ICal Alarms Unreliable

Hello,
After months and months of experimenting and researching how to make iCal alarms more reliable I am at my whits end with it all. Things work, then they don't, or they never work, or the popup occurs but I don't get the email or vice versa or my ipod reminds me but my mac does not I could go on and on but I can't understand why I need to spend hours and hours fighting with software to make sure its performing a core function. I am missing meetings and reminders to perform critical actions. I was hopeful that Snow leopard would fix everything but alas it has not. I sync through Mobile Me by the way.
Any advice from anyone? I am so busy I cannot do without a calendar and a helpful reminder system that I can rely on, but just trying to babysit iCal all day has become untenable. iCal just keeps missing the mark on reminders...

Hmm. I would suggest that you make two separate recurring events, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each alarmed for say 15 minutes before. Do not make them all day events.
AK

Similar Messages

ICal Alarms are unreliable. Some show up, some don't. How to fix?

My iCal alarms are unreliable. Some work and some never show up. I've even copied and pasted an event from one place to another, and on the new date, it didn't work.

It depends on the way you told iTunes to sort your music.
It mostly happens with mp3's from friends, as some software does not put the mp3 tags in as iTunes do, cause there are different mp3-tag versions out there.
For example, if you choose in iTiunes to sort by Album Name, all songs without a matching entry in the "Album Name" field where sorted to "unknown album" or "build up a different album" if only some "Album Name" entry's are different.
Also, if no Artist Name is set in the informations, the tracks will get sort to "unknown artist"
As said before, put all songs from the album in question into a playlist and edit the information to be the same on every track.
You may also mark all traks from the album at once, right click, choose information and put the correct Album name in the field.
Lupunus

ICal alarms aren't reliable

Since getting my new iMac (and even after upgrading to the new OS), my iCal alarms don't always go off. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for why this is or which events the alarms go off for and which events the alarms never happen for.
I have one alarm set to go off every day at 10:45 am. Until yesterday it was fine. Now it hasn't gone off for two days in a row. (This alarm was rock solid when I was using a G4. Then I got a new Mac, synced everything, and it worked fine for months afterward. Then, yesterday, all of a sudden, no alarm. Again this morning, no alarm.)
When I set my alarms and appointments for the upcoming week, again, some work, some don't. I've triple checked the settings and I don't think I'm doing anything wrong when setting the alarms.
I live by iCal and really need this fixed. Help!

My experience has been a little different. When I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard 10.5 email notifications of events I had scheduled in iCal ceased to work. (Alert messages to the screen with sound still happened.) Then the 10.5.1 update seemed to fix the emailing notification problem.
But for some reason, recently the email notifications have become unreliable again. I set up a test event yesterday and never got notified. Then today a regularly scheduled (recurring) event came due and it did send an email which seemed to trigger the missing email from yesterday as well.
And unlike the situation when running 10.5, sometimes the event will cause the Mail app to open but not send the email. In 10.5 the Mail app never responded in any fashion.
Later... Since writing the above I have read other threads on this and the following has some interesting thoughts:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1215043&tstart=15
Message was edited by: WebSailor

Ical alarm keeps trying to open file from old location

I have an iCal alarm to open an accounts file each day.
I moved the file to another folder,
and selected the new location iniCal.
It always gives me this:
Could not open file because 'Old/Path/to/File' could not be found.
When I look at the alarm section in the iCal event, there is a list of files.
When I choose the file (with the same file name) in the NEW folder, this list of files doesnt seem to update.
Is there of forcing iCal to open my new file path?
or a way of taking the OLD file out of this list?
Thank you for your help
Frazer

I just found how to removed the old files from my list
in the terminal I type:
open library/preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist
and then delete the entries under PersistentMenu
Would still love to hear a more user friendly way to do this.
And a way to just get iCal to open the new file path, or how best to report this bug to apple

How prevent iCal ALARM reminders popping up when not wanted?

