Android calendar disappeared :(

[jocke4u]

Hi,

I have a bit of strange problem...or my mum has.

She bought a Samsung S20 a while ago and is happy with it and leaving Samsung S5 Neo. However she noticed that quite some calendar events didn't appear on the new phone and I suspected she had stored it in phone and not on the Google account.

They booted the old phone at home (no internet connectivity) and the event was still there.

Today she visited me to get some help and my idea was to export the phone's calendar events to ICS file and then import it to Google Calendar. In order to do that I needed Calendar import/export app and therefore internet connectivity needed.

When launching the app there were very few events on the old Phone's calendar and in the normal calendar app I couldn't find the old events anymore?!?

Both phones are using the same Google Account.

She had the "automatically restore" feature enabled. She got the newly added Google events (as expected) - but should that wipe the local phone calendar??

Checking Google Drive and I can only see the new S20 phone and not S5.

Is it any way to get the old events back? Any possible way forward?

Regards Joacim

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! On the S5 Neo, select one of the events in question and look at its details. What account does it say it's saved to? Phone account? Samsung account?

 

[jocke4u]

Welcome to Android Central! On the S5 Neo, select one of the events in question and look at its details. What account does it say it's saved to? Phone account? Samsung account?

After I connected it to WiFi to install Calendar import/export for exporting ICS file(s) using https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sufficientlysecure.ical&hl=en&gl=US I did so for all calendars but the the events are not there anymore.

So I get the feeling that the S5 got some sort of restore when it connected to the WiFi?!?

Really annoying

 

[B. Diddy]

If you open the Calendar app on the S5 Neo and you can't find any events there any more, then it will probably be hard to figure out what happened to them. Go through the calendar accounts in that phone's Calendar app and make sure they're all set to display (i.e., not be hidden), and that they're also syncing.

 

[jocke4u]

For some f**king reason the events popped up in Google Calendar ...they were not there before so I was quick to do an export of them. Now I need them to be synched to the phone. I have her old phone here and it seems that they aren't synched more than one year back.

How can I sync the full calendar?

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't think the Google Calendar app can fully sync every single event in a calendar all the way back in time indefinitely. There's a limit, which I think is based on the number of events (rather than the number of days). For example, I use Google Calendar to schedule my work group's hospital shifts, where each day has 4-6 events representing a person's shift. I've been doing this since 2001, and can certainly access that on the Calendar website on desktop Chrome, but on my phone, it only goes back to around mid-2020.

Where did you find the events you were looking for -- on the old phone's Google Calendar app, or somewhere else? If you found them on the old phone, what account were those events saved to? If it was a Google Calendar account, then they should be accessible on the Google Calendar site (and they should also sync to whatever device is logged into that account).

 

[jocke4u]

I can understand that Android phone doesn't sync everything and as it looks it is 12 months. Since I got the events back into Google Account - I made a complete export as a backup. I resetted her old Samsung and created a new Google account and it synched to August 14th just fine.

I can clearly see in her Google account events back to July 2018 and since she is only using the mobile phone and not computer it would be great to be able to sync "down" the events to the phone.

As for the missing events, I tried to explore the file system etc in order to locate and backup etc. But I didn't get any success in that....but last evening before I was going to leave my house I noticed a lot more events in her Google account (from my computer) which was great. I directly made am export of them.

Since she is using her Google calendar as a diary very often - started before my sister (her daughter) got cancer and later passed away. So there are a lot of sentimental notes in the calendar that she would like to access and read form time to another. However - I - am mostly happy that the event are back into calendar.

I don't actually have a clue what have happened. Seems just strange - but happy I have the ICS file has backup.

Now I just want to push the events to her phone so she can access them and enter new ones (to recent date).

 

[jocke4u]

I would prefer to have the events being synched from Google to her phone but since I now have the events as ICS file I might be able to import them.
In the old days I know I could select on how long time I would like to sync back...

 

[B. Diddy]

Let me make sure I'm understanding correctly -- if you look at your mother's Google Calendar website on a computer browser, you can see all events as far back as she entered them, but on the phone, you can only see back to August 14, 2021?

You said you created a new Google account -- is there a reason you did that? A new Google account wouldn't sync the events from her old Google account.

 

[jocke4u]

Let me make sure I'm understanding correctly -- if you look at your mother's Google Calendar website on a computer browser, you can see all events as far back as she entered them, but on the phone, you can only see back to August 14, 2021?

Correct but sorry it is 2020 so I mean ~12 months!

You said you created a new Google account -- is there a reason you did that? A new Google account wouldn't sync the events from her old Google account.

No, maybe I was unclear ...she has ONE Google Account XYZ.... he new new phone is at her place (100km away) but I have her old phone here. So I cleared the accounts on that old phone.
Then I connected that phone to her existing Google Account and it synched ~12 months back.

Thanks for your support B. Diddy

 

[B. Diddy]

Ah, I see. Then I think it's what I mentioned before -- the Google Calendar app won't necessarily sync every single event in the past. It'll go back only a certain amount of time, which I think might be based on the number of total events it's syncing.

To see prior events on the phone, you'd probably have to go to the Google Calendar website on the mobile browser (calendar.google.com).

 

[jocke4u]

I think In can solve it for my mum, export the Google Calendar to ICS file and then import it to the phone's calendar (not Google Calendar). Then she can access the old entries also. Maybe this has to be done once per year and I can live with that to keep mum quite and happy