MobileMe: Advanced iCal troubleshooting for MobileMe Calendar data

Resolution

The steps in this article should be preformed from your computer with the most up-to-date calendar data.  

Note: Remeber to test to see if the issue you are experiencing still occurs after these steps.

To clean up your MobileMe Calendar data

1. Analyze the state of your calendar data
2. Back up your calendar data
3. Temporarily disable any non-Apple calendar accounts
4. Remove your calendars from MobileMe
5. Remove unusable and duplicate Events
6. Clean up Birthdays / use the Birthday Calendar
7. Create an archive system for legacy data
8. Backup your calendar data (again)
9. Move the calendars you want in MobileMe to MobileMe

1. Analyze the state of your calendar data

Review the information in the article MobileMe: Understanding where MobileMe Calendars are stored in iCal and then look over your calendars. Some of the actions you will take will vary depending on where the affected calendars are stored. The most common causes for calendar syncing issues are:

• Reoccurring calendar events that have no end date (such as birthdays).
• Duplicate events.
• An excess of calendar events that happened in the past (especially those that were previously synced from another calendar client).

Any of these conditions can impede your calendar syncing. The steps below will help you determine if any of your calendar data falls into these categories and will help you resolve any related issues.

2. Back up your calendar data

First, back up your calendars by following steps in MobileMe: How to back up calendar data using MobileMe Calendar. It's very important that you back up your data prior to following the steps in this article as they involve deleting and modifying your data.

You should back up each calendar one at a time, including all the calendars in the MOBILEME section and all the calendars in the ON MY MAC section of the calendar list in iCal. This includes but is not limited to any calendars which you have been attempting to import/move to MobileMe. To help keep track of these you should consider storing the exported ICS files in a uniquely named folder, such as "my iCal backups", so you can easily refer to it later and avoid confusing it with any other exported calendars. Furthermore, feel free to make additional backups at any time while following this process if you so wish.

3. Temporarily disable any non-Apple calendar accounts

If you are using any calendar accounts besides your MobileMe account, such as Microsoft Exchange, Google Calendar, and others, temporarily disable these accounts so they are not a distraction and you can avoid accidentally modifying their data while performing any of the large scale modifications described in this article.

To disable an account in iCal:

1. Choose iCal > Preferences, and then click Accounts.
2. Select the account(s) you wish to temporarily disable in the Account sidebar.
3. Deselect the checkbox next to  "Enable this Account" in the Account Information tab.

4. Remove your calendars from MobileMe

In order to clean up your Calendars and eventually push new clean data to MobileMe, you should temporarily remove your calendar from MobileMe. That will allow you to clean up your calendars locally and not have to worry about them trying to interact with MobileMe until you are ready.

1. After verifying you have backed up both your MobileMe and local calendar data by following the instructions in MobileMe: How to back up calendar data using MobileMe Calendar, focus on the calendars stored in the MOBILEME section of the iCal Calendar list. 
2. Verify again that you have backed up the Calendars that are stored in the MOBILEME section.
3. Click on each calendar in the MOBILEME section and delete it by choosing Delete from the Edit menu.

5. Remove unusable and duplicate events

Duplicate events, especially those that occurred in the past, can bloat your iCal database and generally slow down interactions, including those with MobileMe. You can use some simple tricks in iCal to find and remove duplicated data.

1. Open iCal.
2. Type a period in the Search field located in the top right corner.
3. All of your calendar events will appear in the search results, located in the bottom of the iCal window.  Depending on how many events you have, it may take a few minutes for all of them to display.
4. Click the Title field in the search results to sort by title. 
   
5. Scroll through the events. Remove any events that do not have titles by selecting them and choosing Delete from the Edit menu.
   • You can select consecutive items by holding the Shift key when selecting them. You can select discontiguous items by holding the Command key when selecting them.
6. Remove any obvious duplicate events. You may want to retain a single version of a duplicate event, but unwanted versions should be removed.
7. Look for any events whose titles contain complicated characters or symbols. These include high ASCII or double-byte (Unicode) characters (such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Emoji or other extended ASCII characters). Try removing these characters or substituting them with simpler characters. For example, if you had an event titled " Store Appointment" rename it to "Apple Store Appointment".
8. Click the Date field in the search results to sort by date.
9. Scroll through the events and scan for duplicates again. In many cases it will be easier to locate duplicate events that exist on the same day when searching in this manner.
10. Delete any duplicate events by selecting them and choosing Delete from the Edit menu. You may wish to retain a single version of a duplicate event, but unwanted versions should be removed.

Note: If you have a large number of duplicates that would be overly time consuming to clean up by hand, you may wish to use a third party utility such a Busycal, iCal Cleaner or iCal Dupe Deleter. For information about how to use these applications, please refer to their built-in help or contact their vendor.

6. Clean up birthdays and use the Birthday Calendar

Birthdays that have been manually entered in iCal can sometimes result in issues, such as infinitely repeating events that sometimes can clog up the iCal database.

While entering birthdays into any calendar in iCal is a way to track them, it's better to use the Birthdays Calendar. For more information about the Birthdays Calendar, see the MobileMe Calendar help or OS X Address Book help. The Birthdays Calendar is enabled by default on iOS. The Birthdays Calendar is simply a calendar that is automatically created by iCal, MobileMe Calendar, and Calendar on iOS from the birthday information found in your Contacts. It's simple to update the Birthdays Calendar by just updating your Contacts.

