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December 12, 2006

tips

Clear up .Mac sync issues by starting fresh

Posted Dec. 12, ’06, 7:19 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Tips

Sync The big selling point of Apple’s .Mac service is the syncing aspect. I use it heavily for the stock stuff (contacts, calendar, email preferences, keychains, etc.) as well as Yojimbo (the syncing is what sells it). However, I started seeing weird behavior. My Mac Pro was syncing all the time. When I started fresh with my Powerbook, it couldn’t sync the calendar.

I tried using the Reset capability over and over again, but no matter how many times I tried it, the situation stayed the same. I purposely left the Mac Pro off only to find five plus dialogs reporting sync errors on the Powerbook. The solution was to unregister all my Macs. Once you unregister the last, it prompts you to delete all your data off the server. Do it. That clears out the data store. I then started syncing up again, starting my Mac Pro (as it had the most complete set).

All my syncing weirdness ceased. The Mac Pro wasn’t endlessly trying to sync. My Powerbook quickly got my calendar data. All is good. The lesson here is that if you’ve been using syncing heavily for a while now and things aren’t working quite like you’d expect, unregister everything and start over. The problem may be on the server.


2 Comments

Errol Sayre said:

I've found that enabling one item at a time in the .Mac sync preference pane and allowing a sync to complete before enabling the next provides a less painful solution.

That's just my mileage, yours may vary, but it's worth a try before reseting ALL your computers if you have 5 that share data like I do.

December 12, 2006 8:24 AM
Derik Author Profile Page said:

I tried that actually, I just forgot to include it in my account. No dice when I tried it.

December 12, 2006 5:43 PM

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