# Erase/delete iCal event



## riklar (Aug 16, 2009)

Hello,

I have entered an event to ical, which repeats itself everymonth.
I want now to erase it.
I click on the event, then I click on Delete in my keyboard. I get a dialog box asking me If I want to delete all future event. I click to OK and the event is not erased. It continues to appear.

How can I convince this event to disappear forever.

TIA 

iMac 24 Mac OS X (10.5.8) iPhone 3G 3.0.1


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## kisuke3 (Aug 17, 2009)

try going into ~/library/preferences/ then look for a file called com.apple.ical.plist move this file to the desktop, restart your ical. Before you move this file to the desktop make sure your iCal is quit. After the move, reopen the ical app then try deleting the event


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## Dalancino (Jan 24, 2010)

Thank you Kisuke3 !!   

going into ~/library/preferences/ then look for a file called com.apple.ical.plist move this file to the desktop, restart your ical. Before you move this file to the desktop make sure your iCal is quit. After the move, reopen the ical app then try deleting the event

This really worked for me.  I just got anew iMAC for Christmas and did a migration from my slowly dying G-4,  9 years old.   I had been syncing with a Palm for a while....The migration caused all the old calendar info to populate the iMAC.......   I have always been nervous going into the libraries....
I spent over an hour deleting years of events that were "reoccurring"...what a pain to get a reminder from something 7 years ago!     The process was tedious but worth the time.  
Your advice was easy and it worked.  I am beginning to wonder if I should have done the migration assistant at all, I have had to clean up so many things!!!
D


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## silverface (Jun 15, 2010)

To clarify the description a tad and add a precaution:

Close iCal

Go to the following folder on the primary hard drive:

users/(your user name/library/preferences

Locate the file com.apple.ical.plist

Drag the file to your desktop (it will disappear from the folder - don't close the folder!)

Reopen iCal

Delete the event

(you will see a NEW com.apple.ical.plist file appear in the preferences folder)

Drag the file from the desktop to the trash

*Caveat - when I did this the event I had tried to delete was already gone - I did not take time to check if other events were in place as I have not used iCal in the past much and am just starting to - so I'd darned sure check other events to make sure they have not also vanished before emptying the trash!  If they have all evaporated, I'd delete the file in the preferences folder and drag the old one back in from the trash.*

I've learned the hard way about deleting seemingly needless files on both osx and winblows machines!  ALWAYS double check, or make a backup - usually both!  I'd make a copy of an original like that on a thumb drive, remove it from the machine, then do the opening program/deleting event/deleting old file procedure.  That way if it screws thing up you can go back to where you were - I've noticed osx sometimes locates files in the trash, on thumbdrives, outboard drives, etc - that's why I'd REMOVE it from the machine completely.


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