iCal calendars not syncing

[nickcarrasco]

I've basically got my entire life scheduled in iCal and synced with my treo via Missing Sync (Markspace). I was happy to see that you can supposedly sync ical with plaxo now. Has anyone been able to get this working? Does it make a difference that I have multiple calendars in iCal, including grouped calendars?

[pbulteel]

Yes it works great. Make sure you have the latest version of the Plaxo plugin which now appears as a System Preference panel.

Mine is:

Plaxo for Mac v3.0
Build 254

It doesn't sync subscribed calendars but that's expected but it does sync multiple calendars (not their colors which you can then change using the Share and Manage link.)

-P

[garret]

Hey Nick,

Please let us know if you have trouble setting up iCal sync. It should be working well. :)

[chillyjim]

Mine is working well. I do get some conflicts but I suspect it has more to do the the combination of

Plaxo, MissingSync and Spanning Sync (for gcal). It always looks like something is adding line-breaks to my calendar notes

[garret]

Hopefully you'll be able to replace Spanning Sync with our Google Calendar sync soon!

[JohnnyG]

Can I merge ICal subscriptions directly in to my Plaxo "Online Address Book" (not create a new folder)?

This is useful for subscribing to project milestones from basecamp or any other iCal feeds, but making sure it is in my common calendar that I use with Windows Mobile and Outlook..

While I'm at it, is there any planned syncing with 37 signals products basecamp and highrise. Great Web 2.0 company to partner with...

[garret]

There isn't a way to merge an iCal feed into an existing calendar unfortunately. It may be something we could add, but I think it could lead to quite a few confusing cases.

I'm sure we'll try setting up Highrise sync soon, especially since they mentioned us (http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/409-the-highrise-api-is-here) in their recent blog post!

[JohnnyG]

Well, maybe I'm just not used to decentralized calenders.

Now that I think about it, adding all my milestones from projects (like from basecamp) clutters up my calender too much. Plus I like the ability to "uncheck" for projects that don't need my attention anymore.

Integration with Highrise would rock. Contacts and tasks. And please, oh please let us be able to select certain categories for contacts to sync. This would let me sync my customer and business contacts...nut not include my grandmother in our company's contact list. Sync by categories would be a great value add feature for plaxo premium!

[nickcarrasco]

No one has mentioned is the use of grouped calendars. I guess I can try to remove the "groups" and see what happens. Good news is that I see some people have gotten the apple calendar sync to work, this gives me hope.

[dcolace]

The forthcoming update to the iCal sync on Mac will be much more reliable than what you are using now with build 254. We've made quite a number of reliability fixes and will be improving it further beyond this next release. Hope to have something out to you in the next few days.

-Drew

[nickcarrasco]

Looking forward to the next mac release. Thanks Plaxo and keep up the great work.

[nickcarrasco]

Well I don't know necessarily what changed, but everything is working including syncing my calendar over to Yahoo. Life is good... Well, let me say that I did do a bit of changing. I did remove all my "grouped" calendars. When I did this, my non grouped calendars appeared in Plaxo, but also so did all my grouped calendars that must of been syncing just not showing in Plaxo. So now I've removed all the duplicate calendars and again everything is working great.

[dcolace]

We've just released the updated clients for Mac and Outlook. For anyone interested in iCal syncing on their Mac, you definitely want to upgrade as soon as possible. Unfortunately, due to a change in the way we handle our in app upgrade mechanism, the "Check for Update" feature will not work for the version of Plaxo for Mac which has been available up until now. You'll actually need to go to Plaxo online and download the updated software. Just go through the process to add a new Mac sync point, grab the software, then cancel adding the sync point.

You may be fine upgrading your existing Plaxo for Mac installation, but if you've had any problems at all with iCal sync, I'd recommend that you uninstall the older version of Plaxo for Mac prior to installing this new update.

Let us know if you have a better experience with this new release.

Thanks,
Drew

[eboxhead]

So . . . i got ical to sync jsut fine. I went to open my ical this morning, and it closed with some sort of error . . . i cant figure out whats making it constantly close . . .

