Calendar Not Syncing

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 The phone is showing the correct appointments but they are not being synced to the watch, which continues to show out of date appointments, appointments that have been deleted from the iPhone and doesn't show newly-added ones.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?

I just had a chat with Apple Support who raised a ticket. They said the more people who raise issues with them the better, so I strongly recommend everyone experiencing this problem fills out the feedback form:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

I've observed that Exchange invitations accepted via OS X Mail do not sync to the watch. There are 2 work-arounds, both suck:

1. Only accept Exchange calendar invites on your phone. If you accept from the phone, the watch sees the event.
2. If you accepted an Exchange event in some other manner (like OS X Mail or OWA), then you have to open the event on your iPhone, scroll to the bottom of it, and modify it in some way. I've found the easiest thing to do is set the event to private, then set it back. That immediately makes the event visible to your watch.

This is definitely a bug.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html Is definitely one place to start. I'd also HIGHLY recommend opening support tickets to try to raise the priority of this one. If you can't trust the calendar, what point are the alerts?

In addition, if you decline or remove an event from any source other than your phone, it disappears (as it should) from your phone but remains on the watch, and as it has now gone there is no way to force a refresh to remove it from the watch, so it is then stuck there forever...

I struggled with this as well and eventually removed all the calendars from my phone but everything was still on the watch. I was about to reset to factory but I found an option that does exactly what we want. In the Apple Watch app, go to General -> Reset -> Reset Sync Data. The text underneath says it all: "Resetting sync data will erase all Conacts and Calendar data from your Apple Watch before re-syncing from your iPhone".

Once I did this, all the extra entries from shared calendars were gone and over the next several minutes, everything rolled in and it's exactly as want it.

Interesting - good to know there is a way to force a total refresh of the sync data between the phone and watch.

However I still think that the handling of this could be smoother/made to be more robust overall. As it stands right now it's confusing at best when things are out of sync.

Even with the sync defects I think calendar is one of the most valuable features on the watch today.

I have this issue as well. I tried to unfair and then pair the phone and it looks like everything synced, but when calendar items were changed or moved in Outlook they show up on the phone, but not on the watch

ABSOLUTELY GREAT. Struggled, removed a few calendars that I did not use anyway. Changed nothing. And then I did what you suggested. PERFECT WORKAROUND. Still a bug that needs to get fixed: you want WYSIWYG between iPhone and Apple Watch :-)

This was what I learned from BrianNFH and did: In the Apple Watch app, go to General -> Reset -> Reset Sync Data. The text underneath says it all: "Resetting sync data will erase all Conacts and Calendar data from your Apple Watch before re-syncing from your iPhone".

Once I did this, all the extra entries from shared calendars were gone and over the next several minutes, everything rolled in and it's exactly as want it.

Thanks BrianNFH :-)

Having the same problem with one exchange and one google account . Don't want to have to do a data resync everyday to fix this. So will open a ticket for it.

This seems to be the only thread that mentions the "Reset Sync Data" button in the General section of the Apple Watch app on iOS. I have looked high and low for more information about this, but there really is nothing at all about this anywhere online (so far).

My biggest question is how exactly do I use this feature? Yes, it sounds simple -- just push the button. And yes, I would love to be able to push this button to use this feature!

But, pressing this button seems to have literally no effect at all (except to gray out when I press it, until I let go of it). In other words, whenever I click the button (screen shot on the right), it just grays out to indicate that I've depressed it, but it doesn't give me any feedback to say it actually worked!

In other words, the button doesn't change state unless I let go of it. So basically, it feels like a button that's disconnected, and thus has no effect.

When the folks who have successfully used this feature have clicked the button, did it actually give you any feedback to say it worked? The other buttons have the obligatory ellipsis ("...") at the end to indicate that there will be a confirmation/details dialog -- and in fact, if you click them, you do get prompted for confirmation. But this button (Reset Sync Data) doesn't have an ellipsis, and doesn't give any feedback when pressed (aside from graying while you're holding it down).

Are you saying you get different behavior from this button? Both of the posters above said they were able to get this to work. But -- my question is, "how?" (And, believe me, I am fully aware how stupid this question sounds!)

When I press the button -- and then go to Calendar on my Apple Watch -- the visible events are not cleared like you say above! The button basically has no effect.

Now, I can make the Calendar events go away en masse by simply going into my iPhone's Calendar app and de-selecting (disabling) the specific calendar in the settings. However, that just has the effect of hiding that calendar's events from the display (as well as on the watch). But, they all come right back to exactly where they were as soon as I re-activate the calendar (by checking it within Calendar on the iPhone). But at this point, it's not re-syncing the data, it's just re-displaying what's already been synced. And in my case (and many others'), that data is stale and not getting correctly updated like it should. So it just re-displays the old, stale, broken event data, and won't just do what I want (!!) which is re-push the latest state as it is on my iPhone, down to the watch!

