Duplicate birthday subscriptions

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion. While on Lion, I started using iCloud for the Contacts and Calendar and things seemed to work properly after this. A few of my calendar entries have birthdays and I had subscribed in Calendar to Birthdays. That too seemed to work normally. After upgrading to Mountain Lion, these birthdays show up in duplicate on the Calendar. Apparently, I still have Contacts entries both in iCloud and On My Mac. These show up as "linked cards". Contacts seems to resolve the duplicate entries so they show up as one contact, but Calendar does not do this properly and they show up as duplicate birthdays. Any suggestions other than deleting the On My Mac entry for these contacts?

OK, I deleted the On My Mac and kept just the iCloud contacts. That worked kinda, except that I just had "birthday" listed for the deleted contacts that were on my Mac along with the another entry with that person's name and "Birthday". So I deleted contacts, reinstalled them from iCloud, and then just had "birthday" listed twice on those dates for where the birthday listings used to be, no names.
I deleted the Birthday's subscription, and added it back in. Now I have no birthdays showing up, even though they're back in Contacts.
Sigh.

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Duplicate Birthday entries in iCal

Dear forum
when creating contatcs with birthdays and adding them to an exchange address book, the calendar entries for the birthdays show up twice in iCal.
After testing several sceanrios, it seems that iCal reads from "All Contacts" instead of "Contacts On My Mac" contacts only.
Is there a fix for that ? It worked fine before upgrading to 10.8.

I did some further research and it seems to be a bug/feature in den 10.8 Version.
Apparently the address book API returns two entries for linked cards.
There are some workarounds available in the internet for programmers needing to acces the address book without duplicate entries, but the original problem of the birthday subscription showing 2 entries for the same birthday of the same contact due to the contact being shared between two services (in my case local and MS Exchange server in other cases local and icloud) still exists. The support article does not solve the problem.
Any ideas how to solve this ? Thanks.

Re: duplicate Birthdays in iCal since using iCloud

I don't know what to do...There's no way to "uncheck" the birthdays in your iCal that are now coming from both my contacts on my Mac AND on from iCloud.

The problem seems to be due to the birthday subscription using Address Book on the Mac. If Address Book has been linked to iCloud (Contacts), then there are two copies of each contact in the Mac address book - one from iCloud and one on the Mac. So each of these two copies gets a birthday entry in iCal on the Mac (though not on the Cloud, or even on ios devices). You can verify this by looking at the Mac Address Book groups and see you have two address accounts. One way to solve this is to get rid of the iCloud address book on the Mac, but that defeats the purpose of the iCloud. If there was some way to merge the iCloud and Mac contact accounts on the Mac, the problem would go away.
So I think the route problem is in Address Book - because it's a nuisance to have duplicate names there (which problem doesn't exist on ios devices). A partial solution would be to change iCal so that the birthday function can detect duplicates and not post both.
Any actual workarounds or solutions from Apple are welcomed.
After I wrote the above I looked at the "duplicate contacts" discussion (https://discussions.apple.com/message/16422473#16422473). A couple of the responses there suggest manually deleting all the "On My Mac" addresses, leaving only the iCloud contacts.

How to Delete Duplicate Birthdays in iCloud?

While the birthdays are shown properly on my iPhone, there are duplicate records in iCloud. I guess this might be due to revisions to the contact information, or synchronization of two (or even more) sets of contact information with iCloud by mistake. For the latter, I have already removed the duplicate set of contact information from both my iPhone and iCloud. However, there are still duplicate birthday records in iCloud as shown in the attached picture. When I attempted to delete the duplicate birthdays, a message saying that this is a read-only information and can't be edited would display.
I should be grateful for other users' advice on how to resolve the problem. Advice on how to distinguish which of the duplicate records is associated with the existing contact and hence should be retained, and which is/are associated with old records and can be deleted would also be highly appreciated. Thank you very much.

