Please read: Info on 10.5.2

[Larry Hendricks]

Hi,

After hearing from many of you and reading reports around the web, we
think we have a pretty good understanding of the problems that have
begun with 10.5.2. Here's a rundown:

1) As promised by Apple, 10.5.2 fixes the notorious Leopard iCal bug
present in 10.5 and 10.5.1. Unfortunately that bug was replaced by a
new bug with nearly identical symptoms: calendar events don't show up
in iCal. I've reported this to Apple and they responded that it's a
known bug that they're working on. Of course, they weren't able to
provide a time frame for a fix. As with the last bug, this procedure
can provide temporary relief and cause the events to show up in iCal
immediately:

* Quit out of iCal if it's open
* Delete this file:
~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
(~ refers to your home directory.)
* Open iCal
* Wait a minute or two until it finishes "Upgrading Calendars"

Unfortunately it doesn't work for everyone. YMMV.

2) If you sync with .Mac, then you might be wrestling with sync
conflicts that never go away. This problem is affecting users of all
types of sync software, not just Spanning Sync:

Plaxo: http://forum.plaxo.com/showthread.php?s=63cd48e25348951621cc3d4dc8ab5df3&t=5062&page=2
Entourage: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1392050&tstart=30
BusyMac: http://groups.google.com/group/busymac/browse_thread/thread/232cce2d964b4453/d99993379a2a7112#d99993379a2a7112
Nothing but .Mac: http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Board=leopard&Number=851189

It seems likely that this is also a new bug introduced by Apple and
hopefully they're investigating. In the mean time, this procedure
should help:

* On a computer with up-to-date calendar data, sync with Spanning
Sync. If a conflict window appears, resolve all conflicts in favor of
Spanning Sync and let it sync again. Wait for the sync to finish.
* On the same computer, open the .Mac pref pane, go to the Sync tab,
click Advanced..., Reset Sync Data..., "Replace calendars on .Mac",
and click Replace. Wait for the sync to finish.
* On all other computers, perform a sync with .Mac. You should get a
message about merging or replacing data on that computer. Be sure to
select "Replace data on this computer" (*not* "merge") and then click
the Sync button. This needs to be done soon, before the next scheduled
sync with .Mac occurs on that computer. If there are computers syncing
with .Mac that you can't reach for whatever reason, just unregister
them from the Advanced... window in the .Mac pref pane. That will keep
them from syncing and overwriting the clean data. When you eventually
sit down to that computer and sync, be sure to select "replace info on
this computer" as above.

Now whatever property that was stuck on .Mac should be flushed out and
hopefully the conflicts will go away. If that doesn't help, try the
same steps but do a "reset info on this computer" from our pref pane.
That would be a more complete (but lengthy) process.

3) Duplicate calendars. Typically the first sync (with anything, not
just Spanning Sync) after a 10.5.2 upgrade will result in duplicate
calendars. I'll spare you the links to other forums, but this is also
happening all over the place regardless of Spanning Sync. Luckily the
fix is simple: just delete the duplicate calendars. For some extra
safe mojo, delete the second duplicate in the list since presumably
the first one is the original. From what I've seen, the calendars
don't come back again after this. I hate to sound like a broken
record, but this is also likely a new Apple bug since it happens with
plain vanilla .Mac syncing.

For what it's worth, we absolutely hate that our customers have been
placed in a position where they're continually having to deal with
these problems and that we're put into a position where we have to
point fingers. If at all possible we will place workarounds to these
problems in the upcoming v1.2. To that end, please follow onto this
thread with your experiences with the above and any other information
that might help us or other users.

Thank you
--
Larry Hendricks
la...@spanningsync.com
http://spanningsync.com

[Levent Okyay]

I'm guessing these are related problems because they've just started
showing up, when I upgraded to 10.5.2.

When I added a recurring event in google calendars it was time shifted
forward by 30 minutes when synced into ical (so suddenly the start
time is 1:30 on iCal when it is 1:00 on google). Now obviously this
means the calendars aren't actually the same so I synced again, and
this time it duplicated the event in google calendar and shifted it
down again by 30 minutes (so now I have two events, one at 1:00 and
one at 2:00), except that the duplicate event was no longer recurring,
but iCal only shows the second one. If I keep re-syncing, this is how
it stays (one recurring event at 1:00 and the same event not recurring
at 2:00 in google calendar, and only the non-recurring event at 2:00
in iCal)

I know there were issues with recurring events before, but I'm pretty
sure they weren't like this.

