> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cal.id/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Calendar Sync Problems

> Fix bookings that never reach your calendar, outside events that fail to block time, duplicate entries, and connections that quietly stopped working.

Calendar sync runs in two directions, and almost every sync complaint is really a problem with one direction or the other. Cal ID **reads** your calendars to work out when you are busy, and it **writes** confirmed bookings onto one calendar you nominate. Deciding which direction is broken takes about thirty seconds and narrows the fix immediately.

## Which direction is broken?

| What you are seeing                                 | Direction | Go to                                                                                                             |
| --------------------------------------------------- | --------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| A booking exists in Cal ID but not on your calendar | **Write** | [Bookings are not appearing on your calendar](#bookings-are-not-appearing-on-your-calendar)                       |
| An event on your calendar did not block the slot    | **Read**  | [Outside events are not blocking your availability](#outside-events-are-not-blocking-your-availability)           |
| The booking landed on the wrong calendar            | **Write** | [Bookings are landing on the wrong calendar](#bookings-are-landing-on-the-wrong-calendar)                         |
| The same meeting appears twice                      | **Both**  | [The same booking appears twice](#the-same-booking-appears-twice)                                                 |
| Everything reads as busy, or nothing does           | **Read**  | [The connection is broken or its permission was revoked](#the-connection-is-broken-or-its-permission-was-revoked) |

<Info>
  Both directions run through **Settings → Calendars** at [https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars](https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars). That page is where you will spend most of this article.
</Info>

## "Check for conflicts" and "add events to" are different settings

Getting these two confused is the single most common cause of calendar-sync confusion, so it is worth being precise about them before anything else.

|                    | Check for conflicts                                                 | Add events to                                                                                                    |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Direction          | Cal ID **reads** the calendar                                       | Cal ID **writes** to the calendar                                                                                |
| What it decides    | Whether events on that calendar remove slots from your booking page | Where a new confirmed booking is created                                                                         |
| Where you set it   | **Settings → Calendars** — a tick box per sub-calendar              | **Settings → Calendars** for the account default, and the event type's **Advanced** tab for a per-event override |
| How many can be on | Many. Every ticked sub-calendar is checked.                         | One per event type. A booking is written to exactly one calendar.                                                |
| Symptom when wrong | Double-booked over an event Cal ID could not see                    | The meeting is somewhere you never look                                                                          |

<Warning>
  Choosing a destination calendar under **Add events to calendar** does **not** narrow conflict checking. Cal ID still reads every sub-calendar you have ticked for conflicts. Likewise, ticking a calendar for conflicts does not make it a destination. If you want a calendar to both block your time and receive bookings, you must set both.
</Warning>

A worked example. You keep three Google sub-calendars: **Work**, **Personal**, and a subscribed **Holidays** feed.

* Tick **Work** and **Personal** for conflicts, leave **Holidays** unticked — your own commitments block bookings, but public holidays you do not observe do not.
* Set **Add events to calendar** to **Work** — every booking lands in one predictable place.
* A dentist appointment on **Personal** still removes the slot, even though no booking will ever be written there.

Related: [Add events to calendar](/docs/event-types/advanced/add-to-calendar)

## Bookings are not appearing on your calendar

The booking exists in Cal ID — you can see it under **Bookings** — but nothing arrived on the calendar itself.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="The booking is still awaiting confirmation" icon="clock">
    An event type with **Requires confirmation** turned on creates a *pending* booking. Cal ID does not write a pending booking to your calendar, because you have not accepted it yet.

    Go to **Bookings** at [https://cal.id/bookings](https://cal.id/bookings) and open the **Unconfirmed** tab. Accept the meeting and the calendar event is created immediately.

    Related: [Require booking confirmation](/docs/event-types/advanced/requires-confirmation)
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="No destination calendar is set" icon="calendar-xmark">
    If no calendar is connected — or the event type points at a connection that has since been removed — Cal ID has nowhere to write.

    1. Go to **Settings → Calendars** at [https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars](https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars) and confirm a destination calendar is selected.
    2. Open the event type, go to the **Advanced** tab, and check the **Add events to calendar** dropdown. An event type can override the account default here, and duplicated event types carry the override with them.

