Solution to the Android/Google Calendar "old event" problem!
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 may be 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!)
Have a safe and productive 2011.
