Comments on: iPhone, iCal, and Google Calendar 3-Way Sync

By: jenny

jenny — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 14:36:56 +0000

Hi- Wondering how i can get the notifications for birthdays (i have like 10 per person per birthday) deleted from the ical calendar ? It seems like something went haywire in myfacebook/ical/google calendar sync up and now everyone’s birthdays show up like 10x on the same day! THanks

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:18:45 +0000

How i wish i would have found this article before i (just) spent the past two days trying to figure this out!
I inadvertently synced, i believe, two ways by using both the exchange and caldav.
I was hoping you could shed some light on a question i have. I already had my main gmail account connected to my phone although i never used it. But in the iphone system “settings” under “mail, contacts, calenders” i have two aacounts set up. One is the “exchange” with options to turn on syncing of “calender” and “contacts”. The other is “gmail”. This has the options to turn on syncing for “calendar”, “contacts”, and “notes”. Is this latter “gmail” option using caldav? I set this up so long ago not knowing anything about this process (i get it more now after spending two days on it) that i am unsure. It states that it is “caldav” but i believe that i went through the “gmail” option when i added the account when i first purhased my iphone. All ive done is ti turn the option for syncing is turning the calendar button on under this account. For me to be running caldav do i need to add another account and specifically specify caldav under “other” account to be running this? Or is this what im running but got there via a different method by using gmail?

By: John Link

John Link — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:48:07 +0000

There’s no need to export calendars from iCal and import them into gGal. Instead, just follow the directions found on http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=151674

By default only your primary calendar will be synced to your device. You can sync additional calendars by visiting the following page from any web browser:

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect
(Google Apps users can go to https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/your_domain/iphoneselect, replacing ‘your_domain’ with your actual domain name.)

Select the calendars you’d like to sync, and click Save. The selected calendars will display on your device at the time of the next sync.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:37:35 +0000

Thanks, Scott!

This is working great and I’ve no need to purchase spanning sync. I was a gcal user and haven’t used my iCal really at all (though I’m a Mac user). But, having purchased an iPhone I really wanted a decent calendar app and getting the iPhone calendar to sync with all my gCals is exactly what I needed.

I’d just like to emphasize for those gCal users that have a variety of gCals linked to their account that you have to go to:

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

when you’re logged in to Google to make sure you tell your account which of the calendars to push to your phone, otherwise only the top level gCal will show up.

Thanks for writing clear instructions for this!

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:07:30 +0000

so..i have agonized over this! I am doing it to the “T”. its not doin it. I need some clarification..PLEASE I bought an iphone first.. (april 2009) got the iphone calendar filled with stuff. I loved the apple look and feel so much… I bought an iMAC our home (nov 2009) (I am the only “named user account” my wife and kids don’t have a “side”). I sync right now with itunes and set itunes to sync with ical. At this particular point in time, I only had one calendar on the side pane of ical….it was from my iphone and it was called “Calendar.” I then started rock in rollin. Inside the ical program, I named the “Calendar” “Family” and then I added 4 new “SUB” calendars to the left side pane under the arrowed “CALENDARS.” Called them work, wife, son, daughter. I made them all different colors and added events to the correct one when needed. I.E. my work schedules to “work” & baseball practice to “son” etc… Well then I find out that there is this great thing called Google Cal!!! And how cool would it be to get all 3 talking together. BUT!!!! I have never used google cal before…it is blank white. When I export as the instructions say to… I then import the data and what do ya know??? there’s not 5 calendars….ITs only One big one and it green????? is the problem not being able to separate the export data?? If so, how do you import each of the 5 calendars I have separately to google? Also will the duplication be avoided… When i did the process the first time, once ical fetched to google (one min refresh like you suggested) I had duplicated events for all my events. I have snow leopard and its all up to date. Sorry for the long post but this would be great to figure out. Hope you can help

By: Scott K

Scott K — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:56:09 +0000

@tv, Hmm. Not sure. Are you using your full gmail address as the username? At what step above are you getting this error?

By: tv

tv — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:12:57 +0000

I cannot get ical and gmail linked. The error said that gmail account cannot be found.

By: Dottyau

Dottyau — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:53:40 +0000

I worked it out. The previous instructions I was following duplicated the sync when google and iCal merged. I just stop syncing iCal.

By: Scott K

Scott K — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:49:03 +0000

@Curious, Good thoughts. Makes sense that duplicates could be made that way. I’m not sure exactly how the CalDAV protocol handles these things. It might try to get around this by associating a timestamp with each entry. Then it would compare timestamps when syncing to make sure it is updating with the latest version. I haven’t run into this problem. This may because I do not use iTunes to sync the calendar. (I purposely left that box unchecked in iTunes.) I completely allow it to update through the “cloud.” But, it seems to do a great job of caching the entries when not on a 3g or wifi network. I can create entries when offline too. Here’s a link to a page from 2004 that explains how conflicting changes can be handled: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/ietf-caldav/2004-August/000021.html

Let me know if this helps.

By: dottyau

dottyau — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:24:42 +0000

hi. it works. thanks. the link i got your instructions was crap. Yours was easy to understand and able to work without duplication.