    Attendees still receive their confirmation email with a calendar invitation attached, which is why this often goes unnoticed until you find your own calendar empty.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="You are looking at the wrong sub-calendar" icon="eye-slash">
    In Google Calendar and in the [Unified Calendar](/docs/getting-started/unified-calendar), each sub-calendar has a visibility tick box in the left sidebar. If the destination calendar is toggled off, its events are on your account but invisible in the view you are looking at.

    Toggle every calendar on in the sidebar and look again before assuming the event was never created.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The write silently failed on an expired connection" icon="link-slash">
    A connection whose token has expired can still appear in the list while failing every write. Bookings pile up in Cal ID and none of them lands.

    Work through [The connection is broken or its permission was revoked](#the-connection-is-broken-or-its-permission-was-revoked) below, then create a test booking on a spare slot to confirm writes are flowing again.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Outside events are not blocking your availability

Something is on your calendar, but Cal ID offered the slot anyway and you got double-booked.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Confirm the event is marked Busy">
    An event set to **Free** — the default for many all-day events, birthdays, and subscribed feeds — is deliberately ignored. Change it to **Busy** on the calendar itself.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Confirm the event's sub-calendar is checked for conflicts">
    Go to **Settings → Calendars** at [https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars](https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars) and expand the connection. Each sub-calendar has its own tick box, and a conflict on an unticked sub-calendar is invisible to Cal ID.

    <Note>
      Newly created sub-calendars are not ticked automatically. If you made a new "Client work" calendar last week and it has not blocked anything since, this is why.
    </Note>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check that you declined nothing">
    An invitation you declined is generally not treated as busy time. If you intend to attend, accept the invitation or add a separate blocking event.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check how far ahead the sync reaches">
    Cal ID pulls in your meetings from the past 30 days and the next 90 days. A conflict far outside that window may not be reflected in the [Unified Calendar](/docs/getting-started/unified-calendar) view even though it exists on the source calendar.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Verify with the troubleshooter">
    Open [https://cal.id/availability/troubleshoot](https://cal.id/availability/troubleshoot) and select the date. If the event does not appear as a busy block there, Cal ID genuinely cannot see it — the cause is one of the four steps above, not a booking-page problem.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Bookings are landing on the wrong calendar

Cal ID writes each booking to exactly one calendar, chosen in this order of precedence:

1. The **Add events to calendar** value on the event type's **Advanced** tab, if one is set.
2. Otherwise, the destination calendar set in **Settings → Calendars**.

So a single event type behaving differently from the rest almost always has a per-event override. Open its **Advanced** tab and either point it at the right calendar or clear the override so it follows the account default.

<Note>
  Changing this setting affects **new** bookings only. Meetings already on the wrong calendar stay where they are — move them by hand on the calendar, or cancel and rebook if attendees need a fresh invitation.
</Note>

If bookings land on the right calendar but under an unexpected account, check which email address the connection uses. Connecting a personal Google account and a work Google account produces two separate entries in **Settings → Calendars**, and they are easy to mix up when both are simply labelled "Google Calendar".

Related: [Add events to calendar](/docs/event-types/advanced/add-to-calendar)

## The same booking appears twice

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="The same calendar is connected twice" icon="copy">
    Reconnecting a calendar without removing the old connection can leave two live connections to the same account. Both write, so every booking is created twice.

    Go to **Settings → Calendars**, look for two entries with the same email address, and remove the one you do not want. Delete the duplicate calendar events by hand afterwards — removing a connection does not clean up events it already created.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="You are both the host and an attendee" icon="user">
    If your own email address was added to a booking through the **Add guests** field, you receive the invitation as a guest *and* Cal ID creates the host event. Two entries, one meeting.

    Remove your own address from the guest list when booking. This most often happens while testing your own booking link.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="A third-party sync tool is also copying the event" icon="arrows-rotate">
    Calendar mirroring tools, phone accounts syncing the same calendar twice, and automation platforms that create a second event from a Cal ID webhook all produce apparent duplicates.

    Check whether the duplicate is identical or slightly different — a different title, colour, or organiser points at an external tool rather than at Cal ID. Review anything you have wired up under **Apps → Installed Apps** at [https://cal.id/apps](https://cal.id/apps) before changing calendar settings.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The booking was rescheduled and the old event survived" icon="calendar-days">
    A reschedule updates the existing calendar event. If the connection was briefly unavailable, the update can land as a new event while the original remains.

