iCal invites are not received by some people (I know why, but Apple won't fix it)

I switched to icloud a while back and have the maddening problem of SOME people not receiving invites, and have discovered what causes it (at least in my case):

If the user you are sending to has an itunes (or apple id) account with that email as the login (and that email is NOT an icloud email) they will never receive the iCal invite! Instead it gets routed to their (non setup) icloud account. If they start using icloud for their calendars with this same external email address as login, they will receive them there (directly on their calendar if it is setup). Apple refuses to forward it to their real email address, the one we are sending it to. I have reported it to Apple several times but they are not inclined to fix it, probably because they want to force external users to use icloud. This is mega frustrating. Many of my friends do not receive invites, forcing me to use Google calendar for events with those friends. I prefer the general interface and look of icloud/ical invites, but I need to be able to actually invite people!😠

Posted on Aug 31, 2013 4:20 AM

34 replies

Dec 23, 2015 1:39 AM in response to Julie_1012

Does anyone know when will Apple deal with this problem... It's impossible for me to change apple ID ... on other hand it's very important that I get invites on the same mail which is Apple ID....

All the best from Slovenia.

Jaka

Dec 23, 2015 7:44 AM in response to Jaka Zvan

I have no idea when or IF Apple plans to deal with this. I switched to the Google Calendar our of necessity. Cannot run my business with Apple Calendar.

Dec 25, 2015 10:42 AM in response to gagator79

I was having similar issues, but my wife's ical requests to my gmail account were not receiving either. What I found is that I put my gmail address and my work (exchange) addresses into my icloud profile as alternate addresses. When I removed my alternate addresses, they requests came through to those addresses.

However, the non-apple email that is my icloud login was not 'released' from the invite jail, so it's still an issue.

Apr 18, 2016 12:59 PM in response to ssuess

I think I found a work-around: if you set up a google calendar on your google account, then link it to ical as shown here: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/sync-apple-calendar-google-41703.html you can then invite people from that account within ical. testing to see if it really works, but don't see why it wouldn't! (fingers crossed -The platform duopoly of Apple and Google squabble like kindergarden kids - in fact, some kids I know are better at it!)

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iCal invites are not received by some people (I know why, but Apple won't fix it)