I had been suffering for a while with an iCal crash immediately after launch for several months. I had tried many different fixes including deleting all iCal preferences under the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder and nothing ever seemed to work in Tiger. I was able to open iCal as another user so the problem was obviously related to my admin user account.
Installing Leopard wasn’t the magic bullet I thought it would be. Actually, I didn’t think it would be a magic bullet at all. In fact, I bet a friend 10 bucks iCal wold still crash after my Leopard upgrade. Sure enough iCal still crashed.
With the continued iCal crash even after the Leopard upgrade, I got to work trying some of the fixes I had tried under my Tiger install including several popular fixes on the Apple forums that work for half the people and don’t work for the other half.
While trying some of the iCal crash fixes, I noticed the Leopard file structure looks a little different than it did with Tiger. For instance, I don’t have any iCal folder under ~/Library/Application Support/ anymore.
A little more digging around the new Leopard setup and I found my fix.
My iCal Crash Fix For Leopard
Here’s what fixed my year long iCal crash fest:
- Open /user/Library/Caches/
- Move /com.apple.iCal/ folder to your desktop
- Launch iCal
Finally! After struggling with the problem and countless other fixes that never worked for me, this worked. iCal launches without trouble now.
Here are some of the other iCal crash fixes that I tried over the year long battle that might work for you if my iCal crash fix doesn’t work for you:
Shannon Stevens wrote,
OMG! I have been going through hell, trying to solve this ical crashing problem. It started a few days after the upgrade to leopard. I am partner in a small advertising agency and it has put a major wrench in our production. We actually missed a kick-off meeting with a new client due to this issue.
Thank you so much for your posting! Yeah!
Shannon A. Stevens
Principal, Creative Director
essentia creative
Quote | Link | December 6th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Daniel wrote,
It worked. Genius! Thank you very much.
Quote | Link | December 26th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Joe wrote,
Mine wasn’t crashing on startup, but would crash if I clicked on new entry before the current entry “popped-up” (which would take a relatively long time, maybe a second or two).
After trying your fix, entries pop up almost instantly & I can no longer crash it.
Thanks!
–Joe
Quote | Link | December 28th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Joerg wrote,
Thanks alot for the fix buddy.
My iCal wouldn’t start up after importing an .ics-invitation I got from someone using Lotus-Notes on a Windows system.
Moving (and thus deleting) the .ics-file from the cache let iCal launch again.
Happy!
Quote | Link | January 14th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Josh wrote,
I love you man!
Quote | Link | January 18th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Adam wrote,
Sweet! Lots to do now …
Adam
Quote | Link | January 20th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Lou wrote,
Thank you so much. It solved my problem immediately.
Quote | Link | February 5th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
philip wrote,
Kudo’s!!
Solved on 2 MBP’s!
Quote | Link | February 6th, 2008 at 12:21 am
christoph Schmid wrote,
yes, you’re the man!
Quote | Link | February 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
KShapiro wrote,
Okay, it looks as though no one either has an answer, or ever checks this board. Also, I notice that my original message is still pending moderation. So, if anyone has an answer and the original message ever gets posted to the system, please send any answers to KShapiro-at-bigfoot.com replacing the “-at-” with “@”. Thanks for the assistance.
Still wish I could get iCal to function.
Sincerely,
KShapiro
Quote | Link | February 16th, 2008 at 11:33 am
John Atkins wrote,
Thank you for taking the time to post. One of the links helped me. Trashing Sync preferences.
J
Quote | Link | February 24th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
megan wrote,
it didn’t fix my problem. i attempt to open ical, it launches, then dies.
i moved the file to my desktop. same thing happens.
any other ideas?
also, my stickies never remember themselves.
i think i have a “user” issue.
time for a backup and clean install of the OS?
ideas?
email to:
spygirl(AT)att.net
Quote | Link | February 25th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Todd wrote,
Thanks!
