iOS 4.2: Avoiding Duplicate iPad Calendar Entries

The problem that’s leading to the duplicate event issue stems from manually setting up CalDAV syncing on an iPad before upgrading to iOS 4.2 — a process that many iPad users went through after Apple updated the MobileMe Calendar service to rely on CalDAV a few weeks ago. Since iOS 4.2 includes a preference for syncing Calendars with MobileMe, their ipads started syncing iCal events twice.

Manually created CalDAV accounts can cause Calendar event double syncing

Here’s how to fix the problem:

• After installing iOS 4.2 on your iPad, tap Settings.
• Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
• Select the CalDAV account you created before the iOS 4.2 update. Unless you changed the account description, it’s probably called cal.me.com

Delete your manually created CalDAV settings to remove duplicate events

• Tap Delete Account, and confirm you want to complete the delete process.
• Now choose your MobileMe account from the Account list.
• Make sure Calendars is set to ON.

Make sure MobileMe Calendar syncing is turned on

It’s a good idea to delete your manually created CalDAV account settings and use iOS 4.2’s built-in Calendar syncing feature even if you aren’t experiencing duplicate entry problems. According to Apple, syncing events via the MobileMe preference offers better performance compared to manually creating CalDAV syncing settings.