Reminders and Calendar are not syncing with iCloud on our Mac Pro after upgrade to El Capitan

Hi Stephan!

Losing all your calendars after upgrading is a bit of a shocker, isn't it! Well possibly good news for you here. I fixed mine relatively easily by wiping the data from the Calendar app on my Mac and replacing it with my Calendar data on the Cloud. I did this by deleting my main iCloud account from "Internet Accounts" in "System Preferences", then adding it back in after a Restart. Worked for me!

Now Stephan, I don't mean to teach you to suck eggs but how to do it step-by-step is:

1. VERY IMPORTANT: Go online to your iCloud account and make sure your calendar looks right on the Cloud. If it does, continue. If not, restore from a back up from before it went wrong then do the following. Crucial that your Calendar's iCloud data is right as this is what is going to be replacing the calendar on your Mac.

2. Go to "System Preferences", then "Internet Accounts", then delete your main iCloud account by clicking on the "-" button at the bottom of the Accounts list on the left.

3. You'll be asked whether you want to delete and/or store the data for the apps listed on the right. Assuming that your online Calendar looks right, keep copies of everything EXCEPT CALENDAR because it will save time later. As for your Calendar data, It will say that you have a copy of your Calendar data on the Cloud so do you want to save a copy or delete it so just go ahead and delete the copy on your Mac.

4. Your iCloud should be disappear from the list but will say that mine didn't. It stayed in the list but greyed out and gave me an error code. However, it was gone from the "iCloud" window in "System Preferences" which was good, so ignored the error, quit all apps, shut down all windows and restarted my Mac.

5. When it wakes back up, go back to "System Preferences", "Internet Account" and add your iCloud account back in there by clicking on the "+" button at the bottom left and adding your account information back in via the iCloud button at the top right. Note: For me, it was still on the list but greyed out and labelled "Inactive" but the next step worked anyway... It told me the account was already there, I said ok, then it changed from greyed out back to normal type and put itself back at the top of the list of Accounts on the left.

8. Finally, click on your iCloud account in the list on the left and turn all the apps back on in the righthand column, including Calendar. Give it a couple of minutes to put all the data back where it should be and "Voila!", your calendar should have downloaded ALL your information back from the Cloud!

Good luck and let me know how you get on!

Andy (O:

This helped me but the process duplicated all my contacts! I don't understand why this should be necessary after an OS upgrade. It thought this only happened on Windows computers. Very disappointed!

Don't panic! When you deleted the account and stored a copy of your Contacts on your Mac then added the account back in, your computer got over-zealous and replaced the copy you made on your computer, PLUS added in your iCloud data on top of it, thus the duplication. Not a biggie and can happen on any OSX.

So, there are two ways to fix this.

A. The way Apple wants you to do it is:

1. Open Contacts,

2. Click on "Card" in the top bar,

3. Scroll down to "Look for Duplicates",

4. When it comes up with the number of duplications, it will ask you whether you want to merge the information, and you let it.

BUT A SMALL WARNING: I've done this before and in cases where I have duplicate contacts, let's say two 'Joe Brown's, where each 'Joe Brown' has slightly different information, some interesting and unwanted results have occurred so if I were you, I'd do it this way to be safe:

B. IMPORTANT: Go online to your iCloud account and make absolutely sure that your iCloud 'Contacts' and 'Calendars' are right there BEFORE you do this!! What you see in your iCloud account online will be your replacement data. That's what will download after you delete the account so make sure it's all as it should be! If it isn't, do NOT do this!

1. Repeat the process in my previous post to delete your main iCloud account (above) but THIS time:

2. In "Step 3" (above), keep copies of everything EXCEPT 'CALENDARS' AND 'CONTACTS' on your Mac while you it. This will wipe all your 'Calendar' and 'Contact' information - including those pesky duplicates - but only from your computer's hard drive, NOT from the Cloud. Correct copies of your 'Calendars' and 'Contacts' will all still be living safely up there, and that's what we'll use to replace any dodgy sets on your hard drive.