Though the first fix didn’t work, removing the sync folder worked wonders.
Again,
Thanks!
Quote | Link | May 6th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Dick wrote,
I had a problem with iCal Helper hanging, and Mail and iCal also afterwards, after installing the recent big security update on my iMac (PowerPC). The trick to remove the cache and restart worked!! OOffff….
Quote | Link | June 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Koji tokubo wrote,
Thank you very much. it worked for me from japan too.
Quote | Link | September 3rd, 2008 at 5:01 am
rockstacker wrote,
Hi
I realize I am adding to a thread that is almost a year old but…
I also experienced the ical unexpected crash after upgrading one of my iMacs to Leopard from Tiger. This was after having upgraded 6 other (each less than 18 months old) macs (various models) without any problem.
I found many references to this problem and they seemed inconclusive in that some things worked for one person but not another. The solution I describe below did work for me and is more specific to the Apple OS-X System data structure than the other solutions I found in that the files which iCal is upgrading are actually moved to their expected location.
I believe the problem and the solution to this iCal problem may be identical to similar problems people have reported with using other Apple applications (i.e.: iPhoto) after the upgrade.
The problem seems to be caused by a change (by Apple) in the location where Leopard looks for your iCal data as compared to where Tiger expected the data to be. Perhaps an even earlier version of OS-X was responsible since all USER DATA on the problem machine had migrated through several computers over the last couple of years. In any case, if the structure was from a pre-Tiger mac then at least Tiger was able to handle it while Leopard actually moves it’ location during the upgrade.
In earlier versions I found the data in user/library/application_support/ical but in Leopard the required files are in user/library/calendars so I moved ONLY THE DATA FILES (dot calendar files) from the user/library/application_support/ical/ to user/library/calendars.
SO THE FIX:
MOVE ALL DATA FILES (those which start with an alphanumeric string and end with “.calendars” from the ~user/library/application_support/ical/ folder to the ~user/library/calendars folder.
A final note:
It may be that the real culprit is the adding of a calendar event to your system from another system. In my case debugging revealed that an “unexpected end of file” generated the “unexpected quit” of iCal. I have seen reports by an individual who said he/she felt it was caused by the import of an EVENT which was generated by Lotus Notes on a PC/Win machine. That sounds likely to me and I have extensive programming and debugging experience as a computer professional. That’s my guess for now.
I hope this helps someone else. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their knowledge, including those people who acknowledge it worked for them.
Soon we will have a new operating system and this will become moot. See you then with the new exciting problems! Ha!
Quote | Link | October 6th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Amanda Alleson wrote,
Lifesaver, thank you!
Quote | Link | April 30th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Stacy wrote,
I just upgraded to leopard, not snow leopard from tiger and now I am getting a box that pops up when I try to open iCal that reads “you cannot use this version of the application iCal with this version of Mac OS X. Any thoughts on how I can get my iCal to open? Thanks a ton!!!
Quote | Link | August 7th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Zev Eisenberg wrote,
Seems to have fixed it for me in Snow Leopard. Nice.
Quote | Link | August 24th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Jacqueline wrote,
I tried this and it didn’t work please help me I am an older mom and tech challenged but I tried this and nothing back to the same quitting of Ical and a million folders I can’t delete. I stop syncing then started again now I am lost I dont’ know what else to do we rely on ical for our lives PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!
Quote | Link | September 3rd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Jacqueline wrote,
Okay I restarted the computer and I think whatever I did worked because it stopped and I was able to delete all those blank folders. THANK YOU TOMMY
Quote | Link | September 3rd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Jacqueline wrote,
Wrong again the computer is still crashing ical. TOMMY Help!!!
What can I do to fix this problem? ANYONE!
Quote | Link | September 3rd, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Loni wrote,
Well it worked for me - solved a MAJOR headache for my worklife. THANK YOU!
Quote | Link | April 6th, 2011 at 7:26 am