iCal calendars disappearing -- in some cases after .Mac synchronization

A growing number of users are reporting an issue where calendars disappear from iCal -- though individual meetings may still be viewable. It appears that many users experiencing this problem are using Mark/Space's Missing Sync software, which will synchronize some natively unsupported Palm devices with iCal.

The symptoms are as follows:

• When iCal is launched the calendar is blank -- no calendars on the left and no meetings on the day/week/month views
• Clicking on one of the views all of my meetings show up but the calendars on the left are still gone
• The user is able to type in an event and select a calendar, but when the event is saved it becomes invisible.
• Clicking in the blank space where the calendars are supposed to be has no effect.

MacFixIt reader J Wolfson is one reader experiencing the problem:

"Since the only recent backup of my calendar was on my Palm TX, I synced to a different Mac (my iMac G5) and backed up to .Mac. When I try to get my calendar back via .Mac I have the same problems no matter which computer (G5 Dual or iMac G5) I use.

"I even erased the whole disk on my iMac and reinstalled Tiger and apps and after syncing to .Mac my calendar is still messed up. I've also tried throwing out all events and related files bringing iCal back to the default with blank 'work' and 'personal' calendars like when you first install. After a few seconds my old calendar entries somehow reinstall themselves and I'm back to the same problems.

"I should note a couple things. First the calendar on my Palm TX seems to work fine on the Palm and I have since uninstalled Missing Sync 5.0.2 and gone back to version 5.0.1 but if I sync the Palm calendar I still have the same problem."

Possible fix In some cases, dragging the following files to the trash (while iCal is closed) then re-launching the program and restoring calendar data from a backup file or another synchronization source (such as the Palm device mentioned by the above reader) will temporarily resolve the issue:

• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.AlarmScheduler.plist
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.helper.plist
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist

If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know.

Resources

Missing Sync

let us know

More from Late-Breakers