iCloud: Understanding where iCloud Calendars are displayed in iCal

Summary

iCal can display iCloud calendars as well as local calendars, subscribed calendars, and calendars from other account types. This article will help you figure out what calendar you are interacting with and where it is stored.

Products Affected

iCloud

General information

With iCloud Calendar in iCal, your calendars can be stored in different sections. To see this, click your Calendars List by clicking the Calendars button in iCal:

 The Calendar List shows all your calendars in iCal as well as where they are stored. In the example above, Local Calendar is stored on your Mac, and the Home and Work calendars are stored on iCloud.

  • The ON MY MAC section is for Calendars that are just saved on your computer. This can be informally referred to as the "local" calendar section as the calendars stored there are specific to the local Mac OS User account. Changes to calendars and events in this section are not pushed to iCloud. They will not appear on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch when you are using iCloud Calendar.
  • The ICLOUD section is for calendars that are saved on the iCloud Calendar servers. This can informally be referred to as the "remote" section as these calendars are synced copies of the Calendar information that is stored online with your iCloud account. Any changes made to these calendars will be pushed to all devices and computers that are set up to use iCloud Calendar.

Note: In many cases, you will only see the ICLOUD section in the Calendar List. This is because your local and remote calendars are merged when you set up iCloud Calendar. 

 

Considerations

When you are using iCal, be sure to pay attention to what Calendar you are interacting with and where it is stored. If you are creating or editing events and you want them to be in iCloud Calendar, those events need to be created in a Calendar that is in the ICLOUD section of the iCal Calendar List 

You can check or change what Calendar an event is stored in information pane for that Event. Double click an event to bring up its information pane:


Additional Information

Optional settings

In OS X Lion, if you frequently find yourself creating events in a calendar other than the one you intended, you can adjust your Default Calendar settings for iCal. Adjusting the Default Calendar setting will create all new events under the default calendar.

To change the default Calendar setting:
  1. Choose Preferences from the iCal menu.
  2. Click the Default Calendar pop-up menu in the General section of iCal Preferences.
  3. Choose which Calendar you want to be the Default Calendar.
  4. Close iCal Preferences to save your changes.
 
 
 
If you like to create events in a lot of different calendars and don't want to stick to just one as the primary, you might want to use the "Last selected calendar" as your default calendar. When you do this, new events are created under the calendar that is selected or was last selected in the Calendar List. (The Last selected calendar functionality is very similar to the behavior that occurred in previous versions of iCal).
 
Note: Similarly, you can choose a Default Reminder List for creating new Reminders.
 
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