An angry wife & inconsistent iCloud calendar behaviour

[Moleyman69]

Hi,

I hope that someone can offer some help and assistance please.

I am having issues with iCloud syncing calendars between my Mac, my iPhone 5 (9.3) and my iPad Air (9.3). This has been going on since as long as I have had my devices and never worked reliably or consistently for me.

Very briefly, this has never worked reliably between my devices and new appointments wouldn’t sync in any direction to any device until I hard reset the iPhone/iPad (sometimes a normal power off would work but not very often) and then everything works for a while/few “tests” and then goes awry again.

Now, my wife (Gmail Apple ID) has just this weekend got an iPhone 5S and my son (Hotmail Apple ID) has an iPad 3 from a few years ago she decided to do Family Sharing to make use of the Family calendar functionality; I am the main Family member if that makes any difference.

Everything seems to work 100% for my wife’s iPhone (9.2.1) and my son’s iPad (9.2).

I tested this by logging into my iCloud account in Chrome web browser and watching the calendar. I add an appointment “Son’s iPad” and this appears in iCloud within a few seconds and also on to my wife’s iPhone again almost instantly. I set an appointment on my wife’s iPhone (Wife’s iPhone) and again straight into the iCloud calendar and on to my son’s iPad with no issues whatsoever. BUT nothing comes through to my iPad or iPhone.

So I set an appointment directly in iCloud “iCloud appointment” and yep, straight onto wife and sons devices but nothing on my iPad/iPhone.

So I set an appointment on my iPhone “My iPhone” and another appointment on my iPad “My iPad” and nothing appears in iCloud even after an hour, so obviously these appointments never get to my wife or son’s devices.

However, I then switch off my iPad/iPhone and power them back on (no hard reset) and Bingo! “My iPad” and “My iPhone” appointments appear straight in iCloud and out to all other devices straight away! I can then do some more tests and it appears to be working then all of a sudden it just stops for my iPhone and iPad but my wife’s and son’s devices work exactly as they should between iCloud and each other.

I can’t see it being a hardware error as I would have thought that it would never work even after a power cycle. Also, it affecting 2 devices would seem to be very coincidental.

Also, I can’t see anything different in my Settings as I would suspect that if there was some setting that was incorrect it would never work for me even after a power off/on.

The only remaining common denominator is my Apple ID – could it be something to do with this?

I did wonder whether to set up a new Apple ID but this would then be rather inconvenient having 2 Apple IDs just to get this working.

Any advice would be gratefully received as would be somewhere to stay if I can't get this fixed

Many thanks in advance,

Moley

 

[Rigby]

Have you checked if your iCloud account is set to "push" under "Mail Contacts Calenders"/"Fetch Data" in the settings?

 

[Moleyman69]

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Yes, I am set to Push.

Since I did my last power cycle just after I posted this thread, my wife has added a calendar entry and it came through to both my devices straight away. HOWEVER, i can almost certainly guarantee that this will stop working correctly shortly and I will have to power cycle all over again :-(

Edit: In fact just made a new appointment in iCloud and it appeared on my iPhone but not on my iPad! Also just tried editing some Contacts; works on my iPhone but not my iPad also so it seems like it might be more iCloud/Apple ID orientated than hardware possibly.

Thanks again,

Moley

 

[whsbuss]

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Yes, I am set to Push.

Since I did my last power cycle just after I posted this thread, my wife has added a calendar entry and it came through to both my devices straight away. HOWEVER, i can almost certainly guarantee that this will stop working correctly shortly and I will have to power cycle all over again :-(

Edit: In fact just made a new appointment in iCloud and it appeared on my iPhone but not on my iPad! Also just tried editing some Contacts; works on my iPhone but not my iPad also so it seems like it might be more iCloud/Apple ID orientated than hardware possibly.

Thanks again,

Moley

I don't think Apple ID issues would show up like this. Its not consistently on one device or the other. Hardware issues usually follow a specific device. Do you see this behavior on just your wifi network? How many devices are concurrently connected to your wifi? You may want to try a full network settings reset on both devices and try again.

 

[BeefCake 15]

I noticed a similar issue with someone that travels to different timezone often but it was fixed by deleting and re-adding the account.

Kudos on the great excuse I can use next time I forget an appointment!

