How to Remove Duplicate Events

[cwood]

Google Calendar has recently had some internal problems that have
resulted in Spanning Sync creating duplicate entries in some of our
users' calendars. Solving this problem is our top priority. We're
working on a comprehensive update of our duplicate detection and
correction code that should compensate for these problems and plan to
have that code live within the next two weeks. In the mean time,
here's how to clean up any duplicate events in your calendars:

* If you have duplicate entries in Google Calendar but not in iCal:

Open Spanning Sync and perform a server reset ("Reset...", "Replace
info on Google Calendar"). This will completely replace the contents
of your Google calendars with that of your iCal calendars.

* If you have duplicates in both iCal and Google Calendar:

First back up your iCal database (iCal > Back up database...) and then
download and run this AppleScript:

http://www.markspace.com/support/screenshots/Remove_ical_dupes.zip

This will remove the duplicates from iCal. You can then perform a
server reset as above to remove them from Google Calendar.

We didn't create this script so we can't guarantee that it won't harm
your data, but in our testing it's worked well (except that when no
duplicates are found it sometimes reports "1 duplicate deleted"). If
something does go wrong, you can restore your iCal database from the
backup you made.

When the new dupe detection and correction code is live, we'll make an
announcement here and on the Spanning Sync Blog
(blog.spanningsync.com). If you have any questions or run into any
problems please don't hesitate to contact us at
sup...@spanningsync.com.

Thanks,
Charlie

[briany]

If I perform a server reset ("Reset...", "Replace info on Google
Calendar") what happens to events that I did not create on my calendar
(aka I'm using Google Apps for my domain)?

I have a lot of duplicate events on my Google Calendar and in my iCal
(going backwards in time as well as forwards). I want to do a full
reset, but am scared to find out what happens to the events I didn't
create (there are many!)

Also is there any way to have it sync a certain time period instead of
syncing all events in the calendar? Right now it takes a really long
time to sync my calendar and I think it's because it's looking at my
entire calendar which goes back over 6 months. Which brings up
another interesting question, what happens if I tell iCal to
automatically delete events over a certain age?

Thanks,
Brian

[Larry Hendricks]

On Jul 24, 5:16 pm, briany <byaman...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I perform a server reset ("Reset...", "Replace info on Google
> Calendar") what happens to events that I did not create on my calendar
> (aka I'm using Google Apps for my domain)?
>
> I have a lot of duplicate events on my Google Calendar and in my iCal
> (going backwards in time as well as forwards). I want to do a full
> reset, but am scared to find out what happens to the events I didn't
> create (there are many!)

When you select "replace info on Google Calendar," Spanning Sync does
just that: all events in all calendars that you're currently syncing
are removed from Google and replaced by what's in the corresponding
calendars in iCal. So the key to a successful reset is making sure
your iCal calendars are accurate and up to date.

>
> Also is there any way to have it sync a certain time period instead of
> syncing all events in the calendar? Right now it takes a really long
> time to sync my calendar and I think it's because it's looking at my
> entire calendar which goes back over 6 months.

Perhaps. Please contact us offline about this at
sup...@spanningsync.com.

> Which brings up
> another interesting question, what happens if I tell iCal to
> automatically delete events over a certain age?

They will be deleted from gcal too.

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

[briany]

On Jul 24, 8:11 pm, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > If I perform a server reset ("Reset...", "Replace info on Google
> > Calendar") what happens to events that I did not create on my calendar
> > (aka I'm using Google Apps for my domain)?
>
> > I have a lot of duplicate events on my Google Calendar and in my iCal
> > (going backwards in time as well as forwards). I want to do a full
> > reset, but am scared to find out what happens to the events I didn't
> > create (there are many!)

Hmmm... that's pretty dangerous behavior since I didn't create most of
these events. These are meeting events that other create and invite
others on. So if it dumps everything then I will lost those original
events so if they update them (eg. change time, location) I will no
longer be associated with them?

> When you select "replace info on Google Calendar," Spanning Sync does
> just that: all events in all calendars that you're currently syncing
> are removed from Google and replaced by what's in the corresponding
> calendars in iCal. So the key to a successful reset is making sure
> your iCal calendars are accurate and up to date.

