Help! Deleted iCal Events

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My apologies if I am posting this in the wrong forum. I couldn't seem to find a more specific one.

I am running iCal 4.0.4 on 2 Mac & an iPad2. When I last synced the iPad2, I noticed that all of my iCal entries (i.e. events) on the iPad2 were duplicated. Thus, I deleted the dupes (only for the month of May). However, when this change automatically synced with MobilMe, all of the entries (for the month of May) were deleted from the iCal calendars on my Macs (since there were no dupes on the Macs).


Since one of my Mac is backed up with Time Machine, I restored iCal from by Applications folder. However, this merely restored the iCal app, but not the entries. Like iTunes & iPhoto, I assumed that the actual data would be stored in a library in the Home folder. Unfortunately, I could not find it.


Can anyone please help! Thank you.
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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Did you restore your ~/Library/Calendars folder? Your .ics files should be in there which will contain all of your events.
 
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I didn't. But, now having done so, I do have the restored .ics files. There appears to be one .ics file for each date on the calendar as of the restored date (one week ago). However, when I double-click on any date in the May 2011, the file will not open. Of course, the events of May 2011 are the ones I need to restore.

Do you have any thoughts??? Thank you so much.
 

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Have you tried importing that file in to iCal - via File>Import
 

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As I've never done this myself - I just recall backing up those .ics files when I was originally setting up MobileMe - which led me down the path of exploring where they were at the time - I just did a search to see if there's anything else that needs to be involved. This seems to have been successful for folks trying to do something similar.

MacRumors Forums - View Single Post - iCal restore from Time Machine

Edit: I should have replaced my above post with this one - mods - feel free. To the OP - after a quick search - I would probably try this before the import I suggested above when I was just guessing. :)
 
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When I go to File > Import, "Import" is grayed out. However, that is not the case with any dates other than May.
 

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When I go to File > Import, "Import" is grayed out. However, that is not the case with any dates other than May.

Ok - try the above - I have a feeling it will take care of your issue in full. :)
 
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As I've never done this myself - I just recall backing up those .ics files when I was originally setting up MobileMe - which led me down the path of exploring where they were at the time - I just did a search to see if there's anything else that needs to be involved. This seems to have been successful for folks trying to do something similar.

MacRumors Forums - View Single Post - iCal restore from Time Machine

Edit: I should have replaced my above post with this one - mods - feel free. To the OP - after a quick search - I would probably try this before the import I suggested above when I was just guessing. :)

Please forgive my ignorance, but the steps in the link don't make a lot of sense to me. Could you please elaborate a bit on these? I would appreciate it. Thank you Brian.
 

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Please forgive my ignorance, but the steps in the link don't make a lot of sense to me. Could you please elaborate a bit on these? I would appreciate it. Thank you Brian.

It's just telling you to restore those specific folders and files from your Time Machine backup.
 
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Well, here is what I did so far. I went into Time Machine, selected a prior date & restored Library > Calendars (as per your suggestion). When prompted, I selected the option of not replacing the original, but rather keeping the original alongside the restored version. (Since I am treading on unfamiliar ground, I didn't want to get myself into a deeper hole). Are you suggesting that I replace the original with the restored data instead?
 

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Well, here is what I did so far. I went into Time Machine, selected a prior date & restored Library > Calendars (as per your suggestion). When prompted, I selected the option of not replacing the original, but rather keeping the original alongside the restored version. (Since I am treading on unfamiliar ground, I didn't want to get myself into a deeper hole). Are you suggesting that I replace the original with the restored data instead?

I think you'll be just fine doing that as it should have everything you need. Additionally you want to replace your com.apple.iCal.helper.plist and com.apple.iCal.plist files with the Time Machine backup - in the path shown below

<your_user_dir>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.helper.plist and com.apple.iCal.plist
 
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Well, I replaced the old iCal data with the restored .ics files (in addition to the plists you mentioned). Unfortunately, it didn't work. The events for the month of May were not restored. But, I did go into the Time Machine .ics files & manually retrieved the events for May & entered them in iCal. So I did recreate my May calendar. However, it would be nice to know how to use Time Machine to automatically restore iCal events.

Thank you again for your help.
 
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BTW, Brian, I just discovered (what I assume to be) a related problem. Having restored my missing iCal data, I synced iCal (via MobileMe) with my other Mac & my iPad. Worked fine. However, when I opened iCal in MobileMe, the data is still missing there. To me, this seems weird since I assume that my other Mac & iPad had to have been synced thru MobileMe. Any explanation? Any idea how to restore the missing iCal data to MobileMe? Thank you.
 

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That is odd - I'm not sure why that is? Are all of your events using the correct MobileMe calendars in iCal?
 
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Well, interestingly after reading through a FAQ on the new MobileMe calendar, I followed a few leads & was able to restore the events. So everything seems fine, although I really don't know what I did. But some things I just don't have to know.

So I think I'm good to go. Thanks again for your help.
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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Glad you got it all sorted! :) Sometimes - if the hammer works - no need to question why ;)
 
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same problem but not sure what to do - exactly

Did you restore your ~/Library/Calendars folder? Your .ics files should be in there which will contain all of your events.

Hi Brian,
My ical calendars have also disappeared. Could you be very specific how I can restore please?
Thanks
Manley
 

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