Duplicate Calendar Entries after Setting up iCloud

Question

I just installed iOS 5 on my iPhone, and upgraded to the latest and greatest OS X Lion on my iMac to use iCloud. Unfortunately, it appears to have created duplicate entries for all of my calendar entries. Rather than syncing my existing iCal calendars, it looks like it created all new 'iCloud' versions of those same calendars so I have double of everything. (For example, before I had 'Home' and 'Work', etc. now I have 'iCloud Home' and 'iCloud Work') This makes no sense to me...am I just supposed to delete my old calendars and just go with the iCloud ones now? Why wouldn't they automatically do that for you if that's the case? Not very intuitive. Has anyone else experienced this problem?
Additionally, from what I can tell, if I create a new entry under one of the iCloud calendars, it WILL show up on my iPhone. However, on my iPhone, I DO NOT have those same 'iCloud Home' calendars listed, just one that says 'All iCloud'. Unfortunately, that means I can't create a new calendar entry that syncs with iCloud. If I create an entry under 'Work' on my iPhone, it DOES NOT sync with iCloud and show up on iCal on my Mac. There is no way this is correct behavior, as that is one of the main benefits of syncinc calendars.
Does anyone have any solutions for these issues? Thank you.

Answer 1

Okay, got it sorted; hopefully this will help others out.
My situation: calendars were working fine on my Mac, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iCloud up until Friday evening when I activated my new 4S.  Then all heck broke loose, and my calendar events started triplicating (quadrupling, in some cases).  The calendars themselves did not, just the events.  I believe what caused it is that I restored my 4S from a backup of my 3GS, and didn't turn off iCloud on the 3GS before doing so.  So the system got confused and started replicating things like mad.  Then I remembered Time Machine!
Here's the solution:
1. Backup jacked-up calendars on your Mac (just in case, you can always go back and manually fix them...gag).
2. Turn off iCloud syncing on your devices (all of them), including your Mac; this will prompt you to delete the data on the devices, and that's okay (take a deep breath...)
3. You should now have no calendar data on any device; it should only reside out on iCloud; verify this by logging into the site and checking
4. In Finder, navigate to <you_user_dir>/Library and make sure you have a Calendars folder (hold Option and click the Go menu and you'll see it the Library folder...they hid it in Lion); don't open the folder, just make sure it's there
5. From the Library folder, enter Time Machine and select a date you know was working (in my case, I had to go back to before Wednesday to make sure iCloud was not in use on my machine at the time, you might have to do the same, depending on when you started using iCloud)
6. Click the magic Restore button in the lower right-hand corner; you'll be fast-forwarded to the same folder in the present, and asked if you want to replace or keep the duplicate items; choose Replace
7. After the copy is done, open iCal; you should see all your events restored to their normal glory
8. Log into the iCloud.com website and nuke all of your calendars; yes, you read that right, kill them all...or you'll be back at square one. Because you have to have at least one calendar, I created one called "junk" and left it in there temporarily
9. Back on your Mac desktop, go to System Preferences and turn on Calendars in the iCloud control panel; if you have iCal open still, you might have a freak-out moment where everything disappears (I did...).  Don't panic, this is normal; if you look at the website, you'll see your calendars start appearing there, and shortly the same will hold true for iCal on your Mac
10. Once you've confirmed that everything looks spiffy, delete the "junk" folder on iCloud.com
11. One device at a time (I did my 4S first, then my iPad 2), turn on iCloud for Calendar syncing; just to be careful, let each device finish updating before you turn on the next (it probably doesn't matter, but I'm paranoid at this point).
12. Voila, you should now have all calendars in sync across all your devices, your Mac, and iCloud.com
Hopefully this helps some people out; it's the only way I could get it to work and restore my calendars back to a useable state.
Take care!