OSX 10.8.4, Calendar syncing just plain doesn't work

Trying to get this to sync is just plain does not work. If you subscribe to the calendar either using a subscription on Icloud or on your Mac it takes hours to sync if it syncs at all. Me and several members I know have been unable to get this work. We have tried creating new urls and setting them up in Calendar on our Macs. Never synced; just showed the -1 error. Set syncing for once an hour. Still nothing. Setup on my iOS devices 4S, Ipad2 as Other accounts, let them sync over night, Some joy. It brought synced all the calendars for which I subscribed. When I changed those subscriptions on LDS.org. It never made the corrections on either IOS device. There is a mess some where. Question is Where. System Imac 2.93hz I7, 16 gig ram, OSX 10.8.4, tried different user account users, Internet: Comcast 50 meg down. IOS devices all updated to latest IOS.

Looking for all suggestions.

If I have not provided enough information please let me know.

thanks.

Try pasting the URL into a browser. You should end up with a iCal file unless something else has used your URL in the past 9 minutes.

I'm running 10.8.4 and syncing works fine using BusyCal. I'm going to do a few more tests running iCal again and see if I can't get it to work.

Syncing on OS X 10.8.4 works fine for me – something that @russellhltn alluded to is the 9-minute minimum wait time between syncs. That means that the calendar's URL can only be accessed once every 9 minutes, so if you have multiple devices, they may all be trying to access it one right after the other and causing problems. Try turning off all of your syncing devices except your Mac, then wait 10 minutes and refresh the calendar (View > Refresh Calendars).

Thanks for all who responded. Have tried every thing suggested. No joy.

I have learned and would like to verify this if possible. Even if I am subscribed and syncing is working correctly: The calendar will not sync automatically; you must refresh the calendar manually for any changes to appear. Example I subscribe to a calendar for a local college football team. When anything is changed; new time, new day, etc. Those changes sync back to my Mac and on to my IOS devices because they are located on Icloud.

If I understand correctly that is not true with these calendars. You must refresh manually
for any changes to show up.

Correct?

rjtolman wrote:I have learned and would like to verify this if possible. Even if I am subscribed and syncing is working correctly: The calendar will not sync automatically; you must refresh the calendar manually for any changes to appear.

Sync is completely dependent on the receiving device to request a calendar. You tell the calendar the URL to get an update. You're not telling the church where to push updates.

Thanks for the info


Is there a way to have the church push new updates.

rjtolman wrote:Is there a way to have the church push new updates.

That doesn't fit with the way the whole sync process is designed. The Church servers could only push updates if they could be configured to know where to push those updates for each user and could be configured to have access; many (if not all) calendar applications aren't even designed to allow other servers to push information to them. That would be a security and implementation nightmare.

It works much better for each application to request a sync from the URL that you supply. That's the way the iCal standard is designed. That does mean that you are at the mercy of each application for its timing as to when it requests updates, but that's still much more practical than a push approach.

I'm pretty sure Apple products have a way of requesting the information on a regular basis. That would solve your problem.

The important thing is to not set it to update too often or you run into a different problem.

Greetings,

I work for Apple and I'm having some issues as well.

I have a brand new MacBook Pro (10.8) and MacBook Air (10.7).

The calendar works fine on the MBA but on the MBP it does not. The link clearly specifies iCal which was a discontinued functioning name for the new Calendar when Mountain Lion (10.8) was released.

After upgrading the MBA to 10.8 the calendar no longer works. (while writing this post)

I feel the reason for this is that the link is out-dated and the new calendar supports .ics.

I haven't been able to test with Mavericks - But we'll wait and see. In the mean time would it be possible to release a .ics filelink that we can use to sync our calendars with?

robert.reinhardt wrote:The link clearly specifies iCal which was a discontinued functioning name for the new Calendar when Mountain Lion (10.8) was released.

Interesting. I'll pass that along, but I wonder how sbradshaw got his system to work?

Not sure, but I'm trying everything.

Can you associate the iCal extension with the calendar program?

