iCal (Mail Acct) Calendars Not Seen, Other iCal Bugs

[FrostedMac]

Product: OmniFocus
Tag:
Date: 2007-11-01 18:14:54 -0700
Builder: omnibuild
Host: tb104i.private.omnigroup.com
Revision: 93875

#1

When I go into OmniFocus Preferences for iCal, I do not see any Calendars I created in Mail.app, that are stored on my IMAP account. This is going to be pretty slick, allowing me to Sync to my Mail account and see TODO items from OmniFocus in my IMAP folder - ie on my iPhone.

Right now, I only see Calendars local on my Mac... even though I can see them in iCal.


#2

Syncing seems to work fine (although it did blow away all my TODOs in iCal at first), except if I add an Alarm to an iCal TODO... when I sync back, it loses some information, including the NAME of the To Do in OmniFocus. But, I don't set those other fields for Alarm, then it works fine.

[seamusk]

I am having the same issue and reported it. But it would be nice to know if the ability to add the calendars tied to IMAP accounts will return. I really like how it creates the views in iCal as well.

[PatriciaW]

I'm having a lot of issues with syncing and one of them is that it does appear to delete all of the To Dos ... and I definitely do not like this "feature". I've also noticed a lot of items with missing titles and such like so I've stopped using the sync feature until it is a bit more stable again.

[seamusk]

Does anyone know if it is in the plans to allow for synching with the ical imap calendars? I've been building my contexts with this in mind, but am not synching right now because this isn't available yet. Thanks.

[pjb]

OF is not aware of any changes to the list of iCal calendars so while it worked initially, now I cannot assign Categories to Calendars because the preference pane is showing the original, out-of-date list.

I see these calendars in the .plist file as "cached calendars". How can I get the cache to update without deleting the whole plist file?

(when I get home, I'll install the developer tools for Leopard so I can cleanly edit the file and try that; would like to hear if others are seeing this problem).

[Dalmet]

I am also having this problem with outdated iCal calendars (along with many other iSync issues with other 3rd party programs in Leopard).

Apart from that, even if I assign a category to a calendar the synching from OF to iCal doen't work. It works the other way round. However, during troubleshooting, about 10 sync attempts later suddenly some tasks created in OF where showing up as sync conflicts between OF and iCal although these tasks never showed up in iCal at all. After choosing "Fix all issues using OF" no tasks were added to iCal.

This doesn't only sound confusing, acutally it is.

Just for the record: syncing with my cellphone is partially broken as well.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[dhm2006]

I'm having a lot of issues with syncing and one of them is that it does appear to delete all of the To Dos ... and I definitely do not like this "feature".

I am having this problem as well, or one similar to it.

As a test, I setup a calendar called "OmniFocus" and linked one context to it in OF Preferences. I left 3 to-dos in iCal, one marked completed. I had 1 action in the context.

I synced OF with iCal and the 3 to-dos that were in iCal disappeared.

-- I looked in OF inbox, and there were 3 new actions, but the title and note fields were both blank. I suppose those are the 3 to-dos, but blanks don't help much.

-- Also, the context is not the one linked; it is the parent context of the one linked (i.e., "Office -> Phone" is linked; "Office" is on the new, blank OF actions.)

Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug?

I am running build 94156.

The new to-do created from the OF action looks good: correct due date and project name in square brackets.

[PatriciaW]

As I mentioned before, I'm having the same problems ... to dos in iCal with missing titles, and activities in OF with missing titles and also some of these are from different contexts (according to the project name.) Fortunately after earlier problems like this I am doing a backup of both OF and iCal before I attempt to sync. I'm using the same build as you (94156) but this has been happening for several builds.

[Dalmet]

I just managed to recreate the problem with missing titles as well. Still I'm seeing the zombie calendars in OF.

I suspect this is all related to changes to SyncServices in Leopard, since I'm seeing strange behaviour in other programs as well (iGTD, gSync) but I'm not sure if everyone posting in this thread is also running 10.5

[FrostedMac]

I did a rebuild of my database, and things like iCal Syncing and what not started working and things are much snappier as well. (I didn't test for all known issues w/ iCal, but at least it doesn't take 10 minutes to load iCal Sync Preferences pane in OF.

[pvonk]

I just managed to recreate the problem with missing titles as well. Still I'm seeing the zombie calendars in OF.

I'd be interested in having posters indicate whether they are using Leopard iCal (which is different from Tiger iCal - and a downgrade in my mind) or a previous version when reporting iCal problems.

[PatriciaW]

I'm still using Tiger although I hope to install Leopard next week.

[dhm2006]

I'd be interested in having posters indicate whether they are using Leopard iCal (which is different from Tiger iCal - and a downgrade in my mind) or a previous version when reporting iCal problems.

I am using Leopard and was running build 94156 when I reported the problem I encountered.