No matter how many times, or for how long, I hold down or press the "Reset Sync Data" button in the Apple Watch app on my iPhone, it simply will not replace the currently broken and out-of-date calendar details with the up to date ones.

As I've posted other places, it does eventually show me the correct calendar -- but often on the order of 10-12 hours after the fact. When it's no longer useful. I don't understand why I can't force it to update now, when I need it to be the latest (i.e., during the day when I'm running around from meeting to meeting and never sure if meetings have been moved, cancelled, or if new meetings have been added).

This should not be so difficult and confusing. Anyone?

Thanks heaps.

Steve

There is no feedback given when you press the button, but pressing it starts the behind-the-scenes process of re-syncing all your data. There is no confirmation that this has started or ended so it is a bit of a shot in the dark, but it does work. I remember I proved to myself it was working because I then went to the Friends 'wheel' (side button) and could see the friends being refreshed (pictures disappearing etc).

I had this exact problem. Not being able to rely on the watch was so disappointing for me. I did try the advice from JoeSchu to set the meeting to private and then back (on the phone) and that worked, but obviously a better solution is needed as it would be very inconvenient to have to do that with every appointment. I hope JoeSchu gets a response.

I'm using iCloud and Google mail and calendar accounts. (One thing: I'm a Google employee and am using a corporate account, but it uses the same Gmail infrastructure as all external accounts.) All of my calendars and email show up on my iPhone 6+ just fine, and I can see email on the Watch, but no, repeat NO, calendar events are making it through.

I've opened a support case with Apple and it's been escalated to senior engineers, and I'm hopeful they'll have some good ideas. In the meantime, I'll post the solutions they suggested (which, unfortunately for me, did not work). Maybe they'll be helpful for others.

1. Reset Sync Data in iOS > Apple Watch > My Watch > General > Reset > Reset Sync Data > test if the events will then sync, kindly tell me what is the behavior after doing this step. If the issue is resolved or if not, let’s proceed with the second step.
2. Open iOS Calendar > Calendars select “Hide All Calendars” > Select Done > select “Show All Calendars” > Select Done > test again if the events will then sync, kindly include the behavior after doing this step. If the issue resolved or if not, let’s proceed with the third step.
3. Remove the Corporate Gmail account from the iPhone > test again if the events from other Accounts will then sync, kindly include the behavior after doing this step. If the issue resolve or if not, let’s proceed with the last step.
4. Remove the Gmail account from the iPhone (Without adding the corporate Gmail back) > check if the iCloud Calendar Events will then sync, kindly include the behavior after doing this step.

My responses to them were as follows:

I've tried all of these things. Options 1, 2 and 3 did not work.

Option 4 did work, but syncing only worked as long as the iCloud account was the only one enabled on the iPhone.

When I added my Google corporate account, which required me to login and supply my corp password and a one-time password for second-factor authentication, event syncing stopped. I never saw any of the events that were added to my iPhone calendar on the Watch. I added another iCloud event starting at 2:05, which should have shown up on the Watch, but didn't. I sent screenshots of the watch in the Calendar app, showing the "Test iCloud Event" I created before re-adding my Google account to the iPhone, and the view of the Calendar in my iPhone, which shows all of the events that should be showing up on the Watch.

New events I've added to my Google calendar do not show up on the Watch, but they do show up on the iPhone. I just tested that. I also did the "Reset Sync Data" step described in step 1 of your instructions again, to no avail.

FYI: There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to make a Google calendar event "private", though I've seen that mentioned by several others on this thread. I haven't been able to try that.

Hi, Jeff,

I have exactly the same setup as you (like, I mean, exactly).

And I had exactly the same problem as you.

But I did eventually get it to work. Here's what I did that I think actually helped:

Step 0: Note that the watch appears to mirror the iPhone Calendar app exactly; so if you see it on your iPhone, rest assured the model is that you *should* see it on your watch. So, no need to keep trying things that don't conform to that assumption. (In other words, it's not like the watch is using your network to fetch its data directly from some iCloud server; it's really looking at to your iPhone's display settings to determine which accounts and subscriptions (see below) to mirror to the watch.

Step 1: From a web browser, signed into your corp account, go to https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect. (If you have multiple Chrome profiles, be sure you're in your corp profile, not your personal one, so the link takes you to the right Calendar preferences screen.) This will allow you to choose which calendars show up when you use CalDAV, etc. to "sync" your calendar (e.g. to iOS). Now, uncheck all the calendars you don't need (if you're like me, you will have a ton of subscriptions to fellow employees' calendars because you once looked at them -- these are being synced to your iPhone whether you know it or not!). So I recommend unchecking everything except your primary calendar, so you can be sure they're not being synced -- there seems to be a limit (whether intentional or not) on how much data the watch can handle when it tries to pull from the calendar data on your iPhone, so you want to try to minimize the amount of data it needs (and this seems to be the best way). -- Alternatively, you could just go into the settings in Google Calendar and explicitly unsubscribe from all calendars you don't want to sync anyway.