I've done some repetitive testing and it's happening on Mountain Lion 10.8 and possibly for future versions. 10.7 works fine (iCal was integrated) but now in Mountain Lion it does not work.

russellhltn wrote:

robert.reinhardt wrote:The link clearly specifies iCal which was a discontinued functioning name for the new Calendar when Mountain Lion (10.8) was released.

Interesting. I'll pass that along, but I wonder how sbradshaw got his system to work?

As robert.reinhardt says, "Calendar" is the updated name for iCal, since OS X 10.8. I haven't had any hiccups other than syncing too soon...

sbradshaw wrote:As robert.reinhardt says, "Calendar" is the updated name for iCal, since OS X 10.8. I haven't had any hiccups other than syncing too soon...

What it's called really shouldn't matter. The question is can it take a iCal file? Note that the same file is used for syncing Google and Microsoft Outlook, so it's not specific to an Apple product called "iCal".'

I noticed that today when I pasted it in the browser I got just a file with no extension. I thought I'd gotten one with a iCal extension. Not sure if that affects things.

Synching the calendar Apple calendar is not working for me. I have tried deleting the calendar recreating (numerous times), refreshing the link from the church site, trying to do this on another day. No luck. It just doesn't work with my system using 10.8.4 on my iMac. I suspect based on this thread there are probably many people unable to synch with Apple calendar.

rjtolman wrote:The calendar will not sync automatically; you must refresh the calendar manually for any changes to appear. Correct?

I haven't verified this, but I think it may be correct. Most of the time I refresh the calendar manually anyway because I've made a change to the calendar that I want to show up.

russellhltn wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:As robert.reinhardt says, "Calendar" is the updated name for iCal, since OS X 10.8.

What it's called really shouldn't matter. The question is can it take a iCal file? Note that the same file is used for syncing Google and Microsoft Outlook, so it's not specific to an Apple product called "iCal".'

You're right, it should accept the same file. I brought it up because I thought it'd be good for the LDS.org Calendar web site team to know, so they can make the description more clear. Maybe they'll stumble upon this thread

Nothing I do will refresh the calendar, even if I try manually refreshing it. All I get is an error in Apple Calendar saying that it can't synch even when it seems to initially work, I am able to put the address into a Calendar subscription and it seems to be okay with that but then no events gets synched (no events show up) and from then on I get the error saying it can't synch (an Explanation point).

It was working a while back (maybe 6 months or more)..... but not now.

Try this: Paste the calendar sync URL into your browser. You should be rewarded with a downloaded file.

If you don't get the file, then either the server isn't working, or it's been less then 9 minutes since the last attempt to use that URL by any device. Troubleshoot accordingly.

If you do get the file, make sure it has a valid extension (such as iCal) and then feed it to your calendar application of choice. Does it take it?

The above is a manual two-step process for what should be done automatically. But by doing it manually we'll have some idea where the problem is.

Okay that kind of worked but since it doesn't synch it won't keep current.

Here is what happened when I tried that:

First when I go to the Apple iCal tab the initial URL never works and when I ask for a new url it forces me to log in again. - the solution is to select Generate new synch URL before doing anything else. When I copy the new synch URL into a new web page it downloads it and automatically prompts me to add that to a current calendar - so you need to have already created a blank calendar to put it into. That worked to get the current events into the calendar but doesn't solve the synch issue for future events - I would have manually synch every week.

Okay I just went back to one of my test synch calendars and now it seems to be working but the calendar still warns that it is not able to refresh but it seems to be working automatically - weird. I will monitor this and see if continues to to auto synch correctly.

mbsteed wrote:Okay I just went back to one of my test synch calendars and now it seems to be working but the calendar still warns that it is not able to refresh but it seems to be working automatically - weird. I will monitor this and see if continues to to auto synch correctly.

Remember, if the app attempts to sync within 9 minutes after the last use of the URL, it will get a blank file. That may be why it can't "refresh".

It synched once but fails to continue synching new items. I have set it to synch every day from Apple Calendar. Made changes to the LDS calendar Sunday but no updates on my synched calendar on Apple Calendar yet.