Unable to delete calendar invites on my Calendar App after macOS Sequoia update

Update: The "This event was imported (read-only)" showing on ALL Calendar Events issue seems to have been related to Exchange email aliasing and which "account" Apple sees as "active" when I joined it to exchange. And not just having that email associated to your "me" contact card.

I removed the Exchange account a second time, re-added it using my "alias" as my username, then when clicking the SSO Sign in option using the actual username/password and events now show correctly. Events sent to "me" (aka the alias) now show 'correctly' and any previous 'phantoms' from Events sent to lists have also disappeared. The latter more likely due to deleting the calendar entirely though so I'll have to see the next time I receive a list invite to see whether that functions correctly or not (I suspect it will not).

I came here to post my own solution, which is very similar to DBTubbs, but with one tweak.

The problem is that the Mac Calendar app does not recognize the invite email address as belonging to Exchange account holder. So it treats those invited events as read-only. And as DBTubbs says, you cannot fix this by editing your Apple “me” contact card. You have to make the change on the Exchange server.

In my case the issue appeared because my default University email address (where all my invites were sent) was not the same as my University-Microsoft account email address.

DBTubbs solution would NOT WORK for me. I tried to log into my exchange account using the email address to which the invites were sent, but the exchange authentication server says rejected that with the error “email address not recognized.” I can ONLY log into to exchange with one email that my University exchange account recognizes.

The solution for me:

I changed my “default email address” in a proprietary profile page that my university sets up. This changed my Exchange contact information to the same email address as I log into the exchange servers. (Note that my exchange admin prohibits users from editing their own contact card, so the only way to make this change for me was through the separate profile page.)

After that change propagated to the servers, turning OFF and back ON the exchange calendar loaded all events properly.

Hi all.

I upgraded to 15.2 and this appears to be fixed. The calendar still showed items that were marked read-only and were still unable to be deleted.

HOWEVER, for me, I went into System Settings -> Internet Accounts -> and then to the Exchange account, and then disabled the calendar for the particular Exchange accounts. I also selected to "Delete from My Mac." I let it sit for a few moments, quit calendar, and then rebooted. I don't know whether or not the these last steps were necessary but, what the ****... After enabling the calendar in the Exchange account, only those things that should have come back came back!!

For me, I consider this issue solved/closed. I hope this is the case for everybody else!

aps

Hi everybody, had the same problem. Here is what worked for me as a local solution:

1) Go to the calendar view in your exchange account (e.g. outlook) and create a new calendar under your exchange account e-mail (in Outlook in calendar view, click on the three points beside your e-mail and choose "new folder")

2) name this calendar for example "items to be deleted"

3) sync your calendar - that should make it appear in your Apple calendar

4) switch to your Apple calendar app and see if the new calendar has appeared

5) if so, select one or all non-wanted items, and assign them to the newly created calendar ("items to be deleted")

6) switch back to calendar view in your exchange account app

7) delete the newly created calendar ("items to be deleted") - click on the three points and choose "delete folder"

8) sync your calendar - that should make it disappear from your Apple calendar

Finished! I hope it works for you, too

The above solved the problem for me. To repeat the above with a simplification, "I went into System Settings -> Internet Accounts -> and then to the Exchange account, and then disabled the calendar for the particular Exchange accounts. I also selected to "Delete from My Mac."

I waited just a few seconds, reclicked the "calendar" box for the Exchange account, then quit and restarted calendar without restarting my macbook. Problem solved for now. I suspect I'll have to do this again in the future when the same problem of events I cannot delete are on my calendar. Thanks

fronesis47: You are correct. 15.2 did not fix this issue; at least not completely. I was too quick on the trigger to say it did.

HOWEVER, it does improve things. It seems that stuff is still added to the calendar as read only. However, NOW, I can go into System Settings -> Internet Accounts -? Exchange account, and deselect (disable) Calendars. Select to "Delete from My Mac," then wait some time to ensure all is deleted, and then re-enable the Calendar.

It populates only that which I accepted in the first place and all the other stuff is gone.

While annoying, this is a little better situation than it was before....

aps

This is such a silly problem to exist, but for me the 2 main posted solutions worked.

1) can disable and re-enable the calendar account after "fixing" any invites via outlook on the web or wherever else outside of calendar. this clears the old junk but as others have said, more invites to mailing lists & other weird addresses will cause new issues down the road.

2) using the "void" calendar works great. Any of the read only calendar events I move to that void calendar, then I can delete if I want, or just keep it hidden and remove alerts.

On another note I was an old Mac user that recently switched back, I used my iPhone as the main tool for years along with windows Microsoft outlook. I'm finding it very hard to keep things organized as far as consolidated calendar, mail, etc. I have office for Mac and Microsoft 365 but am trying hard to not use them - I should be able to use Mac calendar, mail, etc for everything all in one place. But this Microsoft & apple collab needs some help still, from both sides it seems.

Anyway, thanks to the posters who suggested these solutions.

I've added my work group mail to my addresses in Contacts and then I was able to decline/accept the events that were previously read-only!! No more unwanted events in my calendar!

Thanks for the tip!

Disabling (or deleting) and re-enabling (or re-adding) the Exchange account clears out old ghost events, but doesn't prevent new ones being created. So this workaround has to be repeated regularly.

Another partial workaround is to add yourself as a delegate (macOS Calendar > Accounts > Exchange > Delegation) then remove the main calendar from view and only work with the delegated calendar.

Deleting the account in Internet Accounts, rebooting and re-creating it resolved the problem for me.

I found a hack that is not ideal but gets rid of the clutter in calendar.

1. Create a dummy Exchange calendar. I call mine "void"
2. Change the label for the event that you cannot delete to "void"
3. Hide "void" from iCal view.

Have you given the “void” calendar option a try? I agree it’s crazy this is even a problem, but for me moving these read only events to another calendar then simply hiding that calendar has worked fine.

for me the issue seems to appear whenever someone sends invites to exchange mailing lists, like “Seattle-HR-All” instead of addressing the event to individual email addresses.

I haven’t yet tried adding the mailing list to my contact card, some people claim that solves it also. But to me that’s not ideal as then your own contact card could have tons of these mailing list addresses.

Thank you so much! My problem was with an external appointment scheduling app (it was switching the label of the event to canceled, but I couldn't delete it). Toggling the calendar on and off successfully removed all the canceled appointments.

@Marcus

First, I’m fairly certain your issue is just like mine. Those different emails are what’s confusing the apple calendar. Somehow you need to get the exchange server either to recognize both email addresses as you, or to switch your default email address to the one you log in to exchange with.

For me, my university has an old setup that they still use by long pre-dates when they went to exchange, where you’d log in to a “my.Uni.edu” page. From there you could link to lots of different university web services – payroll stuff, course management systems, etc., and also link to Office 365 stuff. They have a page there that’s “my profile” and changes I made there propagated to the Exchange server.

You need some way of updating your exchange profile, either directly (which was blocked for me) or indirectly (which is what I did).

Good luck!

I found a workaround to survive. If you set yourself as a delegate in exchange account properties, another copy of your calendar appears. This time without the "imported" events, all working fine so far. All you need then is to stop showing the original calendar.