To clean up issues related to birthdays in iCal:

1. Search iCal by entering "birthday" (without the quotes) in the Search dialog in the top-right corner of the iCal window.
2. Sort the Search results by title so they are easier to analyze.
3. Locate any birthdays that are returned in the Search results that are not contained in a Holidays Calendar (such as John F. Kennedy's Birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, and so on).
4. For each non-Holidays birthday returned, decide if you want to keep it. If so, open Address Book and verify that you have a Contact for the individual. Enter the birthday information for that person in Address Book. For more information about updating Address Book fields, see this article. 
5. After verifying that the birthday is entered in Address Book, remove any birthday events not stored in the Birthdays or Holidays calendars by selecting them and choosing Delete from the Edit menu.
   • Note: You can select consecutive items by holding the Shift key when selecting them. You can select discontiguous items by holding the Command key when selecting them.

7. Create an archive system for legacy data

You may find you have events from the past in iCal. Having several year's worth of data actively syncing can cause things to slow down. While it's understandable that you may want to maintain lasting records, old data may rarely be viewed, and you will find that most programs and devices function better if you avoid syncing it.

If you wish to retain historical calendar data, it would be best to not sync it and just retain it in calendars that are only stored locally.

To move historical calendar data to a local Calendar, follow these steps 

1. Type a period in the Search field located in the top-right corner of iCal.
2. All of your calendar events will appear in the search results, located in the bottom of the iCal window. Depending on how many events you have, it may take a few minutes for all of them to display.
3. Click the Date field in the search results to sort by date.
4. Scroll through the results and note which calendars have a lot of older data in them. 
   Note: If you are having trouble figuring out what events belong to what calendar, just select an event in the search results and choose Get Info from the Edit menu.
5. For any calendars with a lot of older data in them that you don't need to have on the MobileMe Servers, follow these step:
   1. Pick a calendar with older data.
   2. Create a new calendar in the On My Mac section of iCal by choosing File > New Calendar > On My Mac. 
   3. Enter a name for the new calendar such as "archive" or "history." You may wish to append this to its previous name (such as "Home-archive").
   4. Select the calendar with older data in the Calendars List that correlates to the archive calendar you created in the previous step.
   5. Choose File > Export > Export and save the ICS file generated to a dedicated location, such as a new folder on your Desktop called "iCal archive."
   6. Choose File > Import, and when prompted, navigate to the ICS file you just exported.
   7. When prompted, choose import the ICS file into the appropriate archive calendar you created in the ON MY MAC section of iCal.
   8. Focus on the two calendars, the one you exported from earlier and the archive one you just imported.
      • In the Calendar list, uncheck the checkboxes next to every other calendar besides the one you exported from earlier and the one you just imported.
      • Select one of these two visible calendars in the Calendar List and choose Get Info from the Edit menu.
      • Set a new color value for the calendar so it is a different color than the other copy of it. For example, your "Home" calendar could be colored green and your "Home-archive" calendar could be colored purple.
      • Type a period in the Search field located in the top right corner of iCal.
      • Once all of the events for the two visible calendars are displayed, sort them by date.
      • Pick a date range that you would like to have available via MobileMe and from where you are comfortable archiving everything prior. For example: the last year, the last two years, and so on.
        • In the archive calendar, delete every event occurring after the date you designated as your archive point. For example if you decided to archive everything prior to January 1st, 2010, you would want to delete all events in the archive calendar from January 1st up to the present day.

          Note: To easily do this, you may want to temporarily deselect the checkbox next to the non-archive calendar in the Calendar List so its events are not visible while you are bulk selecting newer calendar events to delete in the archive calendar. After you delete your targeted events, re-enable the checkbox next to the non-archive calendar so it is visible again.

        • In the non-archive calendar, delete every event occurring before the date you chose as the archive point. Staying consistent with the previous example, that would mean deleting all events from December 31st, 2009 and earlier.

          Note: To easily do this, you may wish to temporarily deselect checkbox next to the archive calendar in the Calendar List so its events are not visible while you are bulk selecting older calendar events to delete in the associated calendar. After you delete your targeted events, check the checkbox next to the archive calendar so it is visible again.

   9. In the Calendar list, check the checkbox next to each hidden calendar to toggle their visibility so you can see their events in iCal again.
   10. Repeat step 5 for any other calendars containing data you wish to archive.

8. Backup your calendar data (again)

 After taking the time to clean up your Calendars, you should back up your calendars with the following method.

1. Create a new folder on your Desktop titled "cleaned calendars."
2. Open the Calendar List in iCal.
3. Select the first Calendar in the list.
4. Choose File > Export > Export.
5. When prompted to save the Calendar as an ICS file, retain its current name and choose to save it to your "clean calendars" folder on your Desktop.
6. Move on to the next calendar and repeat steps steps 4 and 5 for it. Continue until you have exported all your Calendars from iCal.

9. Move the calendars you want in MobileMe to MobileMe

After you have cleaned and backed up your calendars, you should move the calendars you want to use with MobileMe from the local calendars to MobileMe. To do this:

1. In the MobileMe section of iCal, create a new calendar that matches the name one of the calendar you exported. Do this by choosing File > New Calendar > membername@me.com. The calendar should appear under the MOBILEME section in iCal.
2. In the Finder, open the "clean calendars" folder you created and saved your backups to. Double-click the calendar you exported from iCal that has a name matching the calendar you just created.
3. Wait for the calendar to import. iCal will display the text "Updating..." in the Title Bar while an update is occurring. You can also see a spinning progress indicator in the Calendar List next to your MobileMe account.
4. Once the import has completed, repeat steps 1 through 3 for each remaining calendar in your "clean calendars" folder.

Your calendars should now be moving between iCal and MobileMe without issue. If you disabled any non-Apple calendar accounts through the course of troubleshooting, you can feel free to re-enable those at this time. However, if you continue to have trouble with MobileMe Calendar, please contact MobileMe Support.