I haven't noticed a duplication of calendars though, and all my events
do show up (deleting the cache does nothing), so I don't appear to
have the usual symptoms.

Hopefully Apple will fix the endless iCal issues soon.

cheers,
Levent.

On Feb 16, 7:59 pm, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> After hearing from many of you and reading reports around the web, we
> think we have a pretty good understanding of the problems that have
> begun with 10.5.2. Here's a rundown:
>
> 1) As promised by Apple, 10.5.2 fixes the notorious Leopard iCal bug
> present in 10.5 and 10.5.1. Unfortunately that bug was replaced by a
> new bug with nearly identical symptoms: calendar events don't show up
> in iCal. I've reported this to Apple and they responded that it's a
> known bug that they're working on. Of course, they weren't able to
> provide a time frame for a fix. As with the last bug, this procedure
> can provide temporary relief and cause the events to show up in iCal
> immediately:
>
> * Quit out of iCal if it's open
> * Delete this file:
> ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
> (~ refers to your home directory.)
> * Open iCal
> * Wait a minute or two until it finishes "Upgrading Calendars"
>
> Unfortunately it doesn't work for everyone. YMMV.
>
> 2) If you sync with .Mac, then you might be wrestling with sync
> conflicts that never go away. This problem is affecting users of all
> types of sync software, not just Spanning Sync:
>

> Plaxo:http://forum.plaxo.com/showthread.php?s=63cd48e25348951621cc3d4dc8ab5...
> Entourage:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1392050&tstart=30
> BusyMac:http://groups.google.com/group/busymac/browse_thread/thread/232cce2d9...

[Levent Okyay]

I decided to test this bug out a little more. So I created a new event
in google, different time, different name, 1 hour long, recurring
weekly for three months as my original event was.

1st sync: event disappears from google, but appears as correctly
recurring event in iCal, except that it is now set to start 30 minutes
later than entered into google
2nd sync: event disappears from iCal as well

I did this three times with exactly the same results each time. The
event disappears completely after two syncs.

I tried some non-recurring events as well; these sync normally.

I didn't try to do it the other way round (from iCal to google)

let me know if it might be useful to file a bug-report with you guys
or apple (and which log files I need to find)

[ratbastid]

Thanks, Larry! I really appreciate your attention to these issues, and
I hate for you that you're working on such shifting sand.

Only thing I have a question about: I'm experiencing the never-ending
list of sync conflicts, but I DON'T sync with .Mac--just Google
Calendar. I never even unwrapped my free 60 day .Mac trial. Should I
do that and then perform your workaround and see if that helps?

[cwood]

Levent,

Yes, please do file a report--it would be very helpful. Please create
a problem report (by opening Spanning Sync, clicking "Advanced..." and
"Create report") and email it to us at sup...@spanningsync.com along
with a detailed description of the problem, including the exact titles
and date/times of the affected calendars and events. That will help us
track down the issue.

Thanks,
Charlie

[yournotunique]

This is the problem I'm having as well - I don't sync with .Mac either
(tho I did do the trial).

Thoughts? Tips?

[Larry Hendricks]

One person I worked with recently was using a Nokia sync client which
flip flopped the start times for all day events, and this was causing
the conflicts. Which other devices and servers do you sync with?

