I have been going crazy trying to figure out why all my incoming meeting.ics files were going to my QuickBooks calendar (I have several calendars) and not another one. There had to be a setting somewhere, right? I could not find it, but I did discover how to inadvertently set it: drag the calendar you want to use as the default to the top (same goes with Mail.app with setting the default account).
Mar
05
2010
nice tip, thanks. This also works when you have a google calendar sync’d in iCal. That is, you can make the google cal the default in iCal. …To get this done, I had to delete my Home and Work calendars in the Mac. No big deal for me since I wasn’t using them.
Actually, you don’t have to delete the calendars “on my mac”. You only need to click on the arrow in front of that group so that those calendars are not visible, and google calendar will then get highlighted and be your default.
Wow – THANK YOU! That is the best tip ever. I was going crazy trying to fix this and it never occurred to me to close the arrows. Ical kept adding new events to a local system event calendar that I don’t sync and now I’m back in business. Thanks Boris.
Glad it helped. These sorts of things can drive you crazy!
For me it didn’t work, I had unchecked Work and Home, but in invitation of a colleague immediately reopened my Work calendar….. What did I do wrong?
Did you make sure calendar you wanted to use as default was listed first?
Awesome tip – really valuable. Thanks so much!
this tip was VERY helpful to me. tysm!
Same problem but my ical will not let me move/drag my default calendar to the top. I have several calendars that are imported; e.g. my gmail account with calendar. I cannot put a non-ical calendar above the ical calendar at the top: the group name for the calendar is “on my mac”.
It drives me crazy to have my ics requests save to a calendar that is not the one I need.
To make matters worse — when I edit the event I cannot change the calendar to the one I want. It only lets me use calendars in the group “on my mac” and none others.
This is very aggravating.
I have exactly the same frustration and have no idea how is the avoid this problem.
hi I have the same problem – I cannot drag to the top either. I use an exchange account and the “on my mac” cal trumps everything and I cannot save it to exchange. if I accept the event on my iphone where exchange is my default then no problem.
This is SO FRUSTRATING… the closing the arrow thing doesn’t work either. Where did you guys come up with these ideas?
I had this same problem… My workaround was to uncheck all the calendars I didn’t want to drag… then drag the one I needed to the desired spot…. then recheck to calendars I unchecked.
If you go into the preferences under iCal and click on the General tab, you can set the default calendar to whatever you want it to be in the drop down next to “Default Calendar:”
Thanks a lot, this will be a huge help.
Glad it helped!
I have Outlook for Mac 2011 and am trying to have iCal as my default calendar (but keep Outlook as my default email). All ics files go directly to my Outlook calendar. Help!
I have never used Outlook – but I found this during a quick search: http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-239555 I would give that a try.
I’ve just discovered the solution as I was having the same issue.
First download the .ics file (for the calendar), then right click and select ‘Get Info’ – that opens a little window with all the details about that calendar appointment. At the bottom you will see, ‘Open With’ and beneath that a scroll with the apps that can open that. Select ‘iCal’ and then press ‘Change All’ which is below. All done!!
When I receive the ics file it automatically tries to open Outlook. I would like to have it go to iCal. I’ve read your description but I can find any such choices at the bottom of the details box in Lion. Is this an issue with Lion or am I looking in the wrong place?
Thanks
You can delete a calendar. Uncheck it (after making sure it doesn’t contain anything you need to keep), highlight it, then go to the Edit menu in the menubar and Delete it.
Very useful reply from Julio Romo
As a new MacBook Pro users (48 hrs and counting!), I would just add that you first need to open the Downloads Folder to bring up a list of all of the Downloads. This then shows the .ics file as an Outlook Calendar file under the “Kind” column. After following Julio’s instructions, it now shows as an iCal file.
Hope this is not too basic for experienced Mac users but as a PC user of almost 20 years, I am just finding my way around the Mac OS!