NOTE: Am including 'Calendars' again here to avoid ANY possibility of them duplicating in the process.

3. Put the account back and turn everything back on as in "Step 8" above.

4. Give your computer a little while to download your 'Calendar' and 'Contact' information from the Cloud.

It should all come back squeaky clean and happy because now your computer will only have one source, the Cloud, to populate your 'Contacts' and 'Calendar' from so won't have access to a second source to duplicate from. Given that, it's crucial to double-check your Cloud data before you start!

Good luck and let me know how you get on!

This is a very thorough process you've described.

Sadly, after following it to a T, the problem resumed for me.

Online my calendars and reminders were all accurate, however, after following the steps outlined the problem simply started right back up.

Unfortunately my reminders all disappeared leaving me with a blank slate there, but one that was duplicated 6 times. I suspect that this occurred because I tried to delete the other duplicate lists and iCloud didn't like that and deleted all of them (in other words it had nothing to do with the process you outlined).

The calendars simply repopulated and duplicated themselves 6 times again.

I am at a loss. I intend to try your process again, and hope for a different result.

I rely heavily on my calendar, as I'm sure many people do, and this is a very frustrating occurrence.

Any further help or insights you might be able to offer would be deeply appreciated.

THANK YOU!!!! You saved my calendar (and consequently my life).

You're welcome. Glad it worked for you. Poor Jason is still being tortured by triplicate calendars!

Can't THANK you enough!!! Depend upon my calendar for EVERYTHING and experienced a few moments of TERROR when I saw all those BLANK dates after upgrade to El Capitan. Your fix for Stephan (Germany) worked perfectly for me. (I appreciate your clearly detailing all of the steps and possible variances - very reassuring and helpful as I worked through the process). (Bless you!!!)

You're very welcome, and thanks for telling me it worked! Would appreciate your adding your name to the solved bit. Am actually pretty good at all-things-Mac as have had so many problems myself, but never actually helped any forum people before, It's been fun so will do again but would like to break "Level 1" at some point! Ha! Also glad that people aren't offended by my Idiot's Guides. Only do that because when I've needed help I've noticed that people often people start their fix from the middle and leaves me with more questions than I started with! Anyway, happy to help! Andy (O:

Yup. Brilliant. Thank you for posting such a good step-by-step solution. Much appreciated

OK, I finally got a chance to look st this, and,yes, it looks like this fix would work...but I just spent all morning putting new events into the Calendar app on my Macbook ;-(

So now I have to manualy redo them all icloud? There has got to be a better way. That's just whack!

Thank you so much for the help!

Initially it didn't quite work, so if anyone is reading and it DIDN'T work, maybe try this:

I had 6 or 7 duplicate calendars and reminder lists. When I followed Andyathome's directions, I ended up wth only three. I figured I might as well try it again. It worked.

TLDR; did it twice and it worked

I, too, had issues with Calendar after upgrading to El Capitan. Almost all of my calendars were not showing up in Calendar on my iMac.

I tried another solution--signing out of, and then logging back into, my iCloud account on my iMac--but the problem came back on my next boot-up.

I found a quick workaround:

1) In Calendar Preferences, click on 'Accounts', then

2) Disable the iCloud account by unchecking the box labeled 'Enable this account'. Then

3) Re-check the box to re-enable the account.

When I did this, all of my calendars re-appeared. I don't know if it's a permanent solution, but it's easy enough to do quickly until a permanent solution can be found.

Stephan - THANK YOU! I have calendars going back to 2005 on my mac and was so sad that I might have lost them... they are a kind of diary of my kids lives (now both college age!) as well as saving a years with of stuff I would have had to reenter from my phone! I bow to you Mac Master!!!

Waited ages to upgrade to El Capitan from Lion and experienced this same problem. Followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. I am most grateful.

However, my printer refuses to work and I cannot find a solution since upgrading!