My CalDav calendar suddenly disappeared
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I have something very odd going on. I was moving/deleting some mail and when I went back to the Calendar tab all the entries in my main calendar had completely disappeared. They sync to and from a CalDav calendar stored at an account at GreenGeeks.
This is what I did next.
- I checked my Android phone and iPad. The entries in the calendar still showed there.
- I made a backup ics file from the calendar app on my phone in case an attempt at syncing Vivaldi deleted the calendar from the server.
- I exited Vivaldi and restarted it, in case it was a display issue.
- I tried syncing again. Nothing appeared to happen.
- I deleted the calendar from Vivaldi and then added it again. Nothing appeared to happen. I tested the connection and it gave me the green box with a tick saying "Connected to CalDav. Found 2 calendars".
- I then decided to attempt to import the ics file into Vivaldi. The import failed because Vivaldi choked on the DESCRIPTION fields in some of the entries - even those these entries had originated from Vivaldi. Specifically it did not seem to want to deal with descriptions that contained multiple lines although it had happily synced them up until an hour ago.
- I added a new entry into the calendar in Vivaldi and checked that it appeared on my iPad. It did.
- I then added a new entry on my iPad and checked to see if it appeared in Vivaldi. It didn't. It did appear on my phone though.
It appears, then, that the CalDav server is happily syncing bidirectionally, and that my iPad and phone have no difficulties with this. Vivaldi seems to sync outwards correctly but not inwards. Or rather it claims to sync but does not display the results of the sync (See 5 above). And I have no idea at all what caused this to suddenly happen.
One final point: I have 2 Google calendars syncing to Vivaldi - one birthdays and one my timed Todoist tasks - and both of these continue to work as they should. They appear on screen, they sync, and they show new entries made elsewhere.
I don't know what to do next. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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@owenkelly Hard to tell, I tested my caldav setup just now and it syncs both ways. But this is with Vivaldi web calendar sever, not GreenGeeks.
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Is it possible that Point 6 in the original post is the core problem?
When I try to import the iCal file of my calendar I get
Error parsing iCal line "Join on your computer or mobile app". Value not found.
When I check the iCal file I see this:
DESCRIPTION:Microsoft Teams meeting
Join on your computer or mobile appfollowed by several more lines of description, all part of a Teams invitation that I accepted.
If I reduce the description to one line (by deleting all the lines after "meeting") it parses correctly but the importing then fails to parse the next time it comes across a multi-line description.
These descriptions are not from current events. Some go back to the start of 2022 - and have been syncing and displaying happily since I first started using Vivaldi's calendar.
How does Vivaldi deal with this situation when syncing? Is it supposed to display an error message or just fail in the background. If the latter then has something changed recently in the Vivaldi calendar code? If not then why is data that parsed successfully yesterday suddenly failing, while not failing on iOS or Android devices?
Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the problem?
In either case I would appreciate some suggestions because (being currently invisible) my calendar is completely useless, and I was happily relying on Vivaldi on the desktop as my Outlook substitue
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@owenkelly It makes no sense importing an ics file from an already synced calendar into a client which should already be connected. You did it because the entries were gone, but this cannot fix the sync. You could try to create a new profile on Vivaldi and create a new caldav calendar connecting to the server. Should this work it would indicate something is wrong with your profile. If it fails it would indicate that something with the setup is wrong.
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I have just set up a new profile. I attached my CalDav calendar and my Google calendars.
Within seconds the Google calendar entries appeared. Nothing has yet appeared from the CalDav calendar.
Once again I enter a test event in Vivaldi with my CalDav calendar set to default. After refreshing I check my iPad and there it is. I make a test entry in my iPad, wait awhile, and check Vivaldi. Nothing appears.
So it seems that even in a new profile nothing appears from the server on my Vivaldi calendar, although when I test Vivaldi says it has connected and can find two calendars.
@luetage suggested that this would suggest that my profile is okay but something in my setup is wrong. I am happy to agree but since I have done nothing to my calendar settings for months my setup has not changed, or at least I have not changed it. Yesterday it worked. Today it doesn't. Neither have I changed the set up on my phone or iPad, and yet they still work. Has something in the calendar code changed behind the scenes?
I am stumped. Do I completely uninstall Vivaldi next and build all my customisations up again, or is there a less drastic next step? Any suggestions welcome.
Help!
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@owenkelly No, your profile is ok, no need to abandon it. Could it be something changed on the GreenGeeks server? I would poke in that direction.
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@luetage I do believe you are right. I have now downloaded another WebDav powered email client and it behaves the same.
Just now I asked a colleague to download Vivaldi onto his computer. With a completely fresh install I added my calendar and the result was the same. It claimed it was in contact with the server but it could send but not receive.
As a side issue, my colleague was very taken with Vivaldi and is now sitting exploring it with a view to moving from Chrome to Vivaldi, so some good has come out of this, even if I don't have a calendar yet.
I have now logged a ticket with Greengeeks and I will see what happens with that.
Many thanks!
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@luetage So now things get more complicated: the tech support at Greengeeks tried to duplicate the issue with Thunderbird, brought up my calendar with no problem, and decided the issue was local and nothing to do with them.
I then downloaded both emClient and Thunderbird, and discovered that they will sync happily with the CalDav server at Greengeeks while Vivaldi simply won't anymore.
I have no idea where to look to solve this and I would dearly like to.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to proceed from here? @luetage has made a number of useful points but we seem to have detoured right back to where we started
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@owenkelly Can’t test it on GreenGeeks and for me caldav works. Something doesn’t play well together obviously. The fault can be both in the client or the server. Either someone at GreenGeeks has to test it with Vivaldi, or the folks over at GreenGeeks have to provide a test account for a Vivaldi developer. Did the problem happen immediately after a Vivaldi update? If not, I’d reckon GreenGeeks changed something, but who knows.
