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restore ical snow leopard to lion - insanity!

I need an expert. I've tried everything that everyone on any forum of any site has suggested for the last 4 years of relevance to my OS versions. I'm at my wit's end. Here's what's going on:

I have an iMac running 10.6.8 (my main computer where I do most of my work)

I have a Macbook Air running 10.7 (just for away-from-home situations)


When I travel I take the Air and of course, want my iCal the same as my iMac, and up to date.

I DON'T WANT iCLOUD (or any cloud) so if anyone could please help me with NON-cloud suggestions that would be most appreciated.

(And please, no OS upgrade suggestions; I'm on a disability pension and can't upgrade my OS because it would cost me $3,000 to replace all the registered software that I would lose plus probably another $2000 for a new iMac.)


Here's what happens:

The Air iCal restores (from the iMac iCal that I tell it to restore from) but it keeps dredging up old files from some occult mythical location that cannot be found by a human, and fails to show any of the new calendars, events or files from the iMac.

I've tried going via Google calendar, and many other options. Ultimately the only one that made sense was to wipe out all the iCal-related stuff on the Air and fully replace it with the iCal stuff from the iMac. I found instructions for this, and here's how I do it:


I backup my iMac's iCal (exported iCal archive, + Library -> Calendars and Keychains and Preferences -> all 'com.apple.ical' files) to an external drive, or send them over to the Air via dropbox.

I bring up the Air's User Library with Option -> Go -> Library, plus just to be sure I show all hidden files with a Terminal command.

On the Air I delete User Library Calendars folder, and Keychains folder, and all 'com.apple.ical' files in the Preferences, eg the plist files. In fact I delete absolutely everything iCal except the actual iCal.app file. I empty the iCal-contaminated trash fully before I do anything else. I do a search to make sure there are no iCal files left ANYWHERE.


Then I open the iMac's iCal archive, and iCal.app opens and says it's upgrading or updating or restoring. But when it's done: holy moly - it STILL has all the old events and calendars that were on the Air and NONE of the new ones from the iMac!!!!

BIG QUESTION: Where on earth is it hiding these caches of old data and how can I obliterate them from existence? And why isn't it adding the new iMac stuff when I restore from the iMac calendar?


What's weird is that, after everything iCal has been deleted off my Air, if I take a bit too long going off to the iMac to copy files, or go have breakfast while the iCal-contaminated trash is emptying, the Air just creates more iCal files out of thin air (the Calendars folder in Library, with a couple of calendar folders in it, plus the Preferences plist files. Where's it getting them from? Is there hidden data in the iCal.app file itself?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jan 31, 2016 3:41 PM

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restore ical snow leopard to lion - insanity!

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