Thanks

--
Larry Hendricks
la...@spanningsync.com
http://spanningsync.com

[yournotunique]

My sync goes this way:

ical<->spanning sync<->gmail<-><oggsync<->outlook<->exchange<-
>samsungi760 (winmo6)

I know it's a lot, but hey, it's expensive to change everything over
to Mac all at once ;)

On Feb 19, 12:02 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One person I worked with recently was using a Nokia sync client which
> flip flopped the start times for all day events, and this was causing
> the conflicts. Which other devices and servers do you sync with?
>
> Thanks
> --
> Larry Hendricks

> la...@spanningsync.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[yournotunique]

My sync goes this way:

ical<->spanning sync<->gmail<-><oggsync<->outlook<->exchange<-
>samsungi760 (winmo6)

I know it's a lot, but hey, it's expensive to change everything over
to Mac all at once ;)

On Feb 19, 12:02 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> One person I worked with recently was using a Nokia sync client which
> flip flopped the start times for all day events, and this was causing
> the conflicts. Which other devices and servers do you sync with?
>
> Thanks
> --
> Larry Hendricks

> la...@spanningsync.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[ratbastid]

I go:

gcal <-> spanningsync <-> iCal <-> Missing Sync <-> PalmOS

Though my Palm hasn't been synced (sunk??) in several days.

I went ahead and opened my trial .Mac account and synced with that.
Now the menu bar pull-down for .Mac shows one conflict, and Conflict
Resolver runs frequently, but DOESN'T SHOW ME that one conflict. Every
time I look, Conflict Resolver is in my dock running, and I quit it,
but I haven't been prompted for a conflict resolution since I opened
my .Mac account. Does that make any sense at all?

I can't wait for 10.5.3 to fix this... And break a bunch of other
stuff, probably. Leopard is starting to feel just a tad Vistaesque.

On Feb 19, 12:02 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> One person I worked with recently was using a Nokia sync client which
> flip flopped the start times for all day events, and this was causing
> the conflicts. Which other devices and servers do you sync with?
>
> Thanks
> --
> Larry Hendricks

> la...@spanningsync.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[FatherDC]

Thanks, Larry, for your helpful report, and for noting the ongoing
frustration for those of us who depend upon seamless syncing daily.

I have not had success in deleting the calendar cache. I do, however,
see the gcal items that are invisible to ical on my iphone. This
suggests an ical problem to me.

I do not have a .mac account. The endless 'resolve conflicts' loop
strikes me as completely random. Only four events out of thousands
from 9 different calendars. I have not seen any duplicate calendars.

Thanks for ongoing troubleshooting efforts.

[ratbastid]

WOW, this is funny....

Another glitch I forgot to mention is that since my 10.5.2 upgrade, an
event from December 12 is showing up in my google calendar RSS feed
over and over, like tens of times a day, but when I go into iCal or
gCal, I can't find it.

Today I notice, when I look closely at the RSS feed, that it appears
to be in the year 1420. So I open iCal and go to that date, and sure
enough. Evidently I was at a Christmas Caroling party on December 12,
1420. I deleted it out of iCal and presumably it won't try to insert
into google anymore. What's interesting is, Google must generate the
RSS feed prior to the actual storage of the event...

[Chris]

Hi All-
FWIW - I have been able to successfully update an existing one-time
event and change it to a recurring event in gCal with no problems. My
lovely wife actually stumbled across this... kudos to her! So perhaps
this is a workaround. I can't test it right now b/c the SS server
appears to be down for maintenance, but it just may work in the short
term...
Chris

[yournotunique]

Ok, now I am noticing a new, additional problem (the never ending
conflicts is still happening): I'm not syncing at all. I have tried
a few different entries in various calendars, and nothing is being
synced. I happened to check my gcal (my wife can edit my personal
calendar) and saw that i have a funeral tomorrow/today that I would
have never seen on ical.

Please tell me I'm not the only one experiencing this? Or maybe I
want to be the only one, as that means it's a singular issue and not a
SS one...

[yournotunique]

I should clarify this. It is syncing, but only one way: ical->gcal.
not ical<->gcal.

[weigh2tall]

I am seeing this same issue with 1 way sync from ical -> gcal but not
gcal -> ical.
At this point I'm using the "trial version" I think I picked a bad
time to look into the sync'ing market :)

[cwood]

We're optimistic Apple will fix this bug once and for all soon. For
the record, here's the current best practice on fixing the "stuck
iCal" problem when it happens:

* Quit out of iCal if it's open
* Delete this file:
~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
(~ refers to your home directory.)
* Open iCal

* Wait about at least five minutes until *after* it finishes
"Upgrading Calendars"

Be sure to wait the full five minutes before moving on. If the events
still don't appear after five minutes, then Apple Sync Services needs
to be reset like this:

* Quit out of iCal if it's open

* Open iSync (in /Applications)
* Go to preferences
* Click Reset Sync History
* Try syncing again
* Open iCal and wait a few minutes

Please let us know how this solution works for you. If this
solution does not help, please do this: 

* Create an event in iCal titled "iCal test" 
* Create an event in Google Calendar called "gCal test" 
* Sync 
* Create a problem report ("Advanced...", "Create report") and
email it to us at sup...@spanningsync.com along with a description of
the problem. 

