All but one event lost in Google Calendar on VS500

[Android Central Question]

To preface, this isn't the first time this has happened, so I've set up to auto backup to the Gmail/Google Drive account this phone (and the one before it) are set to. The backup from one hour before I noticed this issue is there but even though I can see it in my Drive on both PC and phone, there's no button to "restore from this backup," only to delete it.

Just... why? What am I missing here?

Back to the main problem: Yesterday, my calendar on my phone was fine. It has a TON of events in it because I'm chronically ill and have many doctor appointments, plus I play quite a lot of video games with date-specific events, and also reminders to do various miscellaneous things.

About 1 hour ago, I went to change an event and noticed that everything was gone. Looking online for solutions, I saw "Go to your Google Calendar on the PC to see if the events are there and/or if they're in the 'Deleted' folder," and went there. Only a single event was on that calendar - a flight back to home in 8 hours. Everything else was gone.
I followed other tips and tricks, deleting the app's cache, restarting the phone, and among other things, looking when the last backup of my settings/app data was.

Which brings me back to why I can't restore anything at all. I checked which calendars were syncing and apparently it was syncing all of my Google accounts, and every account had a check in the box next to it.

So if all my accounts were syncing fine, and I have a backup, why can't I do anything with it, and why did the calendar delete itself except for one event, in the first place?

The first time this happened, the Verizon employee chalked it up to a hopeless bug and that the data was just gone, because I didn't have any backups. I can't turn off auto-sync now to stop it from syncing the blank calendar, or it forces me to remove all Google Drive accounts from the phone, for some reason.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Sorry for the basic question, but are you certain you were entering the events into your Google Calendar account? Could they have been going to the local Phone account instead (which doesn't sync anywhere)? Do you recall seeing your events sync immediately when you looked at your Google Calendar website on your computer?

 

[TheBananasaurus]

@B. Diddy
Sorry, OP here, I hadn't made an account yet so I can't reply to your answer/question for some reason, nor do I know how mentions work on here.
At any rate, the calendar itself was, by default, placed under my Google-based apps on the phone (Google Drive, Gmail, Google Play, Google Calendar, etc,) so I suppose I'm not entirely sure if the app is strictly native to the phone. I AM, however, certain that it was syncing up to my Google Calendars everywhere else, however, if only because it wouldn't have shown the event of today's flight on the calendar. That's what's extremely odd - the first time this happened, I lost EVERYTHING, as if it had been a factory restore despite my contacts, texts, and everything else still remaining. THIS time, it erased everything except for ONE event. Why would it single it out?
Now, after posting this question, my father noticed some of his own calendar events and even his texts were missing, and I asked him if he'd recently done the update and had to re-sign in to the Google account he uses. He did, which makes me think this might have been an issue with our phones (he's one model behind mine) and the new OS update causing some sort of syncing-data-loss glitch. Could that be true? And if so (or even if not), what would be my next steps?

 

[B. Diddy]

First things first -- if you go to calendar.google.com on your computer browser, are all of the events you lost on the phone still visible? If so, then on the phone, go to Settings>Accounts>Google, and make sure the sync toggle switch for Google Calendar is turned on.

If it is turned on, then in the Google Calendar app, tap Menu>Settings, and then select any of the calendars listed under your Google account. Is the Sync toggle turned on there? It's possible for secondary calendar labels that you create to be unsynced (although the main Events calendar will always sync).

 

[TheBananasaurus]

@B. Diddy
I did that as the first step, actually, as quoted from my original post:
"Looking online for solutions, I saw "Go to your Google Calendar on the PC to see if the events are there and/or if they're in the 'Deleted' folder," and went there. Only a single event was on that calendar - a flight back to home in 8 hours. Everything else was gone."
I also did that sync check as the second step. I'd turned on syncing long ago: " I checked which calendars were syncing and apparently it was syncing all of my Google accounts, and every account had a check in the box next to it."
In both the mobile app and the computer version, syncing had already been turned on for my main Google account AND for all the others, though I never use any other accounts for my calendar besides my main one, and the only program I use is the mobile Google Calendar.

 

[methodman89]

Most likely, one of the devices you are syncing has , or had , nothing but your flight info, and it’s syncing did what you are experiencing. The flight may also still have been listed if your settings are such that it will pull the flight info from gmail and put it on your schedule. How many devices are you syncing to the same account?

