jackinmaine

Q: Calendar Not Syncing

My Apple Watch is not updating with changes to my calendar. It has had a few hours to update, but still shows the old time for meetings I have scheduled today. I've restarted my watch and my iPhone 6+. Is anyone else experiencing this? Is there a way to force a re-sync of calendar data between my iPhone and watch?

 

Thanks!

Apple Watch, iOS 8.3

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 7:49 AM

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Q: Calendar Not Syncing

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  • by jackinmaine,

    jackinmaine jackinmaine Apr 27, 2015 9:58 AM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 9:58 AM in response to jackinmaine

    I contacted Apple Support. They had me reset my watch to factory settings. I did that, then went through the pairing process again, but still the calendar isn't syncing to my phone.

  • by JoeSchu,

    JoeSchu JoeSchu Apr 27, 2015 5:46 PM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 5:46 PM in response to jackinmaine

    I've also got calendar sync issues. Can't seem to force the Apple watch to re-read what's on my phone.

     

    Is your event on an Exchange calendar? I haven't had a problem with Google events, but Exchange ones seem to be the problem.

  • by JoeSchu,Helpful

    JoeSchu JoeSchu Apr 27, 2015 5:59 PM in response to JoeSchu
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 5:59 PM in response to JoeSchu

    Also, if you go on to your iPhone, try setting the event to private then setting it back.  When I did that, it immediately synced with the watch.

     

    I've filed a bug. Please call support again and tell them you've found a bug.

  • by jackinmaine,Solvedanswer

    jackinmaine jackinmaine Apr 28, 2015 5:54 AM in response to JoeSchu
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 5:54 AM in response to JoeSchu

    I worked with Apple Support yesterday to find possible reasons for my calendar data not syncing correctly. What seemed to work was reducing the number of calendars I have to choose from with my work google apps-based email account. I had 25 calendars listed under that account. I dropped the number of calendars down to about 4, reset my watch (again :-(  ) and it now seems to be working.

     

    The upshot is that the phone-to-watch sync choked when there were too many calendars in an account. Further, just selecting a few calendars to show didn't work. I could actually see the non-selected calendar data displaying on the watch.

  • by rdevillers,

    rdevillers rdevillers Apr 28, 2015 8:19 AM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (29 points)
    iCloud
    Apr 28, 2015 8:19 AM in response to jackinmaine

    I am able to simultaneously sync all 11 of my ICloud Calendars but onlly one of my 2 Exchange Calendars. It only seems to show you the Exchange Calendar that was most recently activated, or enabled, on the IPhone.

  • by slgoldberg,

    slgoldberg slgoldberg Apr 28, 2015 6:26 PM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 6:26 PM in response to jackinmaine

    Can you confirm -- how did you actually "reduce" the number of calendars it needed to sync to the watch???

     

    I am missing something here.  Do you mean, on your iPhone?  Did you change this in the Calendar app itself, on the iPhone, or in the Settings?

     

    There are several places to do various things, so here's what I have (and I'm getting nothing) so any pointers on what you're doing differently could help me and others resolve this. (Note: I'm also using a calendar via a Google account as you are, so I think if I can copy your set-up, my problem could actually finally be resolved.) So far, I've only ever seen "No events this week" in a frustratingly uninformative Apple Watch experience. :-(

     

    On iPhone:

    * In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts > my Google account > Calendars slider switched to "on" (all other sliders off)

    * In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Calendars > Sync is set to "Events 2 Weeks Back" (minimum value just in case)

    * In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Calendars > Default Calendar is set to my primary work calendar in the Google account

    * In Settings > iCloud > Calendars slider switched to "off" (no iCloud calendar; I've tried both options, no change)

    * In Calendar > Calendars (bottom button) > unchecked all calendars except my one primary work calendar in the Google account.

     

    Or did you do something in iCloud, either on your Mac or on your iPhone, or on the web?  It's hard to figure out whether the Apple Watch is displaying the content of my iPhone's built-in Calendar app, or if it's displaying its own version of the iCloud calendar somehow. If the latter, I can't work out how to tell iCloud to subscribe to any real calendars aside from the two pre-loaded calendars you can subscribe to in iCloud (birthdays of friends, and national holidays).