Step 2: On your iPhone > Apple Watch > Calendar settings, turn off all notifications (this is just for now). You will be able to re-enable them later -- once it actually finally starts syncing.

Step 3: Click the magic button referenced above: iPhone > Apple Watch > General > Reset > Reset Sync Data. I actually don't think this button is wired up to anything. But at this point, superstition is all we have since Apple wants us to think their technology has advanced enough to look like magic.

Step 3: Make sure your iPhone calendar has what you want on it, and make sure your iPhone's bluetooth is turned on, and then reboot your iPhone and your watch simultaneously (just once, to make sure both of them are starting from a known state). This is just the first time, to get it going. The timing isn't super important, but I have found that if I do them both simultaneously, the iPhone comes back first (it's pretty fast), and the watch takes a while longer. In case you don't know how to reboot your watch, it's the same as your iPhone basically: hold down both buttons until you see it turn off; but then don't let go -- keep holding 'til you see the Apple logo. Obviously, "simultaneously" means in quick succession (you don't have to literally try to hold down four buttons at once on two devices :-) ).

Step 4: This is the gross part, that I think is actually what's triggering it to start working: Go to iPhone > Settings > iCloud. On this screen, if your Calendar slider is off (meaning, don't sync iCloud calendars), turn it on. If it was on, then toggle it off, then on. I recommend waiting a few seconds after toggling off, before turning back on again. (But either way, be sure it's on in the end.) I think the bug has to do with Apple's testing team assuming everyone uses iCloud, and not figuring out that something breaks when iCloud calendar sync is not turned on. They probably can't imagine we would ever want to use our iPhones without using their awesome cloud. :-) But even if you had it on, something about toggling it off, then on, seems to trigger it to start working again.

Step 5: Wait a few minutes. If it's still not showing any events on your watch, reboot both simultaneously *again*.

Step 6: Wait a few minutes after rebooting, and if you still don't see anything, turn off bluetooth on your iPhone. This eliminates one possibility: that the iPhone connection to the watch is too flaky for that much data to be copied initially without triggering some bug somewhere. When you go over wifi (assuming you're actually on a stable/strong/good wifi connection on your iPhone, and the watch is able to talk to the iPhone when bluetooth is off) the calendar should sync much faster and without errors. You really don't need bluetooth -- in fact, I strongly recommend Apple rewrite their logic so that bluetooth is only used as a method of last resort if wifi isn't available (not the other way around). Their software seems to let you do *everything* you can do between the watch and the iPhone over wifi, but on initial boot-up, the watch only gets its wifi configuration data from the iPhone over bluetooth. So you must have bluetooth on on your watch whenever you reboot, or you'll get the red disconnected icon on the watch. (To fix that, just turn bluetooth back on, and it will come up quickly; then you can turn it off again.) Of course, that only works when you're on a stable wifi connection (i.e., not walking around or driving, etc.).

Other things to note:

There are fundamental differences in the way Calendar (iCal, CalDAV) model repeating events, and the way Google Calendar does it. So, you'll be plagued with periodic issues relating to repeating events. Try to ignore those; you'll rack your brains trying to solve them (though I have ideas on how Google can fix Calendar's CalDAV implementation, I won't go into it here). For example, repeating events that have exceptions (i.e., where you clicked "this event only" after making a change on a repeating event), simply won't sync the exceptions to the watch. So, again, for now anyway, the goal is just to get you your baseline calendar showing up on the watch. Errors relating to repeating events changing, can be dealt with later.

Since Google so horribly blocked us from using Exchange (literally this happened last week for Googlers), we must live in the CalDAV world, which is also riddled with the unfortunate problem of not having support for "push" of updates to the iPhone. :-( So, in the CalDAV model, you have to "fetch". But for this, there are three latencies to worry about: (1) the latency of polling from the Google CalDAV server to some intermediate system backing your iPhone calendar (maybe this is the iCloud connection/bug?), (2) the latency of your iPhone polling or perhaps getting pushes from the intermediary server to your iPhone calendar, and (3) the latency of your watch polling from your iPhone to update its version.

Some more key points:

* Unfortunately, with "fetch" calendars, no matter what latency you give it in the settings (from "15 minutes" to "manual"), iPhone calendar will not begin fetching from the service (#2 above) if it is sleeping (i.e., locked)!!! This is a very annoying problem. I don't know why they do this, but I've confirmed it many times. Until I actually unlock my iPhone, it will not fetch any calendar updates.