[keenannick]

I have been using Tiger and have been experiencing the iCal-sync-deleting-titles-and-notes bug since build 94151, and the bug has been constant for me, and I'm now running 94382. (also sent a Send Feedback bug report the moment I noticed this). This doesn't seem to me to be a Tiger vs. Leopard issue (though I guess it might be), it's just happening at the same time that a lot of us are updating. This change started for me when Omnifocus' iCal syncing features were upgraded.

I just tried rebuilding my database, and that did not solve the problem.

Eep! Any other suggestions? Not being able to sync back from iCal obviously puts a big ol' kink in the works.

[grsilverman]

Just fixed mine, with similar problems. Wouldn't sync with iphone and OF. This made me suspect a iCal problem. I reset iSync, then followed the directions for reconstituting the Calendar folder in ~library/calendars (they say drag it to the desktop). Everything magically started working again. Don't forget to back up!

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306537

BTW, to the person who wonders why to use the talkbar of iCal: that's for setting the GTD-discouraged alarms that I still need. Alarms can be set from tasks, or from events., and probably some way to even do it from mail.

BTW, all this in Leopard.

Good luck. When OF, Mail, iCal and the iPhone all work together, it's heaven!!!

[keenannick]

No luck with this tack... though you seem to be dealing with a similar problem after upgrading iCal, and my iCal has (I think) stayed the same.

So far I have tried:

1. Rebuilding OF Database
2. Reopening OF Database after backing up
3. Resetting iSync
4. Rebuilding iCal Database from Backup

and nothing seems to change the problem.

On the bright side, although it's erasing the data coming from iCal, it is still linking the matching to dos in iCal and OF. The iCal task (now named "@context: (null)") still has the tracking URL ('omnifocus:///task/nZ-5bFIs5fq', for example), which does link itself back to the OF task.

Any new tasks or task updates from OF sync normally.

[pjb]

...then followed the directions for reconstituting the Calendar folder in ~library/calendars (they say drag it to the desktop). Everything magically started working again. ...


Not quite for me. After deleting ~/Library/Calendars the reinstated iCal calendars are the Old set before I made changes. The Old set is what OF was seeing; I just wasn't seeing them in the iCal app. I'm using Leopard and the new lousy, awkward, carpal-tunnel-traumatizing iCal. Tried all again, with an iSync history reset, and OF still does not see any iCal calendars (not the Old set, none at all). iCal is not looking too good here, but OF was initially able to see the iCal calendar list but not now.

[Dalmet]

If you made an upgrade from Tiger you can also try to delete your Birthdays calendar (the one that adds birthdays from Address Book), quit iCal, launch it and add the Birthdays again via iCal preferences.

[pjb]

That worked! Thanks.
BTW, where did you learn about this? What's the problem.

[keenannick]

Sorry this kind of turned into a thread with two bugs in it.

The bug I was experiencing seems to be fixed in build 94470
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=5512

Huzzah!

[Quorcork]

I did a rebuild of my database, and things like iCal Syncing and what not started working and things are much snappier as well. (I didn't test for all known issues w/ iCal, but at least it doesn't take 10 minutes to load iCal Sync Preferences pane in OF.

Does syncing of OF with a mail calendar on an IMAP account really work for you?

As far as i unterstood Omnis sticky iCal post in this forum OF is unable to sync with non-local calendars and ical displays the mail calendar in a separate group. OF does not display my .Mac Mail calendar in the sync config dialogue. :-(

I'd be happy to hear about anyone who is able to do this syncing!
Cheers
Silvan

[Joe.Hocker]

So, I see that others are having the same issue as me. I can't configure an OF context to sync to an non-local / IMAP calendar. I have an IMAP account for work and an .Mac account. I love the leopard mail feature that allows me to create to-do tasks from an email and have access to those tasks in iCal. I hate the idea that I can't sync those tasks with OF as with other iCal calendars.

I'm hoping somebody could weigh in on if that is suppose to be a supported feature or if OnmiGroup plans on supporting it in the future.

[Ken Case]

Unfortunately, 10.5's IMAP calendars are invisible to any software which uses SyncServices, i.e. any software which was written to synchronize with 10.4's calendars.

There's a new 10.5-specific CalendarStore API which we can use to get at those calendars, but it takes a completely different approach: it just tells you what's in the calendar now, it doesn't tell you anything about which items have changed since last time you looked. So there's a whole bunch of 10.5-specific code that would need to be written to support IMAP calendars.

We are looking at adding support for the 10.5-only CalendarStore at some point, but for 1.1 our focus has been on adding synchronization support so you can share all your information between computers—not just task names and dates and plain text notes, but also project structure, contexts, rich text notes with attachments, etc. And we've also been writing a native, synchronizing version of OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod Touch so you can take all that information with you and access or change it or add to it wherever you are.