     

    And of course, there are absolutely no useful settings on the iPhone "Apple Watch" app relating to Calendar. It just shows the alerting options, nothing about which account to display, and certainly nothing as fine-grained as which calendar to display (within the accounts).  Note: I hate the idea that I have to sacrifice my full iPhone experience just to get it to sync to my watch, but I'll do it, I suppose, if there's a way to make it display anything more than "No events this week" which is driving me insane. :-(

     

    Also, do I have to wait some undetermined period of time to even test any changes out? How do I know if the changes I made will eventually actually propagate to the watch? It's impossible to understand the model here: whether it's my iPhone that's loading the data, or if it's a back-end iCloud service that's polling the feed periodically.  On the iPhone, there's also the setting to say whether to use fetch or push, but of course for these types of feeds, it only offers fetch or manual. So that doesn't really tell me much. :-(

     

    Thanks for any pointers.

     

       Steve (without any events on my Apple Watch calendar)

  • by slgoldberg,

    slgoldberg slgoldberg Apr 28, 2015 7:20 PM in response to slgoldberg
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 7:20 PM in response to slgoldberg

    Update: After making the above changes (deselecting all but my primary work calendar from my Google Apps account on my iPhone), my watch still shows absolutely nothing.

     

    So, I re-read all the text, and started to realize, you may actually be talking about Google Calendar itself (as opposed to the Apple iPhone or iCloud subscription to that calendar). I am now guessing that you mean there's a bug (or limitation) that is breaking syncing specifically to the watch, accounts that themselves actually have too many calendars subscribed within them.

     

    For those of you who don't know what I mean: this only applies to people who use Google Apps in particular (which many companies use, including mine). It turns out that Google Calendar has a feature that lets you see others' calendars overlaid with your own. Let's say I happen to work at a big enough company that there are literally thousands of calendars to potentially subscribe to. Let's say that I have been working there for over 10 years, and I have over time accumulated a huge list of subscriptions to other people's calendars, since just *once* long ago, I happened to view each person's calendar overlaid with my own (which Google Calendar makes ridiculously easy -- there's no explicit subscription feature, you simply search for their calendar right on the main calendar view, and it auto-completes to all the employees of the company that uses Google Apps for their calendar and/or email), and *blammy* you are subscribed the second you hit the tab key (even if you then hide the newly-subscribed calendar right away).

     

    So, when I went to look just now in my calendar (on Google Calendar for my company's domain), I found that I was subscribed to upwards of 150 calendars (!!). The reason I figured this out was because the original poster here mentioned having 25 calendars listed, which is far more than I had just in terms of my own calendars (i.e., different shared team calendars for groups I work with, etc.). And I thought, "Why would anyone have 25 calendars?" Then I remember this crazy feature of Google Calendar where it auto-subscribes you just because you looked at someone's calendar. And so now I'm guessing this is exactly what's going on in my case -- at least, it sure makes a lot more sense now that it may be the problem.

     

    So why haven't I already tested this theory and come up with the answer?  Well, unfortunately, it's non-trivial to unsubscribe from calendars (despite it being trivial to subscribe in the first place). There may be a way to script it, but failing that, you have to manually unsubscribe from each calendar, and click confirm each time (there's no default so you can't just hit enter, ugh!).  So, since I have literally 150 calendars or so to go through, I thought I'd post my breakthrough first, in case the original poster sees this before I'm done.  I'll post again when I know for sure if that was it.

     

       Steve

  • by rdevillers,

    rdevillers rdevillers Apr 28, 2015 8:00 PM in response to slgoldberg
    Level 1 (29 points)
    iCloud
    Apr 28, 2015 8:00 PM in response to slgoldberg

    Sorry you are having so much trouble with your Calendars.I am using iCloud and Exchange Calendars and can see current and future events for all but my 2nd Exchange Calendar (I think this is definitely a bug).