* You don't have to actually launch the iPhone Calendar app, you just have to unlock your iPhone or it won't fetch! It appears the timer does continue when it's locked, fortunately, so you don't have to literally wait 15 minutes after unlocking for it to start syncing. But you may have to wait a few minutes, on average. This is really important to understand because otherwise you will be trying many more combinations!

* If you are so lucky as to have an Exchange calendar (which you can do with your personal or non-google.com account) or an iCloud-hosted calendar, everything just works! In other words, for Exchange calendars, you literally see updates on your watch scant seconds after they're applied on the other end, without doing anything! Whereas with CalDAV calendars, you literally get NOTHING until you do both: wait 15 minutes and unlock your iPhone.

The inherent problem here is that CalDAV is "fetch" not "push", though of course Apple could make it "push" if they made their server layer (#2 above) do more aggressive polling and then push to the iPhone.

Anyway, just wanted to make that clear. If you have your iPhone locked the whole time, and you keep looking at your watch wondering when it's going to update, you will be waiting a long time. :-( Unless you're not using Google Calendar or any other "fetch" mode calendar.

Hope this helps.

Steve

Oh, sorry, I left off one important point in steps 5, 6, and the comments at the end:

Not only must your iPhone be unlocked before it will fetch (no matter how long you wait), but you also must launch Calendar on your iPhone -- otherwise, just unlocking your iPhone without opening the Calendar app, despite saying "every 15 minutes", it really is just "manual". I don't know why they give you the option for fetch frequency -- it doesn't seem to really honor the actual time you specify. (Maybe it does on the server side, but not on the phone.)

Once you open Calendar on your iPhone, after about 2 seconds, it will sync from the backend and then push to your watch after that. So it can take up to 10 seconds after you open Calendar before it begins actually syncing to the watch -- that is, for calendar accounts configured with the fetch mode (instead of push). Again, for push calendars, it literally goes straight through to the watch without you having to launch Calendar or unlock your iPhone.

This really confused me for a long time, so I'm hoping to save everyone else a ton of time on this -- just set the fetch frequency to 15 minutes and then be sure to always launch the Calendar app and wait a few seconds minimum for it to begin fetching and syncing. You don't need to keep Calendar running to sync to the watch -- just to pull from the server into the iPhone calendar. Once you see the event(s) you want on your calendar on iPhone, you're good to go -- eventually they will sync to the watch, assuming the steps above really did get your data flowing.

Finally, again, turning off bluetooth really does make things much more reliable and less prone to failure. It's just a basic fact that the Bluetooth stack on iOS is buggy in ways that elude even the most rabid Apple fans. So, unless you see the red slash through the iPhone icon on your watch (saying you have no connectivity to the iPhone) even with bluetooth off, then I assure you the experience will be 10x more smooth (and faster) in pushing data between the two. For example, you'll note that Siri has much less trouble transcribing your spoken commands when bluetooth is off. I tested voice calls from the watch, too, and with bluetooth on, I had several calls with very noisy/choppy/poor quality. But the second I turned off bluetooth and tried again (using wifi), the voice calls were always crisp and clear, and Siri never screwed up. Calendar syncs seemed to go much faster and seemed to fail less often. So, seriously, no joke, try to leave bluetooth off if you can, while troubleshooting -- because I guarantee you that it will be no worse but only potentially a far better experience.

One caveat with bluetooth off, though: unfortunately, the Apple Watch app constantly warns you to turn bluetooth on whenever you switch to it. Don't give in to the pressure (!!) and leave bluetooth off. Only turn bluetooth on when you see the icon on the watch saying it lost the connection (or when you're about to reboot or move out of range of your current wifi connection). Yes, it's stupid that you have to manage this yourself, but I really am not kidding that you get so many fewer weird problems by doing so -- it's worth the minor inconvenience for now. Also, I'll note that I never actually need to launch the Apple Watch app anymore -- many of my earlier troubleshooting steps required me to constantly run it to test things. But in fact, aside from the initial settings as described in the steps above, you really don't need to launch the Apple Watch app on your iPhone to trigger syncing or other behavior. Everything that needs to happen with respect to the watch can happen in the background as far as I can tell (except, you must launch Calendar so it can sync calendar data).

Note that it's really stupid that the watch-based Calendar doesn't just work the same way as Mail. In Mail, you can specify which accounts you want to show on the watch (using the Apple Watch app settings), and it actually does sync perfectly well in the background without you having to unlock your phone and launch the Calendar app. In that case, it doesn't care whether it's push or fetch -- it just works even when your phone is in your pocket. Why Calendar doesn't do the same thing is beyond me. It sounds like different engineering teams for Calendar and Mail that don't really talk to each other -- maybe the Calendar team needs to do regular knowledge sharing lunches with the Mail team (I'm trying to put it nicely that the Calendar team may need some guidance).

Anyway, again, hope this helps.

Steve