So what I'm not understanding is how to do the other way. I want
everything on my Google Calendar to replace everything in my iCal. I
thought 'Reset Info on this Computer' would do that, but that isn't
the case.

Thanks for all your help!
Bri

[briany]

I should clarify my previous post. When I say meeting invites, I
should say invites from other users of GCal for my domain and not the
sort of invites I get via email which are added to iCal or otherwise.

-Bri

On Jul 24, 8:11 pm, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jul 24, 5:16 pm, briany <byaman...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If I perform a server reset ("Reset...", "Replace info on Google
> > Calendar") what happens to events that I did not create on my calendar
> > (aka I'm using Google Apps for my domain)?
>
> > I have a lot of duplicate events on my Google Calendar and in my iCal
> > (going backwards in time as well as forwards). I want to do a full
> > reset, but am scared to find out what happens to the events I didn't
> > create (there are many!)
>
> When you select "replace info on Google Calendar," Spanning Sync does
> just that: all events in all calendars that you're currently syncing
> are removed from Google and replaced by what's in the corresponding
> calendars in iCal. So the key to a successful reset is making sure
> your iCal calendars are accurate and up to date.
>
>
>
> > Also is there any way to have it sync a certain time period instead of
> > syncing all events in the calendar? Right now it takes a really long
> > time to sync my calendar and I think it's because it's looking at my
> > entire calendar which goes back over 6 months.
>
> Perhaps. Please contact us offline about this at

> supp...@spanningsync.com.

[Larry Hendricks]

On Jul 24, 10:38 pm, briany <byaman...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Hmmm... that's pretty dangerous behavior since I didn't create most of
> these events. These are meeting events that other create and invite
> others on. So if it dumps everything then I will lost those original
> events so if they update them (eg. change time, location) I will no
> longer be associated with them?

This is a shared calendar that you have write access to, correct? If
so, *all* the events will get created, not just the ones that you
originally created. However I can understand your trepidation in
performing such a drastic operation on a shared calendar. Is it
feasible to delete the duplicate events manually?

> So what I'm not understanding is how to do the other way. I want
> everything on my Google Calendar to replace everything in my iCal. I
> thought 'Reset Info on this Computer' would do that, but that isn't
> the case.
>

To copy a Google calendar to an iCal calendar:

1. Click the "manage calendars" link on Google Calendars
2. Select the calendar you want to copy
3. At the bottom near "Private Address," right-click (or control-
click) ICAL and select "Download Linked File" (in Safari, similar in
others)
4. In iCal, import the downloaded file into the corresponding calendar

I hope that helps.

[briany]

On Jul 25, 12:58 am, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is a shared calendar that you have write access to, correct? If
> so, *all* the events will get created, not just the ones that you
> originally created. However I can understand your trepidation in
> performing such a drastic operation on a shared calendar. Is it
> feasible to delete the duplicate events manually?

This is not a shared calendar. When you invite someone to a meeting,
you are the owner and others have the meeting added to their calendar
automatically. So having it delete and re-add the event will
disconnect it from the original meeting. This is what happens when
spanning sync creates duplicate entries. It creates and additional
one where I'm the owner, but have lost all other information about the
original invite and attendees.

I have already done this after spending a whole night in front of the
TV doing it. It was over 1000 entries spanning over a 6 month
period. It has helped reduce greatly the amount of time spanning sync
spends syncing. Again I stress how you should look into limiting the
syncing of entries to a certain time period. Otherwise this is only
useful for the casual home user and not a serious business user who
has a lot of meetings.

> To copy a Google calendar to an iCal calendar:
>
> 1. Click the "manage calendars" link on Google Calendars
> 2. Select the calendar you want to copy
> 3. At the bottom near "Private Address," right-click (or control-
> click) ICAL and select "Download Linked File" (in Safari, similar in
> others)
> 4. In iCal, import the downloaded file into the corresponding calendar

You may not know, but for Google Apps users, the administrator can
turn this feature off. (In my case it has so that is why I was happy
to see that I could use Spanning Sync to import my calendars!

It would be great if I could mark a calendar as read-only so I can use
it to import to my iPhone and not worry about it creating spurious
duplicates or inadvertently deleting entries from my corporate
calendar.

