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I have various calendars from iCloud and Google and it's very often that an event will be deleted from Google calendar but the iPhone will still show it. The same calendar is on iCal on my Mac and it shows it correctly there. If it doesn't, I can ⌘ + R or ⇧ + ⌘ + R to update it.

Maybe I'm missing the place or configuration to do the same on the iPhone calendar application.

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8 Answers 8

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EDIT: This has been fixed in recent versions of iOS. Please see Freewalker's answer which describes simply pulling to refresh the calendars in the Calendars list.

For deprecated versions of iOS: As of iOS 5 there is no super easy/obvious way to do this. What I have found that works, is opening Settings > Mail, Contacts, and Calendars > Tapping the email account you'd like to refresh > turn the calendar off > wait while it deletes it > turn the calendar back on.

sometimes by forcing a New Event, it triggers syncing.

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    This worked for me; unfortunately it means losing any local modifications (on the phone that haven't been synced). So if the reason you need to force a sync is because you've made changes on the phone that haven't synced to the cloud, this trick won't help.
    – metamatt
    Commented Nov 5, 2012 at 18:50
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In iOS 7 and later:

  1. Open Calendar app
  2. Tap Calendars
  3. Drag down to refresh
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    Works exactly as described, and is entirely non-obvious. Thank you!
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Jun 20, 2014 at 18:25
  • Worked on iOS 8.1 also, great!
    – haa
    Commented Nov 5, 2014 at 20:51
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    Didn't work for me on iOS 8.1.1 Used to work on iOS 7 though.
    – Artem
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 9:03
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    Didn't work for me in iOS 10.0.1
    – mwengler
    Commented Sep 21, 2016 at 20:17
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    Worked for me on 10.3.3, but agree with @MattBall that it's very non-obvious. Remember when Apple UIs were the gold standard? Not so much these days.
    – Dave Land
    Commented Oct 28, 2017 at 3:56
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On iOS 6 or earlier, my experience is that the easiest way to sync the calendars is, from within the Calendar App on the iPhone, tap the Calendar Button in the upper left corner. You now have a display with a grey Edit button in the upper left, A blue Done button in the upper right, and down at the bottom on the left is a white clockwise circular arrow. Tap it and it will sync the calendars.

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    I don't know if this refresh button is supposed to refresh the calendars themselves, or just the list of calendars (what's on the same screen as that refresh button). My iPhone stopped syncing my Google calendar completely -- updates stopped syncing in both directions -- and this refresh button didn't help.
    – metamatt
    Commented Nov 5, 2012 at 18:49
  • Worked for me. Had stale data (ie missing events from my corporate calendar), performed the above steps by Haiyaka, and the events showed up.
    – r00fus
    Commented Sep 3, 2013 at 19:46
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I had this problem in iOS 8. For some reason, all the events from my work Gmail calendar disappeared. What I did was go into the settings then into mail contacts and calendars and then selected my work Gmail account. I turned off the calendar, then turned it back on. Then I went back to the calendar, and it started to sync. Hope that helps

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  • when you turn it off would it delete all your calendar entries?
    – Archimedes Trajano
    Commented Apr 1, 2015 at 15:00
  • This is the only thing that worked for me on iOS 16.1.2. No amount of refreshing, restarting, etc. would fix it. When you disable the Gmail calendar, all of the Gmail events disappear. But when you re-enable it, they come back (along with the missing calendar entries).
    – jstricker
    Commented Feb 6, 2023 at 15:56
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I was able to refresh my google calendars on iOS 8 by clicking on "Calendars" on the bottom of the screen, then just swiping down, just like you would when refreshing your mail inbox.

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If you open the iCal app on your phone, go to "Calendars" and swipe/pull down it will refresh it (you'll see the spinning circle thing). Refreshed and updated it right away.

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I had this problem today and the solutions above did NOT work.

In my case the problem was I did not have calendars enabled for cellular data. Since I wasn't on Wi-Fi, my calendar was not updating.

The solution was:

  1. Go to Settings > Cellular
  2. Make sure Cellular Data toggle is turned on (shows green).
  3. Scroll down to Calendars & Reminders. Make sure toggle switch is turned on (shows green).

That solved it for me!

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What solved this for me was:

  1. Turn calendar sync off and back on again.
  2. Re-enter your Apple ID password in settings.
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