 

[B. Diddy]

@B. Diddy
I did that as the first step, actually, as quoted from my original post:
"Looking online for solutions, I saw "Go to your Google Calendar on the PC to see if the events are there and/or if they're in the 'Deleted' folder," and went there. Only a single event was on that calendar - a flight back to home in 8 hours. Everything else was gone."
I also did that sync check as the second step. I'd turned on syncing long ago: " I checked which calendars were syncing and apparently it was syncing all of my Google accounts, and every account had a check in the box next to it."
In both the mobile app and the computer version, syncing had already been turned on for my main Google account AND for all the others, though I never use any other accounts for my calendar besides my main one, and the only program I use is the mobile Google Calendar.

Oh, sorry about that -- I thought I had read your post more carefully than that.:-\

This may also be elementary, but let me just check -- are you certain all of those missing events were in fact saved to your Google Calendar account? When you enter an event directly from the phone, the default account is often the "Phone Account" (and not your Google account), and the Phone Account doesn't sync anywhere. So if those events were entered to the Phone Account, and then something glitched with those records, then that could explain why they're nowhere to be seen.

If, before this happened, you could see all of those events on both the phone and the web-based Google Calendar display on your computer, then the events were in fact saved to the Google account. But I'm asking this on the off chance that you've exclusively been looking on your phone, and then checked the Google Calendar web interface only after you lost the events, assuming that they would've been synced there.

 

[TheBananasaurus]

@methodman89
See, that's what's weird - I never use any other device for my Calendar events. Ever. The only reason I went to check if it was synced to my Google account on my computer was because someone suggested I look there. However, I don't actually use that. Just the app in my phone. After speaking with Verizon, Google, and LG, it seems that the app in question was the native app on my phone, not the actual Google Calendar app. THAT is the part I was mistaken on, only because it said it was syncing to my Google accounts every time I plugged it into my laptop to charge. So, yes, @B. Diddy you are correct in that I wasn't used the Google Calendar app on my phone, however, it WAS syncing up to my Google Calendars in general.
I can understand if everything was deleted - that would make sense, since the recent update apparently deleted and re-added my Google account to the phone - but why was there still ONE event left? Just... random chance? Why had that event synced and stayed synced, but the rest were lost?

 

[TheBananasaurus]

At this point I'm close to calling it a lost cause and just downloading the actual Google Calendar app. I have NO idea if that will actually prevent this issue from recurring in the future.

 

[B. Diddy]

It probably wouldn't have mattered if you had the actual Google Calendar app installed, because even the Google Calendar app might initially set the Phone Account calendar as the default to save to. It's just something you have to be aware of -- I always thought that Google or the phone manufacturer should show a clear warning when you first save an event to the Phone Account calendar that it doesn't sync anywhere.

The one event that does show up might have been automatically placed by Google -- it could be based on an email you got for the upcoming flight, and then the event gets added automatically to your Google Calendar.

To prevent this from happening again in the future, make a habit of checking and double-checking that a new event you're entering is going to one of your Google Calendars, not the Phone Account calendar.

 

[TheBananasaurus]

@B. Diddy
Ah, that might be what happened, since I received an e-mail about the flight on another Gmail account. What I don't understand is that THAT account was not the one that still had the event on it when I went to check Google Calendars on my laptop.
And also, the event was typed exactly as I'd typed it myself, not as if it had been automatically recorded. I had typed "Flight Back Home at <insert time of flight>" and that is what is still showing up.
Oh well. I downloaded the actual Google Calendar app and will make sure to frequently double check everything. It's just kind of ridiculous that I/we have to do this in the first place.
I moved the phone's native calendar app the third screen that I never even use.
Thanks for trying, guys. I'm sorry there wasn't a fix and that this is the SECOND time it happened. Verizon sent me to Google, Google sent me to LG, LG sent me back to Google, and Google sent me back to LG. All of them just kept saying "it's not my expertise" or "we can't access that information." Just... WHO can, then?!
Ugh.

 

[B. Diddy]

Sorry you had to go through that hassle.:-\ One of the things I like about Pixels is that there's no such thing as a Phone Account calendar!