 

[Moleyman69]

OK, so just power cycled the iPad and all the latest calendar events were suddenly there once it had rebooted.

Meant to say originally that yesterday I also did a complete erase all data and settings on the iPad to see if that would help after doing a full factory reset but obviously, no, that didn't help :-(

 

[BrianBaughn]

There's probably something odd going on with your account and Apple. It's worth a shot to call Apple Support. They can possibly do some sort of "reset" on their end.

 

[campyguy]

A few tips, having owned and run a small civil engineering company. You offer that you're an IT pro, so I won't bother you with port blocking stuff. That written...

Stop trying to see immediate updates - push works when Apple's version of XMPP "works". Apple offers that updates take 15 minutes for their own native data and up to 2-4 hours for proxied data. Old news here, I'm not going to provide proof here. This synching works when it works. Most of the free services I've used more-or-less want pinging their services no more often than 15 or 20 minutes - Google it, but I'm sure you're aware of this already. My real world data goes through Office 365 or my Exchange Server - products I pay for that kick the free stuff to the gutter. My paid for services work in real time, 100% of the time - the free services, not so much...

Make sure that your account adheres to the limits of iCloud. Too many of my employees gripe that their iCloud services don't work properly but they're loading all of their calendar events since Day 1 and never clear their browser history. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202158.

One of my employees griped about iCloud not working, but had the FaceTime, Mail, Contacts, and some other apps open including two browsers. The cheesehead was saturating port 80 and 443 with app polling that use the same ports that Calendar uses - that employee is on a short leash now.

Make sure your firewall isn't blocking Ubiquity. Ubiquity is the utility that synchs

Make sure your ISP isn't blocking ports 80 and 443. It happens. Here, both of my residential ISPs (CenturyLink and Comcast) flag an account and restrict some access if there's an issue with an account; my business class ISPs don't filter my services...

In your Network settings, make sure you have access to Amazon's AWS - they're hosting a LOT of iCloud data.

 

[Moleyman69]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the replies and advice. It is much appreciated.

An update so far (but it still doesn't work consistently...)

I got my wife to add a calendar event this morning and it didn't appear on my iPad or iPhone within the half hour or so before I left for work.

So, I get to work and turn on my iMac and the event is in my calendar on my work iMac! However, still not on my iPhone (iPad is left at home). So, I add an event on my iPhone but it doesn't arrive on my work iMac (and when I log into iCloud on my iMac web browser the event I set on my iPhone isn't there either so hasn't left my iPhone). SOOOO... I power cycle my iPhone and once the iPhone has powered on my wife's event that she set before I left for work appears on my iPhone and the event that I had just set on my iPhone appears on my work iMac.

So I get home this evening and neither of the two aforementioned events above are on my iPad. So, I power cycle the iPad and then the item appear on my iPad once it has restarted.

From this, it wouldn't appear to be my home network as the same issues are happening on my work network. Time doesn't appear to be a factor (11 hours should be long enough I would like to think).

I just can't nail if it is a hardware issue (two devices seems unlikely though) or something else.

It is intermittent and always seems to be solved by power cycling the devices in question.

Thanks again and if anyone has any further insight my wife and I would be grateful

All the best,

Moley

 

[whsbuss]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the replies and advice. It is much appreciated.

An update so far (but it still doesn't work consistently...)

I got my wife to add a calendar event this morning and it didn't appear on my iPad or iPhone within the half hour or so before I left for work.

So, I get to work and turn on my iMac and the event is in my calendar on my work iMac! However, still not on my iPhone (iPad is left at home). So, I add an event on my iPhone but it doesn't arrive on my work iMac (and when I log into iCloud on my iMac web browser the event I set on my iPhone isn't there either so hasn't left my iPhone). SOOOO... I power cycle my iPhone and once the iPhone has powered on my wife's event that she set before I left for work appears on my iPhone and the event that I had just set on my iPhone appears on my work iMac.

So I get home this evening and neither of the two aforementioned events above are on my iPad. So, I power cycle the iPad and then the item appear on my iPad once it has restarted.

From this, it wouldn't appear to be my home network as the same issues are happening on my work network. Time doesn't appear to be a factor (11 hours should be long enough I would like to think).

I just can't nail if it is a hardware issue (two devices seems unlikely though) or something else.

