iCloud repeatedly deleting all my events, even after a restore

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iCloud repeatedly deleting all my events, even after a restore

Yesterday iCloud deleted all of my calendars, and all my events (and also reminders), replacing them with two empty calendars named Home and Work. I have both Time Machine and Carbon Copy backups; I’ve restored the ~/Library/Calendars/ directory five times. Each time, my all my events are again deleted within a minute or so, unless I turn off all internet connectivity (even after disabling Refresh Calendars.)

The “Restore your calendars and events on iCloud.com” is unusable, since https://www.icloud.com/recovery/ improperly listed No Archives for Calendars, and also Bookmarks and Files. (There are ten archives listed for Contacts.)

Sometimes after restoring, I get crash dialogs for /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CalendarDaemon.framework/Support/calaccessd and DataAccess.framework/Support/dataaccessd.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Mar 28, 2025 10:00 AM

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Answer 1

May 21, 2025 3:31 PM in response to Flash Sheridan

But the events don’t seem to show up on either the secondary Mac (even after View/Refresh Calendars) or iCloud via Safari.

Some events are now visible, but the number of events is still too low, 847 of 997. Exporting the two calendars as .ics, sorting the files in BBEdit, and diffing, showed that some of the omissions are significant (e.g. “10/22/10 Open Mobile and Social Computing Prof. Monica Lam”). So it’s not just that empty and duplicate items are filtered out by the export/import process. The obvious explanation is that Apple Calendar import+sync is buggy in a way that BusyCal is not, but I don’t have enough data points to exclude coincidence.

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Answer 2

Jun 23, 2025 3:22 PM in response to Flash Sheridan

There‘s an independent bug in Apple’s Calendar app Export as .ics. When I compare an older calendar with a newer on (sorted in BBEdit and diffed in BeyondCompare), a lot of events seem to be missing in the new one. Searching for supposedly missing text (e.g. “Imagine Harder”) in Apple’s app usually shows the event. A spot-check of an export from Busy Call showed the missing text, so this is another case where Apple’s quality assurance is inferior to Busy Mac’s.

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Answer 3

Jul 29, 2025 10:56 AM in response to Flash Sheridan

DeepSeek repeatedly failed on a similar script for BusyCal, but refused to acknowledge it. BusyCal officially does not support AppleScript, though the app has an AppleScript dictionary. ChatGPT-4o eventually admitted failure:

The BusyCal AppleScript dictionary is misleading, and even though it defines a command like:

applescript
CopyEdit
fetch calendar events from <date> to <date>

…it does not actually compile in standard AppleScript syntax, and many users have found it broken or non-functional despite being documented.

Summary: BusyCal AppleScript Event Access Is Broken

every event of calendar → ❌ not supported
events between X and Y → ❌ causes syntax error
fetch calendar events from X to Y → ❌ declared in dictionary, but does not compile

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Answer 4

Aug 4, 2025 3:18 PM in response to Flash_Sheridan2

Importing a different .ics file from  Cal to BusyCal seemed to create duplicates in BusyCal. Before the import, Cal on my main machine reported 499 events, with only one in BusyCal, and 27 in Cal on my secondary Mac. After the import, List View in BusyCal reported 1600 events (1471 after removing duplicates), and Cal reported 968, with 495 in Cal on my secondary Mac.

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Answer 5

Jun 4, 2025 10:00 AM in response to tygb

This is clearly a server problem.

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Answer 6

Jul 22, 2025 1:59 PM in response to Flash Sheridan

More discussion at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/480532/3641

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Answer 7

Jul 30, 2025 2:58 PM in response to Flash_Sheridan2

That gave, on the remote Mac, somewhat different missing events, e.g. 8/10/18 1:05pm. 1076 total on main Mac; remote Mac, first method 1069, second 1065.

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iCloud repeatedly deleting all my events, even after a restore

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