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Google Calendar delegates being listed twice

About two months ago this problem started happening. I have several google calendars that I access with MacOS Calendar (Mountain Lion).


As usual, the main calendar shows up under "GMail" in the sidebar and all the other sshow up under "Delegates". But recently, all the calendars in delegates have also been showing up under "GMail", creating duplicate event entries in the calendar view. This happens intermitently. It will just appear and disappear periodically. Everytime it happens, I need to unselect all the calendars under 'Gmail' so I don't see the duplicates, then after a while they will disappear altogether, then reappear later, selected.


Anyone else seeing this? Any solution?


Geoff


p.s. I find the Google calendar support pretty flaky in general. Get a lot of server errors here and there, and find the whole way "delegates" to be handled is very cumborsome, curiously much more complicated than in calendar.google.com.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Nov 26, 2012 12:52 PM

Reply
26 replies

Nov 28, 2012 10:42 AM in response to Geoff Fitch

I'm having the exact same problem on two different Macs which I recently upgraded to Mt Lion 10.8.2. I also have this problem on another Mac running Lion 10.7.5, so it's not just Mt Lion. In addition, I am no longer able to create Alert Messages in Calendar or iCal. They are immediately deleted when they sync with Google Calendar.


I've been using Google Calendar with iCal for a few years now and the problems seem to come and go. Strange error messages appear. The calendars sometimes don't sync at all. I'm thinking of changing to iCloud for calendar services. Oddly, I have no problems with my various iOS calendars and Google Calendar, so maybe it's the Mac calendar app, which has been rather lame for years. Perhaps it's time to try BusyCal.

Nov 28, 2012 10:50 AM in response to Geoff Fitch

Yes - I've used BusyCall in the past and it has worked flawlessly in terms of Sync. Probably going to go back at some point.


I had the brilliant idea to uncheck the delegates in preferences, so I would just see the calendars, under "Gmail" - but then found out these calendars just don't show up reliably. When the app opens or wakes up, it seems to reload these calendars from scratch each time, so when my computer wakes up, Calendar shows nothing and sits there and spins for five minutes while it loads the calendars.


I believe iCloud calendars will work much better, but that's not useful to me as Google Calendars are the gate way to other online services that work with them.

Nov 28, 2012 11:20 AM in response to Geoff Fitch

Check your Google Calendar settings... you may have default alerts, which you can change or delete.


I don't know why this basic calendar stuff doesn't just work... I suspect Apple and Google differ in their CalDAV implementations and they are too stubborn or distracted to work together to fix it. As soon as I upgrade to Mt Lion on my main Mac, I'm going to try BusyCal 2. This is annoying, because I don't really need anything more than Apple Calendar, but the flakiness is starting to drive me a little nuts. I'll post an update when I make the switch. Good luck!

Nov 28, 2012 12:53 PM in response to Geoff Fitch

I have the problem too. Calendars show up twice. Deselect the delegates. A little later everything disappears.


Apparently its a problem on google's side. They claim to be "working on it"

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/AWJSWllOt9Y/discussion


I found the google thread on another apple forum page devoted to the same problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4512975?start=0&tstart=0

Nov 29, 2012 1:27 PM in response to Geoff Fitch

Exactly the same problem here in the UK; both myself and my wife's calendars. BusyCal seems to not have an associated iPhone App and uses the default iPhone calendar. I'm getting double entries on both phone and laptop so I doubt BusyCal will completely solve the problem.

I'm also one of the minority that likes iCal, has Apple given up the ghost?

Nov 29, 2012 1:56 PM in response to nicboffin

nicboffin wrote:


Exactly the same problem here in the UK; both myself and my wife's calendars. BusyCal seems to not have an associated iPhone App and uses the default iPhone calendar. I'm getting double entries on both phone and laptop so I doubt BusyCal will completely solve the problem.

I'm also one of the minority that likes iCal, has Apple given up the ghost?

You misunderstand iCloud, BusyCal is simplly a client, as are iCal and iPhones, there is no need for a matching utility.

As for duplicates you are probably viewing more than one account simultaneously. Open your calendar, turn off every calendar except your iCloud calendar and then compare.

Nov 29, 2012 2:47 PM in response to nicboffin

Are you seeing the double calendar problem on iOS? I'm not. I think the architecture is different on iOS because it doesn't require the Delegates setup that iCal/Calendar on Mac OS requires to access multiple calendars. I proposed BusyCal as a solution to the Mac iCal/Calendar issues before I heard that Google was making changes to their calendar service, apparently to remove the need for delegates...

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/calendar/-/tgyr5MbVYS0 J


This would be a nice improvement, but it appears that the production rollout of this change has caused serious problems that have been wreaking havoc on users for a couple of weeks now. In addition to the double calendars appearing and disappearing, I also cannot create alerts from Mac iCal/Calendar. I'm not seeing either of these problems on iOS Calendars (an iPhone running iOS 6 and an iPad running iOS 5.) I also do not have either of these problems with the Google Calendar Website.


I'd love to hear from anyone who uses BusyCal, to know if they're seeing either of these problems. There is a trial version at http://www.busymac.com/busycal/ which I'm going to try when I get a little time to mess with it. I'd buy it (it's only $30), but I'm really fine with iCal/Calendar... if it would just work. The fixes and improvements in Calendar on Mt Lion are a solid step in the right direction, so I'm hopeful in the long term.

Google Calendar delegates being listed twice

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