address Book, that identifies duplicate entires?

Answer 3

Ferd II

Level 10

105,403 points

Apr 12, 2006 11:43 PM in response to Todd Berliner

Todd,

I suspected a more serious problem because the answer was too easy.

Thousands of duplicate entries...Is this what happened?

According to, Mac OS X 10.4: Stay away from the SyncServices folder:

As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X 10.4. Removing or modifying anything in it—or in subfolders within it—may cause unexpected issues. (This folder is located in your Application Support folder, in your Library folder, in your Home folder.)

Deleting or modifying things in the SyncServices folder may cause unexpected results such as:

• Duplicate contacts in Address Book or appointments in iCal.
• Data loss in Address Book or iCal.

Important: Any lost or duplicate data could propagate to other devices and computers via iSync and .Mac sync. This means data could be lost on other computers.

If that is your problem, I suspect that without a backup, duplicate entry deletion will at best be tedious, and at worst fraught with frustration. You may be better off starting from scratch.

;~)

Answer 4

Apr 13, 2006 12:01 AM in response to Ferd II

Fortunately, I did not tinker with the sacred SyncServices folder. I think the duplications occurred when I was importing files from the Palm Desktop or Entourage (or both). I am not going to start from scratch because I have already made many updates to my calendar, and the duplications all occur in past months. However, the duplications have engorged the file size, slowed down iCal, and make looking up past events tedious. I'm eager to clean things up.

Any thoughts on how to do that?

Answer 5

Apr 13, 2006 12:18 AM in response to Todd Berliner

Hi Todd,

There were a few people reporting the same problem a few months back.

I wrote an Applescript called Delete iCal Duplicates which you can pick up here, thak deletes events with the same name and start time in one iCal calendar.

Best wishes

John M

Answer 6

Apr 13, 2006 2:22 AM in response to John Maisey

I wrote an Applescript called Delete iCal Duplicates
which you can pick up
here, thak deletes events with the same name and
start time in one iCal calendar.

Best wishes

John M

What a fabulous script, John. It deleted over 1500 duplicate entries.

I discovered what was causing my problem, and there is still one unsolved issue that perhaps you can help me with: I have duplicate entries that start at different times. Somehow iCal imported files (or converted files) into two different time zones--the zone I'm in now (Asia) and the original zone (US east coast). So I might have an event scheduled at 2pm, April 5, 2001 and a duplicate "false" event scheduled at 1am, April 6, 2001.

So your solution solved my "all day" events but none of my timed events. Is there any solution to this problem?

Answer 7

May 8, 2006 1:14 PM in response to Todd Berliner

Another work around for duplicate entries (Address Book and iCal) is to fix the duplicates from the PALM side of the equation.

There is a fantastic and extremely easy utility for PALM OS called UnDupe.

http://palmsource.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&prodid =756

With one click it will find all duplicates on your Palm device, and with another click remove all duplicates. The next time you sync all the duplicates will be removed from your .mac, iCal and Address Book entries, also.

It's shareware, and well worth the fee of $9.95 in my opinion. I have over 1000 entries in my address book and it would have taken me all day to do this manually. With UnDupe it only took a couple of minutes.

G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Treo 650

G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Treo 650

Answer 8

bobio

Level 2

344 points

May 9, 2006 11:00 AM in response to macsantos

I have been following your knowledgable responses, and hope that you may be able to help me with a similar though not identical problem. I have no duplicate date book entries in Palm Desktop, but when I export via a vCal file to iCal, "duplicates" (actually an added day prior to the event) are created starting with entries on or after October 31, 2006.
Specifically:
I prefer to use Palm Desktop over iCal, at least up till now. However, since I have updated Palm Desktop 4.2.1 to the latest Rev D, an irritating problem has developed in exporting a vCal file from Palm Desktop into iCal (there has been no change to my iCal program). Once the vCal file is imported into iCal, all recurring events starting in Oct 06 (but not before), have one day added prior to the correct date. For example, Christmas falls on both Dec 24 and 25, a birthday on Nov 12 also falls on Nov 11, and so on. The iCal calendar, although not used on my Mac, is important to me for I publish it to my .Mac account so that I can access it on the road. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Bob

G5 Dual 2.0, 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6) also running beige G3 w/ OS9