Duplicate "Birthdays" Calendar

[Kahalu'u Bob]

Whenever I get a new iPhone or iPad, I always set it up wrong to synch w/ MobileMe and get duplicate calendars. This usually tells you how to fix it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3677

This time, however, with my new iPhone 4, I could not get rid of a second calendar titled "Birthdays". I keep one calendar on iCal and MobileMe title "Birthdays" and enter birthdays into iCal in that calendar; this second duplicate "Birthdays" calendar doesn't have anything in it, but I couldn't delete it.

After two hours with Apple support, and three separate technicians, they decided that the second "Birthdays" calendar is created by Address Book, and that it could not be deleted.

So, I've got two calendars of the same name. Inelegant, but no big deal I suppose.

If anyone knows how to get rid of the second "Birthdays" created by Address Book, I would be interested to learn the trick. Otherwise, maybe this will save someone a couple of hours on the phone with Apple technical support.

 

[aresinferno]

Hello. I am not entirely sure of the problem but I do know of a potential cause. However in order to help I may need some more information.

When you open the calendar app on the iPhone, there should be a button in the top left corner to select which calendars you want to use. When you press this, does it show different groups of calendars. For example you could have iTunes synced calendars from your mac, MobileMe calendars, Exchange calendars and another section called other.

Do you have these different sections at all and is the second calendar separate from the original calendar?

If it is in the same section then you may want to ignore whatever else I say. However since it is not an exact duplicate since it is empty it could be a different problem than you think.

One possibility is that you are syncing some kind of calendar through iTunes. This would show up as from my mac.

The second and most likely is that the second calendar is under a heading of other and is a new feature of iOS 4 where your contacts birthdays are added to a special calendar that contains them all.

 

[d21mike]

I keep one calendar on iCal and MobileMe title "Birthdays" and enter birthdays into iCal in that calendar;

You may want to consider getting ride of this and putting all of you Birthday Entries into your Address/Contact List. iCal/MobileMe/iOS4 now all have a Subscription Calendar Called Birthdays (I wish they would also add Anniversaries) which is maintained automatically from your Address/Contact List. If you do not want to do this then you can uncheck it and they will not display in your actual calendar display. For me the Contact maintenance works great. Also, Windows Live Calendar and Google Calendar have the same feature so if you share you Contacts you automatically get the Birthday Calendar. Google actually supports your Anniverary Dates the same way.

 

[Kahalu'u Bob]

Thanks. I think you both are right. The new calendar is a feature of iOS 4 and holds the birthdays you enter into Contacts. And it might well be easy to use that feature, but I've already spent a lot of time entering the information into iCal over the years, and don't want to do it all again.

So, I'm just stuck with two Calendars in iCal each named "Birthdays"! I can live with that, now that I know what it is. Thanks!

 

[gujamin]

I'm having the duplicate calendar issue and the problem is I can't delete the duplicate calendars! I have 15 birthday calendars and I can't delete any of them, just hide them.

 

[Mal]

gujamin, if you hit the edit button at the top left, do they not get a small remove button next to them?

jW

 

[gujamin]

gujamin, if you hit the edit button at the top left, do they not get a small remove button next to them?

jW

Nope I wish it did!

 

[soundmanbrad]

I found a solution to the multiple birthday calendars...

Hey guys,

I tried deleting the contents of /var/mobile/Library/Calendar after removing all my mail and calendar accounts and it fixed the problem. I don't know if it is necessary to remove the mail accounts first, but I don't think it is. I wrote a more detailed set of instructions at,

http://www.themathpowers.com/drupal/content/fix-multiple-birthday-calendars-iphone-or-ipad

Let me know how it works. You of course, need to be jailbroken to do this.

Cheers,

Brad

 

[Bonding for Today]

I was able to finally get rid of the duplicate Birthday calendars the following way.

1. Turn off all calendars on your iOS device in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Create a complete backup of your iOS device on your computer with iTunes.
3. Make a copy of the backup folder
4. Download and install iBackupbot on your computer
5. Delete the Calendar folder and all Calendar items out of the backup as shown in the screenshots.

6. Reset your iOS device and use the edited backup to restore it.