If your iCloud calendar or contact data isn’t syncing between your devices, an important troubleshooting step is to figure out where the bottleneck is. What I usually do is add a test contact (for example) to my Mac and one to my iPhone, and then I log on to iCloud.com with my Apple ID to see which contact arrives. Whichever one doesn’t appear identifies the device that’s the culprit!
In my experience, though, the problem is almost always with iOS, and if that seems to be the case for you, there’s a quick trick you can try to get things running smoothly again. It’s a way to force your calendars or contacts to refresh themselves, and it’s so quick! You don’t even have to restart any devices, and whoo-hoo to that!
So to refresh your iCloud calendars, here’s what you’ll do. Open the Calendar app on your iOS device, and then touch the “Calendars” button at the bottom.
When you get to your calendars, drag down on the list and release. You should see a small icon appear at the top which’ll spin for a moment or two (if it disappears immediately, be sure you’re dragging down far enough).
That’s it! After the gear stops spinning, go out and check to see if the events you’re expecting have shown up.
The process is very similar for the Contacts app. Open that, and then tap “Groups” at the top-left. If you don’t see the “Groups” button, you might need to first select “All Contacts” in the upper-left to go back out to the main list view.
Once you’re looking at your groups, do the same thing that you did in the Calendar app—drag down on the list until you see the spinning icon.
Then go search for your previously unsynced contacts.
You shouldn’t have to take these steps very often (and if you do, it could indicate that the issue needs further troubleshooting), but if you’re having problems with syncing every now and again, this could be just the ticket!
Comments
I have to do this constantly to update my iPhone 5s iOS 8 calendar. Changes made on my iPad or Mac Calendar won’t show on the iPhone until I do. If I create a new event on the iPhone, it then updates all events and calendars automatically once. Obviously something else is broken (could it be iOS 8 itself? nah? Apple wouldn’t release buggy software!). It is VERY annoying to get bogus alerts on my iPhone for events that have been deleted or changed on my Mac/iPad.
Another iOS 8 calendar annoyance (bug? in Apple software?) is that when an event is deleted on the iPhone, the view changes from List view to Month view. I have to tap on the current date to return to List view.
I seldom have this problem but it showed up in a weird way yesterday.
There was a “badge” (red circle with count of “1”) on Calendar in my iOS 8 iPhone, but nothing showed up as an invitation or change. So it reached the iPhone - but not fully. Weird.
I occasionally have a synch problems with photos. I wish that there was a force synch button.
Hey Mike,
It might be time to take some more drastic steps. Have you tried logging out of your iCloud account on your iPhone and then logging back in? If not, that would be a good place to start—but be sure that you’ve backed up your important iCloud data first (instructions are here: http://support.apple.com/HT204055).
If that doesn’t help, I would consider restoring my device if I were you. Sorry you’re having trouble. :(
—Melissa
Hello,
Have you ever had a problem that iCloud restores a contact that is not on your phone anymore… and it restores with someone else name
thanks
Thank you! That completely fixed the non sync bw my Mac and my iPhone. It had never happened before and hopefully, it will not happen again.
If you are a user who uses iDevices such as iPhone or iCloud and happen to be an Outlook user. I could suggest these users to have a look at EVO Collaborator.
Its an Outlook add-in that allows you to establish a reliable two way sync between iCloud and Outlook. Whatever you change in your iCloud or Outlook will be reflected on the other accounts.
This way you will always be up to date with your appointments and mails
Here is a blogpost on its use : http://outlookandmacosxserver.blogspot.com/2014/10/synchronize-iclouds-contacts-and.html
Melissa, you made my day!
Melissa, great! Thanks a million times!
Greetings from Budapest.
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