Sometimes I don't want to see my alarm box popping up to remind me of things.
Suddenly, & frequently, the pesky iCal Alarm box pops up in the middle of the screen with another preset alarm reminder, insisting on my immediate attention. Like when I'm watching a video on my mac.
Then I've got to get up and move it out of the way, but as soon as I touch it, the video which I've set to full screen shrinks to small & I've got to click it to big again. This is just one of the inconveniences.
Please, how can I set the iCal alarm to give it a rest for a while and save those reminders for later
I've made lots of iCal alarms to remind me of things throughout the day. so these interruptions are a constant problem.
Q#2: Why doesn't my ALARM BOX show active the Yellow Button so I could relegate it to the side Dock? Or even the Green Button, so I could enlarge it when I want to see all my open reminders without scrolling?
Instead, My ical ALARM BOX only has the Red button, which closes it out and loses all those reminders therein until it's their time again.
Oh, dear, I don't think anybody can solve this problem.
Or
can
you?

You can look at Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1865
You need to subscribe to a ''Filter list'' (e.g. the ''EasyList''): http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions
Adblock Plus forum: https://adblockplus.org/forum/

How can I get iCal alarm to sync with my iPhone 4?

My iCal alarm won't sync with my iPhone 4 if I add the event using iCal on my Mac. I find that if I set an alarm on iCal, I only get an alert on my computer. If I add an event on my iPhone, I get a pop up alarm on both the phone and the computer. I want to be able to add an event on my computer and get an alert on both devices. Is this option even possible?

Turn up the alert volume all the way in Sounds. Lock it so you can't change it with the buttons.

Ical alarm default email is incorrect, how do I change it to match "my card" in address book.

When I create a new event in Ical the default email that appears in the ical alarm drop down menu is incorrect. I have changed My Card in Address Book to match my new email address but ical still wants to use the old email address. I have also completely deleted the old email account from Mail too. Does anyone have a solution to this problem?

If you've updated the account to have the correct email email address on the other devices tap on the old id id in Settings > iTunes & App Store and log out of it and then log back in with the updated version of the account so as to 'refresh' the account on them.

HT2488 How do I create an iCal Alarm to delay send an e-mail in my Drafts folder of Mail?

I've learned how to use iCal Alarm to schedule sending an e-mail. However, all of the instructions I read say that I have to type the e-mail inside the automator's "New Mail Message". Is there a way to type the message in Mail, save it in drafts, and then create an iCal Alarm to schedule sending it?
I got as far as "Get Specified Mail Items" --> "Display Mail Messages". This sequence displayed a message in Drafts. What next to get it to send that message it displayed? I tried adding "Send Outgoing Message" to the sequence with no success. And I tried adding "New Mail Message" --> "Send Outgoing Message" to the sequence with no success.
Sometimes there will be several e-mails I want to delay send (some that I started earlier in the day, saved in Drafts and finished up in the wee hours of the morning) and it seems a waste to have to create a new iCal Alarm for each.
Thank you!

I've learned how to use iCal Alarm to schedule sending an e-mail. However, all of the instructions I read say that I have to type the e-mail inside the automator's "New Mail Message". Is there a way to type the message in Mail, save it in drafts, and then create an iCal Alarm to schedule sending it?
I got as far as "Get Specified Mail Items" --> "Display Mail Messages". This sequence displayed a message in Drafts. What next to get it to send that message it displayed? I tried adding "Send Outgoing Message" to the sequence with no success. And I tried adding "New Mail Message" --> "Send Outgoing Message" to the sequence with no success.
Sometimes there will be several e-mails I want to delay send (some that I started earlier in the day, saved in Drafts and finished up in the wee hours of the morning) and it seems a waste to have to create a new iCal Alarm for each.
Thank you!

Why are iCal alarms coming up with a black rectangle?

Why are iCal alarms coming up with a black rectangle? I'm running 10.3.9 and iCal v. 1.5.2. This started after I did software updates this week.
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I solved it in my case by going to System Preferences>Internet & Network>QuickTime>Advanced, then clicking the checkbox to Enable Flash. I also had to quit and restart iCal.
I think the Quicktime715 update that recently came out had something to do with it.
It seems that the black box is supposed to be a movie of a vibrating alarm clock, and apparently that movie uses Flash.
I hope this fix works for you too.