Thanks,
Charlie

[Bill HR]

Looks like resetting the Sync History worked for me. I created both an
iCal and gCal test and thy are showing up on both tools.

> email it to us at supp...@spanningsync.com along with a description of

[patrick...@gmail.com]

Ugh.... This is getting painful... It's been over a month since
this fix was posted...
Any word on a fix timeframe? I've wasted time trying all these
suggestion (to no avail).

I've got to get this syncing again or I'm going to be forced to switch
to another solution soon...

HELP!!!

On Feb 16, 2:59 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> After hearing from many of you and reading reports around the web, we
> think we have a pretty good understanding of the problems that have
> begun with 10.5.2. Here's a rundown:
>
> 1) As promised by Apple, 10.5.2 fixes the notorious Leopard iCal bug
> present in 10.5 and 10.5.1. Unfortunately that bug was replaced by a
> new bug with nearly identical symptoms: calendar events don't show up
> in iCal. I've reported this to Apple and they responded that it's a
> known bug that they're working on. Of course, they weren't able to
> provide a time frame for a fix. As with the last bug, this procedure
> can provide temporary relief and cause the events to show up in iCal
> immediately:
>
> * Quit out of iCal if it's open
> * Delete this file:
> ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
> (~ refers to your home directory.)
> * Open iCal
> * Wait a minute or two until it finishes "Upgrading Calendars"
>
> Unfortunately it doesn't work for everyone. YMMV.
>
> 2) If you sync with .Mac, then you might be wrestling with sync
> conflicts that never go away. This problem is affecting users of all
> types of sync software, not just Spanning Sync:
>

> Plaxo:http://forum.plaxo.com/showthread.php?s=63cd48e25348951621cc3d4dc8ab5...
> Entourage:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1392050&tstart=30
> BusyMac:http://groups.google.com/group/busymac/browse_thread/thread/232cce2d9...

[Larry Hendricks]

Hi,

You're right, this is painful. I personally have to trash the cache
file about every two days. Very tedious.

When will Apple fix this? They don't typically announce their plans in
advance so I'm not quite sure. However I'm optimistic that a fix will
be in the next OS update, 10.5.3. In the mean time, deleting the cache
file *should* work:

* Quit out of iCal if it's open
* Delete this file:
~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
(~ refers to your home directory.)
* Open iCal

* Wait about at least five minutes until *after* it finishes
"Upgrading Calendars"

Be sure to wait the full five minutes before moving on. If the events
still don't appear after five minutes, then Apple Sync Services needs
to be reset like this:

* Quit out of iCal if it's open

* Open iSync (in /Applications)
* Go to preferences
* Click Reset Sync History
* Try syncing again
* Open iCal and wait a few minutes

Thanks

--
Larry Hendricks
la...@spanningsync.com
http://spanningsync.com

On Mar 19, 8:02 am, "spannings...@nickles.cc"

[jv]

Could an applescript be developed that could be run automatically each
day using iCal to close iCal, wipe out the Calendar Cache file and
then reopen iCal? I'm no expert on applescript, but automating the
process might make this less painful until the bug is fixed by Apple.

On Mar 19, 10:17 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>

> la...@spanningsync.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[Mike]

For me, it seems that resetting of the sync history was also necessary
(presumably in addition to trashing the cache). FYI, I just got a new
MB Air and this was a simultaneous switch to 10.5 from 10.4. I'm also
syncing from another, 10.4, computer, and an iPhone. My symptom was a
Google calendar that looked fine, but iCal not showing many of the
events there. What's more, the iPhone calendar looked more like the
Google calendar than iCal did. Changes in iCal didn't get reflected in
the iPhone, nor were iPhone events showing up in iCal (though they
were showing up on Google).

