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

Same issue. I've tried responding to events and deleting them and I just can't get them to go away.

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 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

It's over four months later, and the issue is still here. I'm rebuking large calendars weekly to remove canceled meetings. These particular people do not want to use Outlook or another client that does not have this issue.

AppleMail. Does anyone read these except us? Are Apple engineering moderators listening or maybe Apple intelligence could cull these and bring them to their attention? I'm up for a terminal script ( if available?) to remove the read-only attribute for the invite.

This has been a really irritating issue. I'm on a listserv for work and whenever they send an invite (+ reminders) all of them clog my calendar even if I'm not attending that event. My Outlook calendar doesn't have that invite after I decline, and the email itself is deleted, but Apple calendar helpfully remembers and shows them to me.

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.

I did this, but it only works temporarily: unwanted calendar events will build up in future and you'll have to do it again. I had hoped it would fix the problem, but it only clears out the garbage.

Agreed. Still the same 4 months later. I tried adding an email address to the contact card, but that does NOT work.

In my case, all of the 'phantom' objects are for Events that I've declined but were sent to a list address OR Events that I was listed as the "organizer" for but were NOT created in Calendar.app (either crated in OWA or MS Teams).

So I did some additional checking. ALL of the Events in my exchange account that show the "This event was imported (read-only)" message have the following things in common.

1. It does not matter whether the organizer shows as me or not

2. It does not matter whether I am in the 'To' list or received the invite as part of a list.

3. For events where I AM the Organizer, the Event was NOT created via Calendar.app.

And then did a BUNCH of testing to see what would / would not result in a 'phantom' Events that could not be deleted.

I added the mailing list email address for several 'phantom' Events to my contact card. I closed all apps after saving to Contact, verified the updated details showed up in my contact card on iCloud.com (I don't have any contacts in my exchange account and I don't think Exchange has a concept of a "me" contact card anyway), and then rebooted. I still see the events and cannot delete them.

I also noticed that I could NOT delete events where I WAS in the TO list OR where I was the organizer and the event was created outside Calendar.app (M$ Teams or OWA).

I also tested whether having an "online meeting" changed anything - it did not.

Additionally, I found that cancelling Events that I had scheduled outside of Calendar.app resulted in 'phantom' Events that still could not be deleted - even though they no longer show up in OWA, on mobile (iPhone / iPad) or M$ Teams.

Finally, for meetings that were addressed directly to me, I no longer have an option to change my response option from 'accepted' to 'decline' or 'tentative' (maybe) either. So there is no way to REMOVE ANY Events in Calendar.app any longer.

Guess I'll be using OWA and Teams for everything now.. Might as well stop using Mail.app as well since I'll have to be in OWA anyway.

It's not just a MS Exchange issue, but also affects Google Calendar imports and, I imagine, any other similar systems.

Prior to Sequoia, there was seamless two-way integration between ical across devices and Google Calendar - I run my life cross-platform, so I need calendars that work on whatever machine is needed and Google has always provided that. I have always been able to create events in iCal which are directly hosted on Google Calendar, then edit them as I wish on any of my computers or handheld devices without a hitch.

However, after Sequoia arrived, that interoperability went.

I have managed to resolve this by adding the Google email identifier (a very random, very long email address that is only referenced in iCal) into all of my contact cards on the various systems. iCal now identifies me as the sender of the events, as that weird email address is locally associated with my user accounts on all of those various devices.

This suggests that, whilst Apple may have highlighted an issue, their security protocols are working and the issue is that the non-Apple calendar servers are causing the mismatch by using random identifiers, rather than the user account identifiers we might expect. Both approaches make sense from a security perspective, but what is needed is a system where the unique identifier used by Exchange or Google etc is then translated back into the user-expected identifier (ie their logon email), so that the system can be accessed as expected in whatever 3rd party system as required. IE the tech giants need to talk!

While I don't know who wrote the Exchange connector on MacOS, I am willing to bet this to be an Apple problem.

I (bet that many other users) cannot adjust Username / e-mail difference (so they match) to account they do not own.

I have this problem. I have removed and re-added the account. But It dont seam to help. Other calendars google and iCloud works fine

Hi fronesis47

I'm also on an Exchange account that's admin'ed by my university. I'm intrigued by your suggestion to change the default email on a "proprietary profile page" – can you explain what you mean by that? My uni offers the usual Exchange desktop suite plus Office 365 on the web and a university-specific page where I change my uni-wide password every couple of weeks. But I'm not sure what you mean by "proprietary profile page"...?

I note that my official uni email is first name initial dot surname @ uni domain. But the Exchange login is just username @ uni domain, which looks like an email.

Thank you!