Hey fchengwy,
Thanks for the question. I understand you are having issues with your Birthday calendar in iCloud, specifically duplicate events. The following article addresses Birthday calendar troubleshooting, and steps to resolve any duplicate entries:
iCloud: Advanced Calendar and iCal troubleshooting
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4337
To clean up issues related to manually adding birthdays to a calendar in Calendar (or iCal):
1. If you already have the Birthdays Calendar enabled, deselect it in the Calendars list in Calendar (or iCal).
2. Search Calendar (or iCal) by entering "birthday" (without the quotes) in the Search dialog in the top-right corner of the Calendar (or iCal) window.
3. Sort the Search results by title, so they are easier to analyze.
4. Locate any birthdays that are returned in the Search results that are not contained in a Holidays Calendar (such as John F. Kennedy's Birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, and so on).
5. For each non-Holidays birthday returned, decide if you want to keep it. If so, open Contacts (or Address Book) and verify that you have a Contact for the individual. Enter the birthday information for that person in Contacts (or Address Book). For more information about updating Contacts (or Address Book) fields, see this article.
6. After verifying that the birthday is entered in Contacts (or Address Book), remove any birthday events not stored in the Birthdays or Holidays calendars by selecting them and choosing Delete from the Edit menu.
Note: You can select consecutive items by holding down the Shift key while selecting them. You can select non-consecutive items by holding down the Command key while selecting them.
After cleaning up any manually added birthdays, you can enable or re-enable the Birthdays Calendar. To enable the Birthdays Calendar for the first time, open Calendar (or iCal) > Preferences and select the checkbox next to Show Birthday's Calendar. If you temporarily hid the Birthdays Calendar as per the instructions above, you can re-enable it by selecting the checkbox for it in the Calendar List.
Thanks,
Matt M.

Can you edit or add a custom event to contacts to show in Birthday Subscription calendar

I want to modfy Birthday subscription calendar to include custom events that appear in my Contacts. Is there a way to do this?
Or how can I create a new subscription calendar to be published in my iCloud acct pulling the custom events from Contacts?

You have some contacts with more than one birthday?
To add a custom label for a date, select Edit for an existing contact. Select Add Field. Select Date. Scroll up with the Info window above the date selection and select Other for the new date selection. Select Add Custom Label and then select this label for the new date field for the contact.
As far as linking dates with multiple contacts, the answer is no to that.

TS3999 how to remove duplicate Birthday entries in icloud on my PC

how to remove duplicate Birthday entries in icloud on my PC
The Birthday entries on my iPad are ok.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
The following article(s) may help you.
Resolving duplicate calendars

How can I get rid of duplicate birthdays in icloud Calendar, especially when there are no Contacts in the iCloud? Case ID: 365381395

How can I get rid of duplicate birthdays in icloud Calendar, especially when there are no Contacts in the iCloud? Case ID: 365381395

Found the answer myself while helping to set up iPhone. It is simple when you know how. Before signing out of iCloud to sign in again and restore the link to Photo Stream I had opted to copy iCloud contacts to the Mac. When I signed in again this created two iCloud views which can be seen in Contacts Preferences. I just disabled one of them. Not brave enough to attempt removal but I gues this would work too.

Duplicate birthday in my iphone which not in my icloud

I'm using iphone 5 in iOS 7.1.1.
I notice in my iphone calendar there have duplicate on birthday. I had check my icloud do not have duplicate birthday which show in iCloud is empty. I also have check my contact list do not have any duplicate..... Can help on this?

Managed to solve it. Went to a contact with a "duplicate birthday". Made a note of the birthday. Deleted the birthday. Saved the contact. Reentered the birthday. Saved the contact.

ICal data suddenly gone and iCal stuck on birthday subscription

I am on OSX 10.8.4 - iCal data suddenly gone and iCal stuck on birthday subscription - when trying to create events, or enter any data - the following prompt comes up "You can't add or change events on the Birthdays Calendar". I can not get "off" the Birthday Calendar - I can no longer access any of the old data or use iCal at all.
- Any thoughts? Suggestions?

