Your calendars will be merged with iCloud

It means the calendar on your phone will be merged with your iCloud calendar. If this is the first time you turned on calendar syncing with iCloud, your calendar will simply be uploaded and merged with an empty iCloud calendar.

This is a normal prompt when you turn on calendar syncing with iCloud and you should accept it if you want to sync your calendar with iCloud.

randers4 - i have been using an iPhone 4s with iOS 5. i replaced it with an iPhone 6 iOS 8 about 3 weeks ago. Ever since there has been an iCloud, i have always had data sync automatically, immediately, AND, i could also sync with my computer any time i wanted, without changing any settings. Just now, i tried to sync with my computer using iTunes and no sync occurred. When i looked in iTunes>Preferences>Devices the last syncs were in November, when i first got the phone and was getting the phone set up. i don't remember any problems with my iCloud syncing preventing me from using the computer to sync.

Is there a setting i can turn on so that i can use iTunes to sync and back up a copy of my iPhone data to my computer while still having iCloud keep my other device updated (iCal, etc)?

When you sync data with iCloud, such as your calendar, the data is moved to the iCloud server so it can be read by your other devices. (That's how iCloud keeps your devices in sync: when you make changes to your iCloud calendar, the changes are made on the server so your other devices will all see the same changes.)

You will still be able to see your iCloud calendar on your phone, even when you are not connected to the internet, because you will have a locally stored copy as well as the one on the server. If you decide not to sync you calendar with iCloud in the future, all you will have to do is go to Settings>iCloud, turn Calendars off again and choose Keep on My iDevice when prompted. This will disconnect your calendar from iCloud and keep the local copy on your device, just as it is now.

When you use iCloud to sync data such as contacts and calendars, the data is moved to the iCloud server and iCloud takes care of syncing the data between your phone and you computer, not iTunes. You can still sync non-iCloud data such as music, movie, tv shows, podcasts, ringtones, etc. using iTunes. To sync iCloud data with your computer it has to be running OS X 10.7.5 or later, and you would need to go to System Preferences>iCloud on your Mac, sign into your iCloud account and check the data you want to sync with iCloud.

Thanks for the reply. i think things are a little clearer.

i know that ever since iCloud has existed, a few years, syncing of contacts and calendar have alwqys been automatic and ongoing. When i got my new iPhone/iOS in late November, everything seemed pretty much the same. Then, last week, i noticed some changes, mostly related to Calendar. It worked normally up to that point, last week, syncing with iCloud. Then, i noticed the events i entered were not in iCal, or, therefore, the iCloud calendar.

I also noticed that i was out of iCloud storage, something that had never happened before in the years i've been using iCloud. i thought maybe that was why Calendar events weren't syncing. I eventually figured out there is a Back Up setting in iClound settings on the phone, which was turned on, and i could see that two back ups were listed since i got the new phone. The first one was in late November and it was 2.4G. The second one wasn't dated and was also 2.4G and said that it was incomplete. It was obviously using up all my storage on iCloud. i deleted the second back up and i turned off Back Up in settings.

But my events in Calendar were still not syncing. i was trying to figure this out and as of last night, the problem is solved, i sort of understand it, though i don't know why it just started having this not-syncing problem in the last few days but was working fine before that. It seems to have to do with the fact that my Apple ID and my iCloud ID are different, my Apple ID is a gmail.com email address and my iCloud ID is a me.com address. So, there are iCloud calendars (8 of them, Health, Pets, Finance, etc) and there is one gmail.com calendar, which is my user name. My user name is the same for both my iCloud email and my Apple ID email, but they are separate Calendars (though not before the last few days). To solve the problem, alll i have to do to get my events to sync with iCloud is when i create the event, be sure to choose one of the 8 iCloud calendars for the event. i have the Apple ID calendar checked in settings as my default calendar. I just change it to one of the iCloud calendars when setting up the event, and it syncs with iCloud. So that problem is solved.

When i was having the trouble geting Calendar data to sync with iCloud during the past several days, i decided to do an iTunes back up, so my data would be backed up.

That's when i found out i can't sync with iTunes. This may also be something that has started in the past few days because when i first got the phone in November, i backed up using iTunes twince. It shows in iTunes>Preferences>Devices - it shows the dates of the back ups. But in the past three days i've tried to back up using iTunes three or four times, i can tell it's not working, it goes through the process, step 1, step 2, step 3, but it only takes about 20 seconds and then it's done. There is no back up listed in iTunes>Preferences>Devices. To perform the sync, i go to iTunes, i connect my phone to the computer with a cable, although i have wireless turned on, but just to make sure, i used a cable, and i click on the button that says Sync. But it won't sync, or it won't do a back up anyway.

Another question i have about iCloud syncing and backing up is about Photos. I used to have some photos backed up on iCloud. i don't see any now. I don't see a Photos category on the page that has all the different options, email, contacts, calendar, find my phone, etc. Nothing about photos. i read somewhere that Photo stream is on iCloud. Photo stream used to be on my phone, taking up too much space, and it was in iPhoto.

That's one of the reasons i want do iTunes back ups from my phone, because i want to back up my photos. But iTunes won't back up. I don't know why it was backing up to iTunes when i first got the phone, end of November, i don't know what changed, and i don't know why my Apple ID calendar was syncing when i first got the phone, but then last week, stopped syncing.

i have a question about iCloud back ups--about the setting in iCloud on the phone that says Back Up. i had the two back ups mentioned above, two 2.4GB back ups which had used up all my storage--i had 89MB left. So i deleted the more recent one which was incomplete, giving me 2.4G of storage. Is there any reason to keep the other back up, from late November? i would like to delete it too, unless it's the only back up i have of some data. This is all new to me, i never had iCloud running out of storage space before, and in such a short time. I didn't get any message telling me that it was backing up my phone. i also don't know what it's backing up that is taking that much data.. i looked in 'manage storage,' but the space taken by apps didn't look even close to 2GB.

If i don't use iCloud back up of my phone, i realize that contacts and calendar are still synced so i don't have to keep the back up for that data. Is there other data in these 2.4G back ups? Apps? i want to continue using iTunes to back up apps and their data, but right now, iTunes won't sync for some reason, i don't know what i'm doing wrong here.

I have the latest version of iTunes

i have iOS 8.1.1

the computer is running OS 10.8.5