It is intermittent and always seems to be solved by power cycling the devices in question.

Thanks again and if anyone has any further insight my wife and I would be grateful

All the best,

Moley

Someone mentioned earlier to delete and then re-add the accounts. Have you tried that?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Someone also mentioned calling Apple Support (me). It'll probably take 15 minutes. The problem account is with Apple and the devices are from Apple. Conclusion: Apple Issue.

If you already tried that...what did they say?

 

[Moleyman69]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I've been busy looking for somewhere new to stay

Just to answer a couple of questions that you have asked.

Have I tried deleting & adding the account again? Not exactly, but I did do a complete General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings on my iPad with this issue and then set up iCloud again which I would imagine constitutes the same thing as just deleting & adding the account again.

Have I spoken with Apple? I haven't contacted Apple yet but will be able to visit my nearest Apple Store over the weekend. Question though, will they be able to do much as both my iPhone and iPad are loooong out of AppleCare?

Thanks again everyone and I hope that you all have a nice weekend.

All the best,

Moley

 

[whsbuss]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I've been busy looking for somewhere new to stay

Just to answer a couple of questions that you have asked.

Have I tried deleting & adding the account again? Not exactly, but I did do a complete General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings on my iPad with this issue and then set up iCloud again which I would imagine constitutes the same thing as just deleting & adding the account again.

Have I spoken with Apple? I haven't contacted Apple yet but will be able to visit my nearest Apple Store over the weekend. Question though, will they be able to do much as both my iPhone and iPad are loooong out of AppleCare?

Thanks again everyone and I hope that you all have a nice weekend.

All the best,

Moley

Actually it is not the same resetting all data vs. deleting and re-adding the account. Resetting all data is local and does not affect connecting and handshaking with Apple's servers.

 

[Moleyman69]

Hi whsbuss,

Apologies - I did not realise it wouldn't have the same effect/result. From the description I read on Apple's website that describes using this function to completely wipe an iOS device and restore it to factory condition in preparation for resale or giving to someone else, and then being able to set it up as a fresh, new device I simply thought I would have been doing in essence the same thing as you had kindly suggested.

If I delete my iCloud account from an iOS device will it still leave all my data on the iCloud server or will that all get deleted as well?

Thanks again,

Moley

 

[whsbuss]

Hi whsbuss,

Apologies - I did not realise it wouldn't have the same effect/result. From the description I read on Apple's website that describes using this function to completely wipe an iOS device and restore it to factory condition in preparation for resale or giving to someone else, and then being able to set it up as a fresh, new device I simply thought I would have been doing in essence the same thing as you had kindly suggested.

If I delete my iCloud account from an iOS device will it still leave all my data on the iCloud server or will that all get deleted as well?

Thanks again,

Moley

When you delete the account from your device is will ask to keep data locally or remove. If you leave a copy locally, when you re-add the account, it may create duplicates. In any case, if its an iCloud account it will keep a copy on their servers.

 

[maxsix]

iCloud doesn't live up to Apple's premium standard. It just hasn't in my experience.

Luckily I've had years of exceptionally great service from Google Drive.

Working with great speed stability and smoothness on my Androids and iPhones, Macs, PC'S, and Tablets, it's thanks to Google for the best Cloud service.

 

[Moleyman69]

Hi again, everyone!

Well, I seem to have a fix in place that seems to be working consistently now for the last few days.

I am in the UK and that may or may not be important.

However, I checked once again my wife's, son's and my devices and couldn't see anything different with regards to settings between them.

I then logged in to each account at www.icloud.com and noticed that all 3 of our accounts were set to the same geographical area / time zone as each other BUT they weren't set to UK (I can't remember now where they were set to, but all 3 accounts were the same so I would imagine it is a default). So, I duly changed all of the accounts to be set to United Kingdom and since then my devices are now playing nicely with my wife's iPhone and son's iPad. Calendar updates are almost instantaneous and consistent. I think that maybe just changing a setting in the iCloud account / website was enough to handshake my devices with iCloud again possibly.

So, for the time being iCloud seems to be working as it should and I haven't had to leave home

Thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to help and offer advice.

I hope that this thread may help someone else out in the future who is having similar problems.

Thanks again and all the best,

Moley