Resolved HELP! iCloud deleted ALL my calendars!! Now there are multiple copies of everything..

So when iCloud came out, I decided to sign up although I have no real need for it (don't have iOS 5 and don't really need the whole cloud thing, but I thought why not). Since then, my iPod Touch (2nd Gen, no iOS 5) was unable to sync my calendars with my Mac through the USB cable. So I decided to sign out from iCloud, and it just deleted all my stuff from iCal on my Mac. How the HELL do I get back to the way things were before I signed up for this stupid iCal??

Please help, I will die without my iCal…

Thank you…

PS: I do have a Time Machine backup, but I don't know what part of it my iCal stuff is in…

Here is what it says when I uncheck "Calendars" in iCloud:



Why can't I just STOP using iCloud but keep my iCal? That's the way it was before I had iCloud...

paulsalter said:

unfortunately thats how it is with cloud calendars, turn off cloud and it deletes them

easiest way I have found to get them back

turn iCloud calendars back on, this should put your data back
right click each calendar and select export
then when all have been exported, do an import on each of them and select a calendar in the on my mac section (gives option to create one during import if not there)

Click to expand...

Thanks! I did that, and I was able to get my iCal on my Mac back to how it was, with iCloud being off.

However, now, when I sync it to my iPod Touch (2nd Gen), every single entry appears THREE times! What the hell is going on?

I now restored my iPod, I unchecked "Sync Calendars" and I even checked "Replace information on this iPod: Calendars", and none of this helped. I even restored an old iPod backup from Time Machine (User Library > Application Support > MobileSync > Backups), and then restored my iPod again to that old backup, and while it was fine after the backup was complete, upon the next sync I again had 3 copies of each event.

To make matters worse, the copies synced back to my Mac and now I also have 3 copies of everything on my Mac.

This whole thing is going to hell, could someone help? I can get my Mac's iCal back to normal from the exported backup, but my iPod always syncs in a way that I have 3 (or 2, or 4, it depends) copies of events on my iPod.

Solved!

Okay, seems like I solved the problem, it wasn't easy!

Here's what I did:

1. Make backups of calendar, "Export > Export" and NOT "Export > iCal Archive" because that would save the iCloud settings which we don't want
2. Sign out of iCloud to cause deletion of entire iCal database on Mac
3. Reboot (it won't work without a reboot, the calendar is probably cached somewhere)
4. Sync iPod to Mac and make sure to check "Replace contents" to force it to sync the empty iCal to the iPod
5. Disconnect iPod and restore iCal database on Mac from the backups (there should be one backup file per calendar)
6. Plug in iPod, let it sync

This should do the trick, and there should be no more duplicate (or more) entries!