I have a similar problem. I have been using MobileMe to sync my MacBook Pro and my iPhone 4. I noticed on Friday morning that all data prior to 6 months ago (23 Apr 2010/Fri) is gone, except for recurring appts (birthdays, mainly). MobileMe may have had something to do with it, but I never log on to the site, and I had not updated my MobileMe calendar online (or iCal on my laptop, either, for that matter). And, I also don't know exactly when I lost all this data, either, which of course doesn't help either the troubleshooting or the recovery processes.
I confirmed that all my settings (laptop, iPhone, iTunes, MobileMe online) were all set to keep all events forever and to sync all events. As part of checking all this, I got the message about updating my MobileMe calendar, which I did. I didn't lose any additional data. I am diligent about all updates, but if I had realized I was switching from keeping all my calendar data on my laptop to keeping it all on a MobileMe server, I wouldn't have gone ahead.
Anyway, a Genius confirmed that my settings all look good. I went through the Express Lane chat process and am now in touch with a MobileMe Senior Advisor. We'll see. I'm not especially hopeful but will let y'all know how it proceeds.

How do i remove duplicate birthdays on icloud

My Birthday Subscription Calendar on iCloud continues to show multiple birthdays for the same contact records.
Even though I only have one contact record per person with one birthday entry for them - on the birthday calendar, their birthday appears two and three times.
How do I resolve this?
Then when I sync to OutLook 2010 - I can not get any of the birthdays to appear. The birthday subscription calendar does not sync - how do I fix this?

Same here. Did you fix it?

HT2513 I keep getting duplicate Birthday entries in Ical with only one date/entry in the Contacts App. Please help?

I need help deleting one of the duplicate birthdays in Ical on my Macbook Pro?
Sam

What I found was that you have to go all or nothing. I don't have any personal iDevices (just an iPad through work) so the simple solution was to turn off Contact syncing for iCloud. I'm guessing you'll need to remove all your local contacts or, the more tedious solution, remove the birthdays from all the local contacts. As you surmised, iCal seems to use the whole address book, and can't be just a subset of contacts.

Duplicate Birthday Calendars

My iphone duplicates the birthday entries on the calendar. The iPhone info tab in iTunes seems to have the option to synch Birthdays from the calendar even after i deselect all options to synch birthdays. *Is there a way to delete the Birthdays option from the iTunes:iPhone:info tab?* If I select the synch Birthdays tab, it puts the Birthdays Calendar on my iphone, but not on my iCal. If I choose to synch Birthdays in iCal I have it on iCal and on the iPhone. There are then two "Birthdays" options to select from the iTunes:iPhone:info tab.

That solution didn't solve the problem for me. I too had Birthdays showing up twice in the "Sync... Selected Calendars" list. What worked for me was disabling syncing of all info in iTunes and .Mac sync, quitting all applications and deleting the following folders:
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/
~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/
The tilde character (~) signifies your user account's home folder. Once I did that, I attempted to resync the info with the iPhone, but I found the contacts, calendars and Mail accounts lists empty as though there was nothing to sync with. So I opened Address Book and tried to sync again and suddenly all the contact groups appeared in the list. Launched iCal and tried to sync again and suddenly all the calendars appeared. Same thing with the mail accounts. Not sure if launching the seperate apps was necessary, iTunes may just have needed a bit of time to rebuild the links to the application data. Everything is working fine again and this time, I don't have duplicate Birthday calendars.
Just as a side note, those folders I deleted I believe contain cached information related to synchronization, and I believe the problem stemmed from corrupt or duplicate information which was resolved by deleting them and forcing iTunes/.mac/Sync Services to rebuild them. There is no important data stored in either folder that won't get recreated by the apps in question, although it's probably a good idea that you do a complete sync of both .mac and your iPods/iPhone before deleting them. In my case, the Mac I was using contained the 'master' databases for all apps, so I didn't hesitate to tell .mac to replace it's contents with the information on my Mac. Proceed with caution if you have multiple Macs that may not be in sync with each other.

