iPhone and Google Calendar Not Syncing Properly: Fix

One common problem I experienced with the iPhone 4 when I picked mine up about a month ago is the synchronization of events on my iPhone and Google Calendar. If you haven't done so already, Google's written a nice guide on how to sync your iPhone with Google Calendar that you can follow.

There's been many occasions where I've added an event to my iPhone and it shows up 3 hours later on my Google Calendar (any the other way around). I found the extremely bizarre. I would get alerts, if I set them for the event, hours later (it also displayed PST, which is clearly not the time zone I'm in. I'm in EST!) So I decided to see what other's have said about this. I tweeted it about, asked friends, but I couldn't figure out what caused this problem.

In the end, there is a very simple fix to it. Follow these steps and hopefully it will solve this problem on your phone:

1. Settings
2. Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Scroll down to the bottom and change the Time Zone Support to your designated city.

iPhone calendar settings time zone iPhone alert screen iPhone time and date settings

Simple eh? The whole time, I was looking in Settings > General > Data & Time > Time Zone.   

It may be best to set this to your designated city too. This time zone option, if I'm correct, is the setting for the phone. The time zone setting under Mail, Contacts, and Calendars is for those applications. They all must be in sync in order for Google Calendar to recognize that yes, we are in the EST time zone.

I hope this helps fix your calendar problem on your iPhone. If this didn't solve the problem, leave a comment below and I, or other readers, will try and give you other options to go abouts fixing it.

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Jackson Lo

Jackson is the Analytics / SEO Manger at adjump media and MENU.CA. His expertise spans from digital marketing (search engine optimization, local search marketing) to digital intelligence (digital analytics, data analysis). Very passionate about what he does, he also has big interests in photography and travelling.

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Posted on January 8, 2011 by . This entry was posted in Other and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Timcypert

    THANK YOU!!! I thought I was going crazy!

  • Matt

    I’ve done this.
    Im in Dublin time zone.

    I’ve deleted recurring alarms.
    disabled the calendar in exchange so the calendar was wiped re-enabled it and it’s put them back so that the phone is still an hour out.

    The google calendar is correct.
    But this means my iPhone is useless to keep my appointments.

    Grrr

  • Matt

    I’ve fixed it.
    Another setting you can change is in Google Calendar.
    I changed the GMT setting on Google Calendar. It made the iPhone sync and then I changed it back.

  • Dummyinfo1

    Fixed my problem. Thanks for the tip.

  • brad

    Thank you so much! This was driving me absolutely nuts. 

  • http://jacksonlo.com Jackson Lo

    You’re welcome Brad! Glad this was helpful to you.

  • Leow

    Hi there
    I just got my iPhone yesterday and tried all the steps listed here, including going to the Google guide.
    But my Calendar on my gmail is still not showing on the Calendar App on iPhone although I'm receiving my mails under the Mail App.
    Any other things that I should try?  
     
    Thanks lots
    Leow

  • http://jacksonlo.com Jackson Lo

    Did you add your mail as an Exchange or Gmail account? I set mine up through the Gmail settings… make sure you have ‘Calendars’ turned ON. Try adding an event via phone and checking your gCal, and vice versa.

  • Raj

    I have added a new calendar to may gmail account. and the calendar shows up in the calendar list on iphone but does not sync. Any idea

  • YoV

    Fixed my issue.  Thanks for the post.  Just starting happening to me all of a sudden.

  • Eric

    Thanks for the help, but it didn't solve my problem.  Any calendar entry created on my iPhone was NOT syncing to google calendars, no matter what.  I deleted the exchange account and recreated it several times…it was making me nuts.   Finally, I realized that I was not only showing the exchange calendars, but also the iphone calendar and all were conveniently set to the same color.  I was creating calendar events on the iphone calendar (which do not sync to google), NOT creationg them on the google calendar on my iphone through exchange! 
    simple fix:  oepn calendars on iphone, click "calendars" on upper left corner, uncheck "Calendar" under "On My iPhone", check "All Exchange" under "Exchange"…VOILA.  I felt like an idiot, but hope this helps somebody else.

  • Lilli

    Hi, thanks for help, but it did not work for me. I tried what you said and I tried removing my google account from the Mail, caldendar etc settings and adding it again, but that didn't help either. Then I did what everybody should always do with any electrical device theyre having problem with, booted. Like properly booting, holding the home-button and the power-button at the top of the phone down together for a few secs, then slide the "slide to power off" bar. After reboot the sync worked both ways. Don't know if it is gonna break again after some while but at least it works now.

  • Connie

    Eric
    Thanks, that last post worked
    saved me tons of time
    I would have gone crazy!!

