iPad Bug – Choosing March 2013 Month View Crashes iCal

Just come across this problem, and quickly managed to work out how to get around it.

Symptoms:

1. You have an ‘all-day’ or birthday event (from Address Book) configured for 1st April 2013, and the relevant calendar is selected for display.
1. Select Month View
1. Navigate to March 2013 – Crash!

**Update: On 28th January 2013, Apple released iOS 6.1 which appears to fix the problem. Make sure you have upgraded!**

Workarounds:

1. Disable the calendar containing the event
2. Use an alternate view from Month view
3. Delete the offending event or birthday.

If iCal/Calendar crashes due to the bug, just reload, and you’ll either be back at Today, or one month either side of March 2013. Switch view (for example to Week View), and you’ll be able to navigate back to March 2013 without crashing.

If you have Facebook enabled in Settings, you may need to switch off contact and calendar sync, or remove the Facebook account. Check your contacts for any with a birthday on 1st April, and delete the birthday if you find one. Then you should be able to view March 2013 in Mpnth View without crashing.

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46 thoughts on “iPad Bug – Choosing March 2013 Month View Crashes iCal

  1. I have been unable to delete an all day birthday notification for 1st April which has automatically transferred from Facebook. I have “unfriended” my friend but the notification remains on my calandar and I cannot find any way of deleting it. My calandar continues to crash!! Do you have any suggestions please? Many thanks. Lynn.

    1. Hi Lynn. You may need to disable Facebook integration, it birthdays may have been merged onto your contact records. If you go to address book, can you delete the birthday from the person who has on on 1st April? Remember, Calendar only crashes if March 2013 is viewed in Month view, so perhaps the only solution is to avoid that view for now.

  2. 1:identified the problem as “calendar dies when going to March 2013”.
    2: Google the issue.
    3: found your blog
    4: done!

    total time spent 3 minutes. Fantastic! /me love Internet

    BUT: What caused the bug in the first place?! And why isnt it fixed?!

  3. I couldn’t believe how simple it was to resolve, it’s been driving me crazy. Simply deleting the Easter Monday and Birthday I had in as all day events resolved it.
    Amazed Apple haven’t resolved it.
    Thanks everyone.

    1. Apple support tell me that the problem is known, their engineers are working on it and the temporary solution is to deselect the uk holiday calendar, and by implication any other calendar where events on April 1st are all day, and to change any all day events on April 1st on your own calendars to say 0100 to 2300.
      It occurs that people might have several day events stretching over 31st March and 1st April which might also need amending.
      Conspiracy paranoids might think the original programmer thought, ahah it’s April Fools Day in 2013, but I guess it’s more likely to be an unintended consequence of the 31st not having enough hours for a 24 hr all day event.

      1. Brilliant. Thanks. I didn’t even delete the all-day event on April 1st, just changed it to a timed event and all is well again. I’m amazed.

  4. Hi Dave,

    Many thanks for your precious help ! It works !
    Long live Internet: a poor Belgian iPad owner find the solution to his issue thanks to the help of a kind Englishman !

    Thanks again,
    Kevin

    1. Andrew – my understanding is that iOS 6.1.1 was only released for iPhone 4S, not the iPad. Are you now seeing this problem on iPhone too, or are you on 6.1 on iPad and still experiencing the problem? Are you able to explain how to reproduce it if different from my description?

  5. On my iPad3 works this: Aktivate multitasking. Open any App except iCal. Push actice app with 4 fingers standby. Open iCal from taskline.

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