Anyway, trashing the cache didn't do the trick, but that plus
resetting sync history seems to have.

Please preface all these statements by "mostly", as I'm dealing with
lots of events here and didn't check things out exhaustively.

[Joey Connick]

On Mar 19, 8:17 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>

> You're right, this is painful. I personally have to trash the cache
> file about every two days. Very tedious.
>
> When will Apple fix this? They don't typically announce their plans in
> advance so I'm not quite sure. However I'm optimistic that a fix will
> be in the next OS update, 10.5.3. In the mean time, deleting the cache
> file *should* work:
>
> * Quit out of iCal if it's open
> * Delete this file:
> ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
> (~ refers to your home directory.)
> * Open iCal
> * Wait about at least five minutes until *after* it finishes
> "Upgrading Calendars"

I wasn't suffering from this problem until about 2 or 3 days ago. Now
I cannot get anything I add in Google Calendar to show up in iCal.

When I try to do the above, I get the message about "Upgrading iCal
calendars..." which takes a few seconds, after which the message goes
away. But then, if I try to do something with iCal, the message pops
back up and does NOT ever seem to go away--it just sits there with the
progress bar at full and I have to quit out of iCal and restart it for
the little progress window to stay gone. I take this not to be a good
sign.

I've tried resetting iSync a few times... no go. I usually sync with
Spanning Sync for iCal <-> Google Calendar and Missing Sync for iCal <-
> my Palm but I've been trying to leave my Palm out of things in case
that causing issues and I still can't get events I add in Google
Calendar to sync to iCal.

Thanks for any assistance anyone might be able to provide... because I
have to say this really sucks.

Joey

P.S. Is there some reason why Google Groups won't let me Reply to the
original message in this thread? Why on earth would the "Reply"
function expire for older messages (as it seems to have for me at
least with several of the older messages hereabouts)?

[Larry Hendricks]

On May 8, 2:51 pm, Joey Connick <joeyconn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> When I try to do the above, I get the message about "Upgrading iCal
> calendars..." which takes a few seconds, after which the message goes
> away. But then, if I try to do something with iCal, the message pops
> back up and does NOT ever seem to go away--it just sits there with the
> progress bar at full and I have to quit out of iCal and restart it for
> the little progress window to stay gone. I take this not to be a good
> sign.

Do you by any chance have the Address Book Birthdays calendar enabled
in iCal preferences? For some reason, this problem comes back much
more quickly when that feature

>
> P.S. Is there some reason why Google Groups won't let me Reply to the
> original message in this thread? Why on earth would the "Reply"
> function expire for older messages (as it seems to have for me at
> least with several of the older messages hereabouts)?

Hmm. I'm not sure. I didn't do anything special to it.

[Joey Connick]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Larry Hendricks <lar...@gmail.com> wrote:

On May 8, 2:51 pm, Joey Connick <joeyconn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> When I try to do the above, I get the message about "Upgrading iCal
> calendars..." which takes a few seconds, after which the message goes
> away.  But then, if I try to do something with iCal, the message pops
> back up and does NOT ever seem to go away--it just sits there with the
> progress bar at full and I have to quit out of iCal and restart it for
> the little progress window to stay gone.  I take this not to be a good
> sign.

Do you by any chance have the Address Book Birthdays calendar enabled
in iCal preferences? For some reason, this problem comes back much
more quickly when that feature

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

No, I definitely disabled that when I read it created issues.  I suppose maybe something has switched it back on.  I'll check next time I'm in Mac-mode (I use Bootcamp so I'm in Windows a bunch).

> P.S. Is there some reason why Google Groups won't let me Reply to the
> original message in this thread?  Why on earth would the "Reply"
> function expire for older messages (as it seems to have for me at
> least with several of the older messages hereabouts)?

Hmm. I'm not sure. I didn't do anything special to it.

Yeah no I didn't think you had... Google has some REALLY strange notions about disabling features.  For instant, if you "Mark all as read" in Google Reader, you cannot then unmark any of those messages and make them unread again.  Very idiotic in my view.