Restoring calendar from backup without Time Machine

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Restoring calendar from backup without Time Machine

Hello. For reasons beyond my control, my old hard drive, which had Mavericks on it, had to be replaced by one with Snow Leopard, and the old hard drive copied onto a backup hard drive.

I have reinstalled Mavericks on the new drive and am slowly restoring everything from the old hard drive.

I currently cannot find any sign of the files for my calendar, and therefore cannot restore it onto the new drive.

Please note: this is NOT backed up on Time Machine. It's just a backup on an external USB drive.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Posted on Aug 18, 2015 1:14 PM

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Answer 1

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Kappy

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Aug 18, 2015 1:23 PM in response to Tim Whelan2

The Calendar's local files are stored in the /Home/Library/Calendars/ folder. You need to copy it to the same location on the new drive. If the /Home/Library/ folder is not visible:

Exposing the /Home/Library/ Folder

Pick one of the following methods:

A. This method will make the folder visible permanently. Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

Press RETURN.

B. Click on the Desktop, press the OPTION (⌥) button, select Library from the Finder's Go menu.

C. Select Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu. Paste the following in the path field:

~/Library

Press the Go button.

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Answer 2

Tim Whelan2 Author

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Aug 18, 2015 1:31 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks, that will be useful in the future: however my problem is that I cannot find the Calendar folder on the backup in order to copy the files over. If I open the library it simply isn't there. The backup disk contains an exact copy of my hard drive; therefore it has to be on it somewhere?

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Answer 3

Kappy

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361,741 points

Aug 18, 2015 2:21 PM in response to Tim Whelan2

Are you in the right Library folder? You want the one located in your Home folder, not the one that is visible at the disk's root. If the folder is not in the /Home/Library/ folder, then look in the /Home/Library/Applications Support/ folder. That is where earlier versions of OS X stored it.

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Answer 4

Tim Whelan2 Author

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Aug 28, 2015 7:23 AM in response to Kappy

The information I am trying to retrieve is in a copy of OS10.9 stored on an external drive. The same problem goes for Mail and Address Book. Can't find them anywhere on the external copy.

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Answer 5

Kappy

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Aug 28, 2015 12:49 PM in response to Tim Whelan2

OK: The three folders are located as below.

/Home/Library/Calendars/
/Home/Library/Mail/
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/

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Answer 6

Tim Whelan2 Author

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Aug 29, 2015 6:35 AM in response to Kappy

My problem is that the Home/Library folder is not visible in the backup, only the root Library. I assume this is something to do with Apple hiding the home library so that it has to be revealed in Go/Recent Folders. The backup is simply a clone of the previous hard drive (OS10.9.5) so it all has to be there somewhere but I can't see how to make it visible.

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Answer 7

Kappy

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Aug 29, 2015 12:25 PM in response to Tim Whelan2

Look at my earlier post in which I provided three ways to see the folder.

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Answer 8

Tim Whelan2 Author

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Aug 30, 2015 2:44 AM in response to Kappy

The posts refer to seeing the folder on the computer itself. The folder I need to access is on the backup on the hard drive. If I was to copy the whole thing over to the computer and simply replace the current Home folder I'd lose a whole load of stuff, so I can't use that to access the missing information.

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Answer 9

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Aug 30, 2015 3:09 PM in response to Tim Whelan2

You can do this from those three:

A. This method will make the folder visible permanently. Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:

chflags nohidden

Press RETURN.

You need to change the path to the folder by placing a space at the end of the above line and dragging the /backup_drive/Users/user-name/Library/ folder into the Terminal window.

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