ICal Alarm on desktop won't go away

An iCal Alarm notice came up on my desktop. Usually one can cancel or close that notification box. But, this time the notice box will NOT go away. I can't close it, move it, delete it or anything else.
How can I get it to close - get if off my desktop?? Nothing so far has worked.

baronpilot,
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Nothing so far has worked.
Could you clarify your troubleshooting steps...what have you tried so far?
In the meantime since I do not know what you have tried:
The first and easiest troubleshooting step involves replacing/refreshing the com.apple.iCal.plist file.
Quit iCal and find the com.apple.iCal.plist file in your Macintosh HD/Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences Folder. Drag the file to your Desktop, log out/in or restart and check iCal for normal behavior.
;~)

ICal alarm shutting me down

I am pretty sure I will be reinstalling Leopard because of a reoccurring iCal alarm that pops up randomly several times a day. I thought I would check to see if you geniuses had any ideas, The Apple geniuses felt I would be better off starting over.
If I put the laptop to sleep the alarm always appears when when the computer is re-woken this also happens on restarts. The alarm has no content in the window that appears but it is a complete processor hog, if I walk away from the computer while it has become active it will grind the machine to a complete stop. Activity monitor will show the memory use for the process steadily climbing to over a gig. The only way to close it is to run a script that I have called "kill ical widow" which was created for me by a apple genius. Any ideas?

Okay, the only fix that eventually came from this, just to wrap things up for educational purposes... I finally had to bring in to a Mac Genius appt., and after keeping my computer for five days, they reinstalled the OS. And to be sure this never happens again, I've also turned off all alarms as suggested. Reinstalling the OS (am now at 10.5.6) has brought a whole other host of problems. They initially returned my laptop with none of my data on it, and I lost all of my additional programs I'd installed on the computer, some of which I don't have authorization codes or discs for anymore. And iTunes has yet to "find" any of my music (or all of my playlists for that matter), despite all the normal fixes. Going back for 3rd Mac Genius appt. today. Very frustrated. But word to the wise: do NOT allow a Mac Genius that may or may not know what they're doing to reinstall your OS without properly backing up your computer. I couldn't back mine up for a while b/c this iCal alarm issue was disabling to the point I could not even open anything on the computer anymore. But please do yourself a favor, and get a back-up and run it ROUTINELY!!!

ICal Alarm is almost off the page

When my iCal alarm notifies me, it is so far to the right I can not see it without dragging it to the center of the page. Is there a preference somewhere that I can set?

You aren't the only one - see this (very long) thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=671199&tstart=0
Powerbook G4 1.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1.5 GB Ram

ICal alarm does not wake up mac

Hi,
I'm trying to set up alarm in iCal to launch app at scheduled time. It works when the mac is up and running. But if mac was sleeping at the scheduled time, alarm is missed.
I've read from somewhere that the new iCal in Leopard is able to wake up mac from sleep. Is it negative?
Thanks,
ner

I don't believe it will wake the machine up. But what you can do is set a Wake time in the Energy Preferennces to wake the machine up a minute or two before the scheduled ical alarm.
Steve

ICal alarm causes application to close

When I try to open iCal I immediately have an iCal alarm pop up and the program closes.
Why is this happening? And more importantly, how can I fix it?
(I sync iCal with my Moto Q using Mark/Spaces The Missing Sync)

Hi Fred,
As we noted in your other post the issue is CR 8.5 is not side by side compatible with any other version of CR. As of Cr 9 we now are, UFL's can be copied into the respective install folders and they'll work together.
CR UFL's are COM UFL's meaning they get registered. Because they use the standard UFL naming convention Any version of CR will load them, we do this for compatibility so developers don't have to re-write/version their UFL's each time.
The only way is to NOT install any other version of CR on that 8.5 PC. Or if you can ask the makers of the UFL's convert them to non-COM ( using C++ ) u2l names then simply moving them into their app.exe folder should allow their software to continue working as long as their software is not in the PATH statement.
The other issue is possibly they did not make the UFL Appartment Model ( thread safe ) but I doubt it would make any difference.
CR 8.5 simple won't work with another version on the same PC.
As a final hack work around, create a batch file that will register the UFL and then one that will unregister the UFL when you want to use your software or their software. Also, try moving \windows\crystal into their folders app path but I don't recall if this will work, it's been a long time since we've had to deal with side by side issues of legacy applications like this.
Good luck
Don

Ical alarm is silent

My iCal alarm works except there is no sound. Just the alarm window with a pulsating alarm clock. Any suggestions? Thanks

Try Turning Up the Volume, when the head phones arent plugged in.
same thing happenened to me and this worked

ICal Alarms Unreliable

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for