HomeLightswitch SolutionsSoftwareHow to fix "Calendar can't save event X to Exchange Server" OSX Lion and iCal/Calendar

2.8. How to fix "Calendar can't save event X to Exchange Server" OSX Lion and iCal/Calendar

If you are using Mac OSX Lion and are syncing to an Exchange Server or Office365, you might encounter this error (or one very like it):

Calendar can't save the event "event name" to the Exchange Server.

The account "Exchange account name" currently can't be modified. To discard your changes and continue using the version of your calendars that's on the server, click Revert to Server.

Options are Go Offline, Revert to Server, and Try Again.

There were three fixes I saw online, some were for Snow Leopard, some for Lion, others for Mountain Lion.  Most of the issues with Lion/Mountain Lion appeared after the July 2012 update to Mountain Lion was made available.  Here are the three fixes I saw, in order of importance:

  1. A forum entry on Mac Support Guy led me to delete the Calendar.Cache file. 
    • Before you can do this, you have to Show User Library on the Mac before you can delete the Calendar.Cache file from within Finder.
    • You'll also want to quit iCal/Calendar (since it's actively using the cache file)
    • Now you can delete the Calendar.Cache file by using Finder, Go\Home, expand Library, expand Calendar, move the Calendar.Cache to the trash.
    • Start iCal/Calendar
    • You might want to set the User Library back to hidden, the previous link shows how to to both.
  2. Set the iCal/Calendar preferences to enable time zones. This article says it's specifically for Snow Leopard, but I also did it on Lion.
  3. Change your accounts so that iCal/Calendar does not have any "Accounts" listed, but instead use the new "Mail, Contacts and Calendar" control from System Preferences.  You have to be careful about this since you don't want to lose any appointments, but you don't want problems with duplicates either.  So my advice would be to try the first two and get the calendar items to sync, then you can do step 3 to hopefully stop the system from causing the same problem.
    • Since I was switching from local calendars to Office365 and never had a sync occur before, I was able to do step 3 and import my exported local calendars.  I didn't have to worry about "calendar creep".

Only with all three of these was I able to get the system to work properly.  We might also have to delete the Calendar.Cache file on a regular basis if the problem keeps cropping up.  Simply "Go Offline", quit iCal/Calendar, delete teh cache, start iCal/Calendar.

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