[dcolace]

So . . . i got ical to sync jsut fine. I went to open my ical this morning, and it closed with some sort of error . . . i cant figure out whats making it constantly close . . .

We do not load any code in iCal nor do we directly modify iCal data (we're using sync services) so the likelihood that Plaxo has impacted iCal negatively is low.

That said, if it had happened to me, I would:

1) Turn off Calendar sync in the Plaxo Pref panel

2) Ensure iCal was not running (doesn't seem like a problem in your case)

3) Move the iCal folder found in at ~/Libary/Application Support/ to the trash (or desktop if you think you want to try to somehow resurrect the iCal data store)

4) Log out and then back into your Mac account on your computer.

5) Start up iSync and open its preferences.

6) Select "Reset Sync History" in the iSync preferences window

7) Start up iCal

8) Re-enable Calendar sync in Plaxo for Mac's preference panel

Your calendars on Plaxo online should now repopulate iCal's calendars.

Let us know if this helps.

-Drew

[slabuda]

I can not get calendars to sync. I have installed the most recent version of the plaxo client, reset my sync endpoints, tried uninstalling and installing again, removed the sync points from plaxo, etc....

No matter what I try...no calendar sync.

When I install the plaxo mac client and go through the process of adding the sync point using the advanced options, I am not presented with a current list of my mac calendars on the configuration screen. It appears that my plaxo calendars and mac calendars are supposed to appear on this screen so i can map out the connection between the two...but nothing.

I am also running "the missing sync" to sync my smartphone to my mac...not sure if the missing sync is known to cause issues with the mac client.

Please help.

[slabuda]

Any suggestions?

[slabuda]

In addition, I am currently getting an error that says "there was a problem with remote account PLXl01000052896932303948244281913667, ical, calendarfolders) not found"

[dcolace]

I can not get calendars to sync. I have installed the most recent version of the plaxo client, reset my sync endpoints, tried uninstalling and installing again, removed the sync points from plaxo, etc....

No matter what I try...no calendar sync.

When I install the plaxo mac client and go through the process of adding the sync point using the advanced options, I am not presented with a current list of my mac calendars on the configuration screen. It appears that my plaxo calendars and mac calendars are supposed to appear on this screen so i can map out the connection between the two...but nothing.

I am also running "the missing sync" to sync my smartphone to my mac...not sure if the missing sync is known to cause issues with the mac client.

Please help.

I think we found the problem, thanks to you sending in your log file (your attempt to help us test Plaxo for Mac has really helped us).

There is a bug in the Mac client, now known thanks to you, where we are not handling some special characters correctly.

Currently, the Mac client cannot reliably handle iCal folder names that contain the following characters:

& < > " '
The ampersand, less than, greater than, double quotes, and single quote characters.

If you temporarily remove these characters from your calendar names (until we release the next update for Mac) you should then be able to successfully sync your iCal calendars with Plaxo.

Please let us know if this helps your situation.

-Drew

[yotimbo]

I'm having generally good luck with syncing between Plaxo 3.0 Build 308 and iCal. The problem I'm having is the time it takes for either one to update the other.

I used to use Plaxo and Outlook and the syncing of events, addresses, etc, happened almost immediately, especially if I forced a sync... I'd sometimes have to press the "Sync Now" button several times for it to actually happen but that was OK.

But with Plaxo 3 and iCal it's taking hours and hours for it to happen. Yesterday I added a couple of events in iCal and hit the Plaxo sync button (several times, after a while) but Plaxo did not register these events on my online calendar for the entire day/night. When I got up this morning, it had.

Is there some kind of cycling going on, like updates only happen at midnight or something?

Also - in the Outlook Plaxo Toolbar, you can continually click the sync button, but in the Mac version (the drop down one), the "Sync Now" is often greyed out. Why is that?

[dcolace]

I'm having generally good luck with syncing between Plaxo 3.0 Build 308 and iCal. The problem I'm having is the time it takes for either one to update the other.

