In my iPhone calendar (iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 16.4.1) I have a series of events that reference URLs to addressbook://<xyz123...>
There are other events in the same calendar that I do not want to lose so deleting the calendar isn't an option.
The "Delete" command does not appear in the Event Details section.
How do I delete these events?
iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 16
Hi RayfromFremont,
To confirm, is this an iCloud calendar? If so, visit iCloud.com from a web browser, sign in and follow the steps below to see if you have the option to delete the event there.
"You can manually delete an event. You can also set Calendar preferences to hide past events automatically.
In Calendar on iCloud.com, do any of the following:
in the bottom-left corner, then choose Preferences. In the Advanced pane, select “Hide events n-days after theyʼve passed,” then enter the number of days.If this is not an iCloud account, you may need to access the calendar on the web in the same manner for whomever hosts the calendar and check for options to delete the event there.
Cheers!
Hello ShannonM1,
Thank you! Your question prompted me to take another look at this and I now have a solution.
Some background info: AddressBook goes back many years, to at least 2010, and it was deprecated with El Capitan (masOS 10.11) and replaced with Contacts in Sierra (10.12).
As I looked at these events they all seemed to be birthday events that originated from contacts in the old Apple AddressBook app. My earlier statement that I have other events in this calendar that I didn't want to lose was incorrect. Turns out that I had two calendars of the same colour and I didn't realize that the other was also selected; so, that "problem" was an error on my part.
Some prior version of MacOS converted these AddressBook birthdays into a calendar each with their unique URL back to AddressBook. I have no idea when or how that happened.
Now that i know that these, and only these, unwanted events are all in the same calendar I deleted that calendar – problem solved.
It still puzzles me why the "Delete" function is not an option for these events. I hope that in the future Apple allows the user to delete any event in a calendar and delete repeating events into the past as well as the future.
Thanks again!
Hello and thanks for the reply.
This is not an iCloud calendar and these events were never on the web.
AddressBook is an old Apple app that preceded the Contacts app. Somehow these events became embedded in my Calendar and have reminded there long after the AddressBook app was retired, hence the addressbook://<xyz123...> URL's.
I've tolerated them being there for many years, but now I want to clean up my calendars.
Any other ideas would be appreciated.
Understood RayfromFremont,
So to your recollection, these were old events that you made and that were set to repeat, and not something that is apart of a subscription-based calendar someone shared with you?
Thanks!
I can’t think of an easy solution. How many events are there in that calendar? If it is a limited number you can move them to a different calendar, then delete the calendar with a problem. Tap on each event, then tap on Calendar and change it to a different one.
Hello,
That is a very good idea thank you, I hadn't thought about moving events to another calendar. However, before i saw your reponse i solved it another way. Essentially similar to your idea. I determined that all the unwanted events were in the same calendar and only the unwanted events and just deleted the calendar. See my response below to another poster for more detail.
Thanks for your reply.
How to delete event
How to delete iPhone calendar events that reference addressbook URLs?
