Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications 10.8, iCloud, Calendar and Synchronizing

[I'll let Diane figure out in which forum this should ultimately reside]

This one is driving me crazy and taking more time than it should, so I thought I would put it out to the experts.

Here is my ultimate goal: the Calendar on my iPhone should be the calendar data that shows up on my desktop iMac's calendar.

Here are some ID specifics:
•Apple ID's and iCloud ID's were separately created over a period of years before Apple had its "cloud act" together (or before I had mine in mind?)
•all Apple user ID's on all devices are the same to allow purchases through one account in the App Store and iTunes. Let's call this ID "APPLEID".
•the iMac's iCloud account, as shown in iCloud Settings, is also APPLEID.
•the iPhone's iCloud account, as shown in its iCloud Settings, we will call "PHONEID".

Here is the Calendar situation:
•Calendar on the iPhone is fine, correct and what I want
•Calendar on the iMac is my wife's Calendar (!), which happened when we had only one computer, I backed up her iPhone stuff on mine and did not care to use Calendar (iCal back then).
•Telling iMac to synch Calendar with iCloud merges my wife's calendar with my iPhone Calendar on my iMac and my iPhone. No good!
•Calendar on iPhone is already synching, but only appears on www.icloud.com, not on the iMac.
•Attempting to Share iPhone's iCloud Calendar with myself at APPLEID says I can't share with myself or just adds my iPhone calendar to the incorrect calendar stuff on my iMac.

Some general questions, but a clean solution is more than welcome:

What's the file/pref to purge on the iMac so there is no data in the iMac's Calendar, since it is my wife's old iCal stuff?

Can data from one calendar (like "Home") be transferred to another new calendar (like "Me")?

Arghh.

I'm kinda trying to do the same thing with my iphone (used as ipod) and laptop. I specifically want calendars and contacts to sync, and don't need anything else. I had a mobileme account and that worked fine but it stopped working recently and I've had to go with manual syncing. It works but I have to plug in and sync it instead of it occurring automagically. I'm also fighting to get Notes working to my liking, but that's a separate issue.

If you don't want the wife's calendar and it can go, just delete it. it should get deleted from the phone. but you may end up needing to delete it from the phone at the same time as the computer if it insists on copying it back from the phone when you sync.

Syncing is different than subscribing. You don't want to subscribe to a calendar. You won't be able to make changes to them.

One option you may want to explore is publishing to a local server. An office in this area has that. Just turned on www on their server which is used only for FMP. The secretary does the bookings and publishes to the server via webdav. Then the office machines subscribe so their ical is kept up to date. (they heavily use ical) But those subscribers can't make changes. I don't think it's possible to have more than one master publishing that way though. You're currently limited to iCloud or google.... have you considered google? There are some limits I found unacceptable but maybe you'd be ok with. It acts a little quirky in the display on the left, and it only takes two alarms per event, but works otherwise.



close ical and mail. rename ~/Library/Calendars to something else. immediately log out and back in again.



you may export each calendar in mail, and then re-import them to any account at any time. I think you need to have a destination calendar ready to select when you import.

As V1 says "Syncing is different than subscribing…" but both are out of date terms when dealing with iCloud. The operative word in iCloud is "sharing" which is more than either synching or subscribing. I find it helpful to think in terms of my iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPad as all sharing the same calendar, contact list, etc and that is physically located on iCloud.

Just to be sure we are on the same page, you can share an iCloud calendar with as many devices and with as many other iCloud accounts as you want. If you share the calendar with "Everyone", any one else sharing that calendar will have read only access. If you elect to share the calendar with specific other users you can specify whether each user has read only or read/write sharing privileges.

Since Calendar on your iPhone is the one you want to use as the starting master I suggest the following:

1. Delete all the calendars on your iMac and any device other than your iPhone.
2. On your Mac in System Preferences > iCloud UNcheck Mail, Contacts, Calendars & Reminders, etc.
3. On your iPhone under Settings > iCloud UNcheck Calendars
4. Still on your iPhone under Settings > iCloud > Account change PHONEID and Password to APPLEID and Password.
5. On your iPhone under Settings > iCloud check Calendars and wait a few minutes for all the calendar data on your iPhone to be copied to iCloud.
6. When the copy has completed (you can check by logging onto your iCloud account on your Mac and checking the calendar) on your Mac go to System Preferences > iCloud and check Calendars & Reminders.

At this point both your iPhone and Mac (and any other iDevices) will be showing exactly the same calendar information. and PHONEID will have become essentially superfluous.

What you say makes sense. You are essentially making the accounts the same.

BUT…your suggestion #4 is not possible. The account ID can't be changed on the iPhone. It displays grey and is not editable.

Regarding Virtual1's comments about purging a calendar: Exporting from Mail, is Apple Mail on a computer, not an iPhone?

Oops. You are right. You would have to delete the account on the iPhone. Then you could set it up again using the APPLEID account. Since the other data, calendar, contacts, etc. have already been deleted from the APPLEID account that should still leave the data on the iPhone intact and it should then be transferred to iCloud.

NOTE: I would plug my iPhone in and backup everything on it to the Mac before attempting this process. Then when I was certain the APPLEID iCloud account had the calendar, etc. correctly I would backup my iPhone again. Okay so I have been known to wear a belt and suspenders.

Arghh.

I don't mind being extra cautious, but I think deleting the iPhone account would delete the iCloud data it contained. Why would it still be there if there is no account to which it is attached?

Absent suggestions with fewer "should's" (although they are greatly appreciated) I may wait for Apple to catch up to me, some proven approach to be presented.

Deleting the iCloud account on the iPhone, does not delete the account on iCloud as there may be multiple devices sharing that same account. If you want to take a belt and suspenders approach you could temporarily share the PHONEID account with another device such as your Mac or another iPhone/iPad until your data is transferred from the iPhone to the APPLEID account. Even though you are "sharing" the calendar data from iCloud there is still a copy on your iPhone that allows it to be used when you do not have a data connection.

Simultaneous and independent solutions!

Independently I did what you suggested. I logged out of an APPLEID on a Mac and logged in with the PHONEID. There are some scary warnings about things being deleted, but the end result is that the correct calendar shows up on a Mac.

At this point I may just consider using the PHONEID on all devices and Macs. There may be no downside to doing that.

If you abandon your APPLEID account you risk losing the history of what you have purchased from the App Store or iTunes under that account. It might be a good time to contact Apple Support and ask if and how you can transfer purchase records so that you have everything in one account. Of course you could keep both accounts active, but I suspect that may result in some irritating circumstances in the future.

Good points, but it seems that Store ID's and iCloud ID's can be different; at least mine are in some instances.

All my Apple hardware have the same Store account ID, yet many of them have different iCloud ID's. When I logged out of APPLEID for the iCloud on one piece of hardware (as described above) and logged into PHONEID for iCloud on the same equipment, my Store account was unchanged (i.e., APPLEID).

For me these distinctions (or lack of them?) were part of the confusion.