     

    I just wanted to point out that, despite the "Mail Days to Sync" setting for my Calendars on the iPhone, the Watch does not show any past appointments. It only shows today and future events regardless of whether it is an Exchange or iCloud Calendar (I do not have any Google Calendars).

     

    Good luck.

  • by slgoldberg,

    slgoldberg slgoldberg Apr 28, 2015 8:03 PM in response to slgoldberg
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 8:03 PM in response to slgoldberg

    Yep -- that was it (I think).  Unblocking it to actually sync to my watch had the unintended consequence of then triggering another issue (read: major bug) with "invitations": for some (stupid) reason, it decided to notify me for *every* unreplied invitation going back however long!  So, for all those instances of repeating weekly meetings that I have not replied to, it synced them all to my watch as notifications (seemingly ignoring my iPhone preference which I was mirroring by default, which is to ignore invitations from my work calendar on my phone).  Weird.  So it took *forever* to eventually start showing the data (it really caused other problems in the interim; my watch was having serious problems doing anything that needed to communicate with my iPhone during that time).. but once it finally started presenting the alerts for all the previous invitations (I mean, we're talking about a hundred at least), I realized that was the problem now (flood gates = open).

     

    So, I went back into the Apple Watch app on my iPhone (in somewhat of a panic) and edited the Calendar settings to explicitly disable alerting on invitation -- and voila!  After a minute or two of waiting for it to re-sync, it seems to finally actually work!!!!!!

     

    Thanks.

  • by Broggy Baby,

    Broggy Baby Broggy Baby Apr 30, 2015 7:42 AM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 30, 2015 7:42 AM in response to jackinmaine

    I too am having calendar sync issues between the IPhone and the watch.  It appears that the re-ocurring appointments are deleting from my iPhone but not my watch. 

  • by waynefromtoronto,

    waynefromtoronto waynefromtoronto Apr 30, 2015 10:17 AM in response to Broggy Baby
    Level 1 (26 points)
    Apr 30, 2015 10:17 AM in response to Broggy Baby

    I have had some troubles where meetings show up twice or some appointments are missing. These are from a corporate Exchange environment.

  • by JAHChicago,

    JAHChicago JAHChicago Apr 30, 2015 1:40 PM in response to jackinmaine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 30, 2015 1:40 PM in response to jackinmaine

    I am also having calendar sync issues.  I have one Exchange (Office 365) calendar.  Most appointments are syncing but some do not.  The appointments do sync fine to on my iPhone 6.  This effectively eliminates the convenience of the watch because I cannot trust its accuracy and therefore need to pull out the phone anyway.  Please help.

  • by anthonypolcari,

    anthonypolcari anthonypolcari May 4, 2015 8:18 AM in response to JoeSchu
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 4, 2015 8:18 AM in response to JoeSchu

    Reducing the number of calendars being synced doesn't apply to me - I only have 2 (work [exchange] and personal [google calendar]). The meeting that wasn't being synced was on my exchange calendar.

     

    The changing of the event to private did force a re-sync of the calendar data between my apple watch and iPhone. I changed it back to public after the re-sync was complete - however this appears to have queued 2 "15 min warning" notifications to occur (which just happened now).

     

    This is definitely a bug but at least there is a work around (for now).

     

    Also for folks that do this - be aware that if you have other invitees on your meeting it will trigger (potentially multiple) meeting update e-mails to be sent out to everybody.

  • by Pinksteady,

    Pinksteady Pinksteady May 5, 2015 5:33 AM in response to anthonypolcari
    Level 1 (20 points)
    May 5, 2015 5:33 AM in response to anthonypolcari

    I have the same setup - a personal Google Calendar and a work Exchange calendar. Seeing loads of problems with the Exchange calendar not syncing currently. The phone is showing the correct appointments but they are not being synced to the watch, which continues to show out of date appointments, appointments that have been deleted from the iPhone and doesn't show newly-added ones. Force-closing the Calendar app on the watch doesn't help, neither does restarting the iPhone or the watch.

     

    I added an appointment to my Exchange calendar from my phone and it immediately appeared on my watch, so I wonder if it only affects events that have synced to the phone from the Exchange server?

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