I used to use Plaxo and Outlook and the syncing of events, addresses, etc, happened almost immediately, especially if I forced a sync... I'd sometimes have to press the "Sync Now" button several times for it to actually happen but that was OK.

But with Plaxo 3 and iCal it's taking hours and hours for it to happen. Yesterday I added a couple of events in iCal and hit the Plaxo sync button (several times, after a while) but Plaxo did not register these events on my online calendar for the entire day/night. When I got up this morning, it had.

Is there some kind of cycling going on, like updates only happen at midnight or something?

Also - in the Outlook Plaxo Toolbar, you can continually click the sync button, but in the Mac version (the drop down one), the "Sync Now" is often greyed out. Why is that?

It would be interesting to see if you have the same experience if you try using the Sync Automatically preference rather than Manually initiating sync.

There are two components that make syncing with iCal interesting:

1) You can make changes in iCal but those changes will not be available to the iCal sync ecosystem until iCal (the application) initiates an update with Apple's Sync Services which can take an indeterminate amount of time. If you quit the iCal app before your changes have been picked up by Apple's Sync Services, no other sync program (including Plaxo for Mac) will have access to those changes until iCal is re-launched and eventually syncs with Sync Services.

2) Initiating a sync via Sync Now in the the Plaxo menu item will sync all pending local changes that Plaxo for Mac is aware of - but trying to pick up iCal changes manually may leave you a bit frustrated as you are currently experiencing. Plus, you miss out on automatically having updates coming from Plaxo Online appearing in your iCal calendars without you having to know or guess that you need to initiate a sync.

By all means, if you feel the need to have control over the sync process, keep the Manual sync option active. That's why we've provided it. But the system definitely works more smoothly and with no guess work on your part if you leave automatic sync enabled.

Note also, for now you need to refresh your browser after Plaxo for Mac completes its sync for you to see any changes sent up.

Regarding the greyed out menu items that show in the Plaxo menu item from time to time, those menu options are disabled when Plaxo for Mac is currently doing some transaction with the Plaxo server. This behavior probably needs revisiting since only Sync Now really needs to be disabled when a transaction is already in action. Thanks for the heads up!

-Drew

[piano]

I have uninstalled Plaxo and installed the latest version of Plaxo for Mac, but it still appears as Plaxo 1.0 build 167. I'm using the latest Mac O/S. And there's no sign of a plugin to sync with iCal. What am I doing incorrectly?

Is there a separate process to install the plugin to sync with iCal? I didn't see it mentioned anywhere?

-Emmanuel

[dcolace]

I have uninstalled Plaxo and installed the latest version of Plaxo for Mac, but it still appears as Plaxo 1.0 build 167. I'm using the latest Mac O/S. And there's no sign of a plugin to sync with iCal. What am I doing incorrectly?

Is there a separate process to install the plugin to sync with iCal? I didn't see it mentioned anywhere?

-Emmanuel

Emmanuel-

The latest Release version of Plaxo for Mac is build 167 and is available from our main Plaxo download page http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/mac.

If you login into the Plaxo 3.0 preview and download the Mac software from the Mac sync point, you'll get the latest Preview release which supports iCal sync (on OS X 10.4.x).

-Drew

[piano]

Emmanuel-

The latest Release version of Plaxo for Mac is build 167 and is available from our main Plaxo download page http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/mac.

If you login into the Plaxo 3.0 preview and download the Mac software from the Mac sync point, you'll get the latest Preview release which supports iCal sync (on OS X 10.4.x).

-Drew

Woo hoo! It works! The part I was missing was that mysterious "Plaxo 3.0 preview." When you mentioned it, I didn't even know what you were talking about, so I googled it and found it here: http://preview.plaxo.com/po3/ (for anyone as confused as I was)

OK, I just jumped in yesterday after not following the forum for several months; that's the excuse I'm using. In any case, I'm delighted that Plaxo now supports iCal!!!

=E=
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