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