HT204150 duplicate birthdays appear in iCal on my MacPro?

I have duplicate birthdays appearing on my Mac in iCal. The first one has the name, the second just had 'Birthday' beside the present icon. So every birthday in my contacts is displayed with this extra icon.

Hi,
I couldn't import ics invitation received by email (in Mail). When I clicked on the ics invitation iCal was opening buy the ics invitation didn't appear.
Reading a few post I realized I could drag the ics invitation from from to iCal and then the invitation appeared into the "Waiting to confirm box" - on the right of the calendar button. By default is tried to sync using the "on my mac" account.
ANSWER:
I wasn't using this account, so I DELETED all my "on my mac" calendars and iCloud calendar is now my default. From now on all my ics invitation are imported into iCal AND they sync flawlessly to my other device (iPhone 5 and iPad 4) and to people sharing this calendar.
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)

Duplicate Birthday Calendar SUBSCRIPTIONS (NOT duplicate reminders/entries)

NOTE:
+This is a DIFFERENT problem than the folks with duplicate iCal entries or duplicate reminders. For that, please either go to http://www.nhoj.co.uk/icaldupedeleter/ to download John Masey's iCal Dupe Deleter Applescript or go to one of the many forums on that topic.+
MY PROB:
Somehow, my *_iCal has hundreds of individual Subscriptions to "Birthdays"._* That is, I have over 800 Subscriptions.
*How can I remove all of them so that I do not have to individually delete them?*
*How can I avoid this in the future?*
I am a MobileMe user and I sync iCal between a PowerBook G4 and an iMac (PowerPC) G5. Both computers now operate on Leopard, but there was a long period where my PowerBook - my primary computer - was on Leopard while my iMac was on Tiger.
I already tried iCal/Preferences/ShowBirthdaysCalendar, <turn off><turn on> (I also tried variations of on/off, off/on, on/close window, off/close window, etc.)
+Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope.+
Message was edited by: WBaggins

Why not post in the iCal forum area?
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=166

Multiple Birthday SUBSCRIPTIONS (NOT duplicate reminders/entries)

My iCal has hundreds of individual Subscriptions to "Birthdays".
NOTE:
+This is a DIFFERENT problem than the folks with duplicate iCal entries or duplicate reminders. For that, please either download John Masey's iCal Dupe Deleter Applescript at http://www.nhoj.co.uk/icaldupedeleter/ or go to one of the many forums on that topic.+
MY PROB:
Somehow, my *_iCal has hundreds of individual Subscriptions to "Birthdays"._* That is, I have over 800 Subscriptions in my iCal's left-hand column, listed under "Subscriptions".
*How can I remove all of them so that I do not have to individually delete them?*
*How can I avoid this in the future?*
I already tried iCal/Preferences/ShowBirthdaysCalendar, <turn off><turn on> (I also tried variations of on/off, off/on, on/close window, off/close window, etc.)
I am a MobileMe user and I sync iCal between a PowerBook G4 and an iMac (PowerPC) G5. Both computers now operate on Leopard, but there was a long period where my PowerBook - my primary computer - was on Leopard while my iMac was on Tiger.
+Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope.+

Hi WBaggins,
Have you tried backing up, then restoring your iCal database? The import back into iCal should clean up the data.
In iCal go to the File menu and select 'Back up iCal...'. Save the file to your Desktop. In the Finder double click the backup (.icbu) file. iCal will ask if you're sure. It may also ask if you want to push the changes to MobileMe - say yes. Now wait.... how long depends on the number of events etc. you have but a few minutes is average.
Let me know how it goes.
Best wishes
John M

Duplicate birthday subscriptions

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