Need calendar that will sync ALL events!

Comment 171 by deviant....@gmail.com, Dec 31, 2010
Wow, people... all i can say is "Happy New Year!" because i think i may have solved this f'ing HORRIBLE Google Calendar problem in Android of phones failing to show events older than a month or two.

First of all... let's cover some basics of what is actually happening because i'm afraid i have seen a lot of misinformation in a lot of threads.

1. The phones are syncing properly, they are just not choosing to list/display certain events. (If you go in your Google Calendar via the web, everything is still there)

2. This is likely due to a weird desire to save resources or some such. I have NEVER seen a phone take an actual performance hit with loads of events in the calendar dating back ages.

3. The software in Android only represses the display of old events which have not been modified in a while. Thus, you can open an old event via the web, modify one small detail, re-save it... and it will then show up on your phone after the next sync, no matter how old it is.


Now... once you realize all that, you can see two solutions to the problem. They both are stupid and a waste of time for anyone who has the slightest semblance of a life...

* Some people mess with their phone's date settings. This is lame.

* Some people log in via the web and manually "tweak" every single event. This is insane.


It is a well-known fact that most of Google's core developers actively HATE the business community and power user community. There can be no other explanation for how awful Google Calendar is, in general. The fact that we can't specify time zones for the start and end of specific events (or, most important of all, make certain events TIME ZONE AGNOSTIC so they ALWAYS show up as a specific clock time, no matter what time the user is in) is a sign that Google absolutely is not interested in making the Android platform ready for the business world.

But, for once, we may have a work-around that can lead us to a small victory!

Here is the solution that i have tried and it APPEARS to be working, at least in my preliminary testing...

1. Log in to Google Calendar via the web

2. Go to "Settings --> Calendar Settings" at the top

3. Go to the "Calendars" tab

4. at the bottom, next to "Create new calendar" you will find "Import Calendar" and "Export Calendars"

THIS IS THE KEY TO OUR VICTORY

if you Export a calendar (which you should do routinely to save a back up... because no one single source should hold your data, even if it is as reliable as Google) the system will pack all of your various calendars (in iCal format) into a zip file.

do this once a month (again, out of routine habit) but THEN unzip the calendars, and choose to "import" them via that other link. (you have to do this one calendar at a time, in order to specify the destination for the events you're importing)

this re-import will REFRESH ALL of your events, all at one time. it does NOT appear to create duplicate events, something i feared might happen. it DOES however cause Android to think that they are all newly-modified and it should force your phone to sync ALL of them and display ALL of them on your mobile calendar now!

i am still trying this and experimenting. i don't know how it might affect things like reminders, "i am attending" status, etc. but i DO know that this could be a BIG step in the right direction for those of us who NEED to be able to view ALL of our old events on our phones.

you should be able to do this maybe once a month and be all set for the rest of the time. i know it's still a little more cumbersome than it should be, but if this works it's LOADS better than what other users were trying up until now.

Best of luck when you try it! Keep hammering Google and their Android team for a REAL business-grade calendar solution (that ALWAYS displays old events and ALLOWS EVENTS TO IGNORE TIME ZONE no matter where your phone or laptop is on the planet when you view things!)

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funpig said:

I use Calengoo, too. Not only does Calengoo sync ALL historical events, the Calengoo sync is also much faster than an Android sync...

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wenglish said:

Does Calengoo sync into the standard calendar database on the phone, so that other calendar apps (like the built-in Calendar or Pocket Informant) can also see those old appointments?

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funpig said:

I don't think so. I just checked the built-in calendar and it does not have any of my historical events beyond about a month (except repeating events eg. holidays). I am not sure about Pocket Informant. I have not tested PI in months and no longer have it on my Android.

I believe that when you use the Calengoo sync, it will set up a separate database. This will result in some duplication of events unless you make the built in database invisible in Calengoo. At first I did not like the idea of a duplicate database (waste of space) and refrained from using the Calengoo sync. But after I ran into some sync issues with Google (turns out it was an unrelated server issue), I played around with the Calengoo sync and found that it is so much faster than the Android calendar sync (15-20 seconds compared to about 4-5 minutes to do a full sync). Also, it was nice not to worry that some past event may not have synced unless I did the switch the date trick (annoying).

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funpig said:

I use Calengoo, too. Not only does Calengoo sync ALL historical events, the Calengoo sync is also much faster than an Android sync.

If you are too cheap to pay for Calengoo, one simple workaround to the one month issue raised by BlueNova is to fool your Android into syncing back more than one month. Go to your "Date & Time" settings and turn off the "Automatic" date feature. Then reset your date to some past date eg. 01-01-1999. This will fool your phone into thinking that it is 1999 and it will sync all past historical events back to that time. Once all the event are synced into your phone, you can reset the Date & Time back to Automatic or the current date. The synced events will stay in your phone.

Click to expand...

funpig said:

I use Calengoo, too. Not only does Calengoo sync ALL historical events, the Calengoo sync is also much faster than an Android sync.

If you are too cheap to pay for Calengoo, one simple workaround to the one month issue raised by BlueNova is to fool your Android into syncing back more than one month. Go to your "Date & Time" settings and turn off the "Automatic" date feature. Then reset your date to some past date eg. 01-01-1999. This will fool your phone into thinking that it is 1999 and it will sync all past historical events back to that time. Once all the event are synced into your phone, you can reset the Date & Time back to Automatic or the current date. The synced events will stay in your phone.

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bluenova said:

The built in app does not sync further back than one month.

There is an open feature request to have an option to sync more.

There is a proposed work-around...

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cece423 said:

I tried this (export Google calendar then import) and the other suggested fix (changing date manually, syncing by year, etc) on my new HTC One X running Android version 4.0.4. Neither changes anything on the calendar on my phone. Either I'm doing something wrong, or Google Calendar has made it even harder to view past events. Any suggestions?

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dvhttn said:

I use MyPhoneExplorer to sync Outlook with my Desire HD. That allows you to sync 'all' events in your calendar or a subset. I always go for 'all' and if I check back 3 years they are on my phone. I use Gemini Calendar but that just accesses the same database as the stock one. I have never had to adjust the settings on the phone's calendar to accommodate this either so give that a go and maybe the 'front end' calendar is not that important as long as it accesses the stock android calendar database. ...

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