  • http://jillsb025@gmail.com Jill

    Eric, THANK YOU!!!  I just did this and am testing it out.  Uuuggghhh, the trials of phone upgrading.  Brand NEW to the iPhone, but already do the Mac desktop and iPad.  Keeping my fingers crossed :)

  • sekar

    Hi, Thanks, Time zone sync is done.

  • M T

    This still isn't working for me.  I have some events I've created on my iPhone that don't show up on the Google calendar AND some events I create on my Google calendar from my PC that doesn't show up on the iPhone.  This is getting REALLY frustrating as I almost forgot to pay a bill because the calendar event did NOT show up on my phone!!!

  • Judi

    Turning my IPhone off and then back on worked.  Everything is syncing again, both ways.  Lilli – thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!

  • Chris

    Currently tearing my hair out about this. My iPhone was only syncing one of my three Google calendars (and not the main one), despite claiming that both existed on my 'phone. I disabled calendars, tried this – and all the other advice I've found on the Internet so far – and re-enabled, only to find that now none of my Google calendars displays! The Google Sync settings (which I set via Mobile Safari) have the three calendars selected, but I have no appointments on my iPhone.
     
    Any ideas?!

  • Andrew

    I had success by changing the date format in the settings to the year-month-date. When using the / format, it did not work

  • Danny

    It worked!  You are a genius!  I've been fighting with this iPhone for several weeks now and up until now it was winning.  Thank you!

  • Victorious

    I have added a new calendar to my Google Calendars, yet it’s not adding to my iPhone calendars. I tried the time zone trick but it didn’t work.  

  • ajrig

    Here’s my trouble - 

    I’ve set up everything according to the specs listed with Google Sync and all that. My iPhone receives eventss from google calendar just fine. However, events do not go from my phone to my google calendar. I’ve tried the time zone fix you mention. No luck. Any ideas?

  • Delroy Lindo

    Same problem here.  Appointments I add from the Google Calendar interface show up on my iPhone fine, but when I add an appointment from my iPhone, it does not show up on Google Calendar ever…not after three hours, or whatever the time zone offset is, it never shows up, even after multiple days.  So I think the timezone thing is not the problem.  Please help! 

  • Mike

    Adding events on iPhone and they don’t show up on Internet shared calendar at all. But they’re on my phone. Help please. iPhone 4 is what im using.

  • Beezorezi

    Hi,

    I can sync calendars owned by me but I can’t calendars shared to me by others. I have about 7 calendars shared to me by others in Outlook but when I sync with iPhone they don’t appear on my iPhone calendar.

    Any Clues?

  • Michelle

    Make sure that the calendar you’re adding events to on your iphone is the same calendar as your google calendar. With the iphone, the default is set to “home” on iCloud, which is probably different than your google calendar. You can set the default to your gmail under settings.

  • Oliver8383

    Hi,

           I am having a problem with not being able to get my google secondary calenders (weather and holidays) to sync onto my iphone. I see the option and its checked but it dont show either only my primary events. I have tried all the options found available online but nothing is working. I have tried goiig to the m.google.com from phone ad syncing it and going to the iphoneselect website as well and it says they are not available with syncing. The problem is they used to sync and show up properply on my other iphone which turnerd out to be defetie so I returned it for a new one and now this problem exist. Please help.

  • John

    I managed to solve the syncing problem by turn off icloud calendars contacts and mail and using Exchange rather than Gmail account for Mail Contacts, Calendars. See http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740
    on how to set up exchange.

  • Jane

    I have done this but am still having problems.  If I add a new event in my google calendar it syncs fine with my iphone.  But if I go to change the time on that event it doesn’t sync back to my iphone.  Please help!

  • Lucy

    Genius!  I too was looking in the wrong settings sub-menu, so thank you!

  • Juan

    I have the same problem too!

  • Rene

    Had the same problem – phone got events from Google but not vice versa. Just fixed it…

    On iphone first go to Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars>Google/Gmail/whatever (the 2nd one)>Account xxx@gmail.com… and make sure Description matches the name of your Google calendar e.g, mine is “Ren” – select Done

    Then go to Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars>Default Account>under Calendar select Default Calendar>Move the tick to your Google calendar (my default was ‘Home’ originally and I moved it to Ren).

    Then log out of Google if you’re doing this alongside your computer and log back in again. Hopefully this will work for you as it did for me! :)

  • tebone

    Perfect! thanks

  • James

    Wow. None of this is working. I’ve tried everything dozens of times. I add or edit an event on my iPhone (5, running iOS 6.1.3) and it doesn’t sync with Google. Truly maddening!