Comments on: Snow Leopard: Beating Microsoft at their own game.

By: Guillermo Rocha

Guillermo Rocha — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:21:02 +0000

Hi Eugenio, would you able to fix this problem ? I have Lion and just set up Chicago as my time zone inside CST even though I’m in Mexico City. Looks like Mexico City option still doesn’t work in ical.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:43:22 +0000

I had timezones set correctly from what I could see, but still got the “Can’t be modified” dialog with the “TimeZone … is nil” error in Console.

My fix was to turn off Timezone Support in iCal -> Settings -> Advanced, then turn it right back on again, select the appropriate time zone in the drop down at the top right of the iCal window, and reselect the timezone for the specific appointment.

Sure, this is a year late, but better late than never. I’m sure someone else will stumble upon this problem when upgrading an ancient system to Snow Leopard in preparation for an App Store install of Lion.

Thankyou, John, for taking the time to document this situation!

By: Gismon

Gismon — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:35:14 +0000

I would like to append that I can add entries to the To Do List through the mail application , fails only when I try through Ical .

By: John

John — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:35:24 +0000

Hi Gismon,

I will have to see if I can duplicate this – I’m not sure that I’ve tried to create todo events in my Exchange calendar.

By: Gismon

Gismon — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:15:06 +0000

Hi John,

I am facing similar issue to sync ical with Exchange Server 2007. I am able to add events to Calendar but not “to do ” items. It pops up a message box which is shown above. Ican was working fine for quite long ( 8 months) but the error started very recently. I tested with another account on the same server and it works fine. The console error says “iCal[23546] error = Error Domain=CalExchangeErrorDomain Code=-5 UserInfo=0×11a0a2350 “iCal can’t save the todo “test” to the Exchange server . I tried the timezone workaround but failed.

By: ayw

ayw — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:43:48 +0000

Thanks for the post. This fixed my problem that I otherwise would have had NO IDEA how to address..

By: jbscfcmc

jbscfcmc — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 03:43:50 +0000

I have Mac Ox 10.6.3 and a Macbook Core2 Duo. I am trying to convert my old calendars from Palm Desktop to iCal and sync through my University’s Exchange server, so that I can easily synch with my new iPhone (finally ditching my old Palm). [Mail is synching fine between my Macbook and my iPhone, but iCal is another story.]
My calendars are 80% my own (and complicated) and 20% stuff that comes to me from work through the Exchange server. I have been able to export my calendars from Palm Desktop, import into iCal, and make the necessary adaptations for iCal. What I have found is that my iCal files of my own prior appointments will NOT go into a new calendar on the Exchange server, no matter what I try. (I have tried exporting and importing, going online, etc.) The error message I get repeatedly is
“iCal can’t delete an occurrence from the repeating the event “xxx” from the Exchange server.
The account “YYY” currently can’t be modified. To discard your changes…click Revert to Server. To save you changes in your computer until the problem is resolved, click Go Offline.”
I have all kinds of recurring events that are modified or deleted for exceptions when I am traveling, etc., and I gather Exchange is choking on these.
However, I can import my calendars into a local calendar on my Macbook. Unless I want to start over from scratch (which means 20+ hours recreating my calendars, no thanks), it looks like I will have to synch my own calenders through iTunes or maybe MobileMe and maintain my work calendar separately through Exchange.
I have already worked on the time zone issue above, and I don’t think that is likely to be the problem.
If anyone has any other ideas to simplify this, I would appreciate it.

By: John

John — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:25:09 +0000

Interesting arguments….

I actually know a few folks out at Microsoft, all of whom confirmed that the reason Entourage does not have the MAPI protocol (depricated now anyways), is because the Exchange group refused to give the Mac Business Unit (responsible for Office for Mac) access to it. That just shows that Microsoft is perfectly willing to cripple their own software just because it’s on a competing OS / platform.

You are perhaps the first person I’ve ever heard who tries to turn “Freeing up space” into a negative. Yes – there was space that did not need to be taken up in previous versions of the OS (look at Windows – an OS that everybody recognizes as full of bloat) – instead of letting that continue, however, Apple remedied it and freed up space in the process. I fail to see that as a negative… no matter how you look at it.

MS Office, for Mac, which includes Entourage…. does not beat SL support. I’ve used both. Entourage is atrocious, cumbersome and kludgy. SL Exchange support is simple, elegant and works. It’s also built in to the OS, meaning I don’t have to buy additional software in order to use Exchange based email (outside of a web browser), calendaring and address book functionality. It works, out of the box, and all I have to do is put in an email address and password.

Also – if you’ve bothered to do any homework on me you’d realize that I don’t go around simply saying Mac OS is better than Windows or Linux. I actually firmly believe that each OS is mostly good, and have their uses. Mac OS is a great every day OS for me – I like it, enjoy it, and prefer it. Windows (esp. Win7) is equally a good OS, and some people like it and prefer it. Good for them. Linux also is making great strides in many areas. I use all three, depending on what I’m doing.

So – hop off the Microsoft bandwagon for a bit, get your facts straight, and understand what you’re trying to act like an expert on. It’s pretty obvious you’re not a Mac user, as you’ve obviously got no idea what you’re talking about re: Office for Mac.

By: ShoX

ShoX — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:57:08 +0000

You didn’t quite get, that Entourage is for Mac and MS has not the biggest intentions to provide better Software for Macs than for heir own PCs?

And “freeing space” means they WASTED space in 10.5

MS Office (the real, big, useful mother of Entourage) beats the SL-support hands down…. Why?
Because it is BUILT for just doing that.

So now STOP bugging around that Mac is better than Windows or Linux or whatever, because if something in ANY OS goes wrong, usually YOU or the Programmer of the PROPRIETARY Software fucked up.

So guys, get knowledge and stop exposing yourself to laughter.

By: John

John — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:59:35 +0000

Hi Khürt,

Were you getting any particular error messages in Console for iCal when you were having issues with it and Exchange? If Mail / Address Book work with Exchange then your admins are correct – Exchange meets the requirements (The webservices required weren’t available in earlier versions of Exchange). My problem was relating to properly setting the Timezone data in iCal and on my Mac and making sure they matched.

I would check Console, though, as that should give you an error message pointing to where to look for a solution. I hate Entourage, so I prefer using straight iCal. Since doing my fix it has worked flawlessly for me. Shoot me the error message from Console and I can help you track down the issue.