Right now I'm going to have to discontinue use until the duplication
of events can be fixed or I can set my calendar to one-way syncing.
You may want to look into the way Google Apps is setup to understand
how invitations work and the administrative restrictions that can be
put into place. It would make the app really appealing to us Mac
owners trapped in a corporate world. :-)

Thanks,
Brian

[timdog]

Any update on when the update to Spanning Sync will be released? I am
syncing between 4 to 5 computers and once I get the calendars cleaned,
one of the computers which is not in the office syncs and re-adds all
the duplicates. It is becoming more of a hassle than a blessing.

thanks
tim

[JH]

"We're working on a comprehensive update of our duplicate detection
and correction code that should compensate for these problems and plan
to have that code live within the next two weeks."

Any updates on this?

-JH

[cwood]

We've already implemented some of the new anti-dupe features and are
working on more. Look for an announcement on the Spanning Sync Blog
(blog.spanningsync.com) soon.

Regards,
Charlie

[timdog]

It has been almost two weeks, any word on when the updates/
announcement of the new anti-dupe features.

thanks
tim

[cwood]

Tim,

Yes! This morning we pushed out some fundamental changes to the way
the server handles large calendars, which have been the root cause of
many of the duplicate-event issues we've seen. Additional improvements
are in the works, and will be released soon.

Regards,
Charlie

[Steve Crow]

I just came home to a Sync Alert telling me that syncing with Spanning Sync will modify 650 of my calendar entries. I can't wait to see what THIS is all about. Looks like another long night ahead.

[Prodrive]

Recently we experienced a total crash of our calendars. Now we have
found out that the reason were two one year old entries in our
calendar which must have been duplicated several times by spanning
sync. One entry is there around 800 times, the other one around 1400
times. We have managed to delete the first one manually and will try
to do the same with the other one but this is a very time consuming
piece of work.

This is a very evil bug as you normally don't look into calendars one
year ago. Is there a method to delete a certain day's entries from a
calendar? This would help a lot.

Thanks
Prodrive

[cwood]

I'm not aware of an easy way to delete one day's events, but if you
run the AppleScript linked to in the original post it should remove
any duplicate entries from your calendar.

Regards,
Charlie

[Prodrive]

The script didn't work. 1400 entries seem too much. I now tried to go
back to an older version from our backup disk where there are "only" a
few hundred of the same entry. I hope that works.

Regards
Prodrive

[chris]

Can you avoid this bug by setting iCal preferences to delete items
older than x days or months?

And maybe you can fix it the same way by first choosing that
preference and then doing a Reset in Spanning Sync?

[Prodrive]

On 24 Aug., 23:36, chris <Chris.Rueb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you avoid this bug by setting iCal preferences to delete items
> older than x days or months?

The longest period we can set iCal to seems to be 90 days. So we loose
all older information which we need from time to time to reconstruct
data.

>
> And maybe you can fix it the same way by first choosing that
> preference and then doing a Reset in Spanning Sync?

We have solved the problem by deleting the entry manually on one
computer and then resetting the Google calendar. Now on one computer
everything works fine. But as we now tried to reset the calendars on
the other ones by just replacing iCal information by the one on Google
SpanningSync failed. The sync process runs for a long while (one hour
and more) and nothing happens.

I think we go back to the "old fashioned" mode of having the calendar
"synchronised" by the secretary.

Regards
Prodrive

[cwood]

We'd be more than happy to help diagnose and fix the problem if you're
willing to provide us with some additional information. Please create
a problem report (by opening Spanning Sync, clicking "Reset..." and
"Create report") and email it to us at sup...@spanningsync.com along
with a detailed description of the problem, including the exact titles
of any affected calendars and events. That will help us track down the
issue.

Thanks,
Charlie

[Prodrive]

I have sent you the protocol and some other information.

Now I have a general question:

We are using one single Google account with one calendar to
synchronize our whole office. This may result in the fact that two
Macs are syncing their data at the same time. Can this cause
difficulties or is this a kind of use which is intended by you?
Please understand me right: We did not choose this solution to save
money on SpanningSync Licenses but because to us it seemed the easiest
way to achieve what we need.

Regards
Prodrive

[cwood]

This kind of use is definitely intended, but we've recently discovered
some problems affecting people using Spanning Sync in this
configuration. We're working on a fix and will release it as soon as
it's complete.

Thanks,
Charlie