    Cancel the stale event on the calendar and confirm the surviving one matches the time shown under **Bookings → Upcoming** at [https://cal.id/bookings](https://cal.id/bookings) — treat Cal ID as the source of truth.

    Related: [Cancel or reschedule a booking](/docs/bookings/cancel-reschedule)
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## The connection is broken or its permission was revoked

A calendar connection can lapse without you touching anything: a password change, a workspace admin revoking third-party app access, an Apple app-specific password regenerated, or a permission declined during the original consent screen.

The tell-tale sign is a sudden change with no matching action on your side — either everything reads as busy, or nothing does.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open your calendar settings">
    Go to **Settings → Calendars** at [https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars](https://cal.id/settings/my-account/calendars). Look for an error state, a reconnect prompt, or a connection that lists no sub-calendars at all.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Cross-check the installed app">
    Open **Apps → Installed Apps** at [https://cal.id/apps/installed/calendar](https://cal.id/apps/installed/calendar). A connection that is present but non-functional usually shows here too.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Reconnect and grant every permission">
    Reconnect the calendar. On the consent screen, grant **all** requested permissions — view, create, edit, and delete. Withholding delete permission, for example, leaves cancellations stranded on your calendar with everything else appearing to work.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Re-select your sub-calendars">
    After reconnecting, tick the sub-calendars you want checked for conflicts and confirm the destination calendar. These choices are not always carried over, and a reconnected calendar with nothing ticked blocks nothing.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Test in both directions">
    Add a Busy event on your calendar for a bookable slot and confirm the slot disappears from your booking page. Then make a test booking and confirm it lands on the destination calendar. Cancel both afterwards.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Warning>
  Disconnecting a calendar stops Cal ID from checking it for conflicts, so slots it used to block become bookable straight away. Do not disconnect a calendar as a diagnostic step during working hours unless you have hidden your event types first.
</Warning>

Related: [Connect Google Calendar](/docs/apps/google-calendar) · [Connect Apple Calendar](/docs/apps/apple-calendar) · [Managing installed apps](/docs/apps/manage-installed)

## What happens after you reconnect

Reconnecting restores the connection; it does not replay history. Set expectations accordingly.

* **Conflict checking resumes immediately.** As soon as the sub-calendars are ticked, your booking page reflects the busy events on them.
* **Existing events are re-read, not re-created.** Cal ID pulls the past 30 days and next 90 days of events for availability. Nothing on your calendar is modified.
* **Bookings taken while the connection was down are not back-filled.** Any confirmed booking that failed to write stays missing from the calendar. Find them under **Bookings** and add them manually, or cancel and rebook if the attendee needs a fresh invitation.
* **Slots that were wrongly offered stay booked.** If the outage caused a double-booking, resolve it yourself by rescheduling — Cal ID will not undo a confirmed booking.
* **Per-event overrides survive.** Any event type with its own **Add events to calendar** value keeps it, so check those event types individually if the connection you replaced was their destination.

<Tip>
  After any reconnection, make one test booking on a slot you do not mind losing and then cancel it. It takes a minute and it verifies read, write, and delete permissions in a single pass — which is exactly the set that silently breaks.
</Tip>

## Other calendar fixes

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="No available times" icon="calendar-xmark" href="/docs/troubleshooting/no-available-times">
    Work through every reason a booking page shows fewer slots than expected.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Add events to calendar" icon="calendar" href="/docs/event-types/advanced/add-to-calendar">
    Choose which connected calendar stores each event type's bookings.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Unified Calendar" icon="calendar-days" href="/docs/getting-started/unified-calendar">
    See every connected calendar in one view and spot what is really booked.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Get help" icon="life-ring" href="/docs/getting-started/get-help">
    Ask the AI assistant or start a live chat with the support team.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>


## Related topics

- [Connect Google Calendar](/docs/apps/google-calendar.md)
- [Connect Apple Calendar with Cal ID](/docs/apps/apple-calendar.md)
- [Unified Calendar](/docs/getting-started/unified-calendar.md)
- [Add Events to Calendar](/docs/event-types/advanced/add-to-calendar.md)
- [No Available Times on Your Booking Page](/docs/troubleshooting/no-available-times.md)