Multiple Google accounts now - 11 days into trial VMU

[lsdfr]

Hi Dan

Been using trial version of VMU for 11 days now - installed on a desktop and a laptop both running windows 10.
Both have been syncing with google calendars (GC) now problems till today.

Had some events disappear on the laptop, re-added them and made a few changes - did not see them on the desktop. Added a few test events on the desktop and they don't appear on the laptop.
Logged into GC and found none of the test events from the desktop OR the changes from the laptop had arrived.
On the desktop, stopped VMU, deleted the VueMinder.Goggle.Auth folder, restarted VMU - this caused Firefox to startup with a GC asking to allow VMU access which I said allow.
Did the same on the laptop
Now checked the GC web and found an extra Calendar

OK names been changed here as don't want to post actual email address but you'll get the idea
Account for Gmail was for Fred Bloggs, email fred.b@googlemail.com so had a calendar name Fred Bloggs and calendar owner is fred.b@googlemail.com which is what you would expect.

Now the extra calendar I have is named as fred.b@googlemail.com and under the description it has "Created with VueMinder Ultimate. Get it at http://www.vueminder.com.

The laptop and desktop both used fred.b@googlemail.com as the calendar name in VMU from day 1 and used only the calendars on google, the local initial calendars under My Calendars were deleted. I wanted to use only GC to sync
When viewing under GC, and have both calendars selected I get duplicates and some of the test events and changes from the laptop - its a mess.

Stopped VMU on both desktop and laptop, deleted the new fred.b@googlemail.com from GC so left with only one which was the original Fred Bloggs.
Fired up desktop and laptop and synced, a new fred.b@googlemail.com calendar gets created.
Tried importing the original calendar into the new one with the thought of deleting the original (Full Freed Bloggs) but there's no option to delete the original calendar - you can only delete new ones like "fred.b"

Fred Bloggs is the original Calendar (C_Orig)
fred.b is the new calendar (C_New) automatically created by VMU

I could understand the creation of the new calendar because its accessing GC via fred.b, and not Fred Bloggs , this would have been from day 1 but why then does Fred Bloggs have some of the VMU entries.

No idea whats going on, and there does not appear to be any debug log options

I now have 3 calendars, all different for the "same" account/name

Any ideas what to do ?

Leigh

[VueSoft]

Hi Leigh, you should be able to sync VueMinder on all computers with the same Google Calendar, so any changes made on one computer automatically appear on your other computers. I'm not sure what happened in your case, but my guess is that you might have opened the Calendar Properties on each computer to enable syncing with Google Calendar. This would result in 3 different calendars being uploaded to your account. Each computer will sync with a different calendar, which is not what you want.

To fix the problem, please try these steps.

1. In VueMinder, right-click the name of the calendar you had configured to sync with Google Calendar and select "Delete Calendar" from the popup menu. Repeat on each computer.

2. On the Google Calendar webpage, delete the extra calendars you don't intend to use. These might have been calendars that were previously created by VueMinder.

3. In VueMinder, click the "File -> Add Calendar -> Add Google Calendar" menu command. Choose the calendar you'd like to sync, make sure the sync direction is set to "2-way", and then click the "Add Calendar" button. Make a note of the calendar name.

4. Repeat adding the same Google Calendar to your other computers, using the "File -> Add Calendar -> Add Google Calendar" menu command. Make sure to select the same calendar that you selected in step 3.


After following these steps, each computer should be configured to sync with the same calendar. Changes you make on one computer will upload to Google Calendar and then sync to your other computers within about 30 seconds.

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[lsdfr]

Hi Dan

Problem solved - Multiple Google Accounts

Deleted all calendars on the desktop and laptop and also the google calendar (GC), primary and the secondary one created by VMU.
Also deleted the google calendar authorization folders on above machines.

Connected the laptop to GC using the wife's Google account, and did a few test events -fine and no new secondary calendars created by VMU
Restored VMU calendar from backup - no sync with GC so all the backup's are no good - no idea why
So using latest non-syncing VMU calendar, exported events to a ICS file.
Deleted non-sync calendar and reconnected a new blank one with GC - then imported ICS file with events - few test syncs = OK

On the desktop machine, connected to GC and got what appeared to be the same calendar above but after a few test events showed no sync.
Noticed on one of the many delete/GC reconnect that I had a list of three calendar accounts one being my email account and 2 of the wifes
Logged onto GC (Web browser) under MY account and found 2 extra calendars that were created by VMU.

I then noticed that the File/Add Calendar/Add Google Calendar has a button in the top right corner "Use a different account"
SO obviously changed this to the wife's account and both laptop and desktop were in sync and test events all worked.

Now I'm not sure how or why for the first 10 days both machines were using the wife's account and then the desktop machine started to create and use my Google account.

How does VMU determine which google account to use ? ie. If I've logged into Google to read say my email and then run VMU, does it automatically create a secondary calendar if it does not find one, or does it only create a new secondary calendar when you use the "Add Google Calendar" wizard?

Suggestion - Not sure if this is possible but for people with multiple Google account may be helpful (I spend 3 hours looking at this ) plus it may reduce your work load.
1) When adding a Google calendar called say Fred.B@gmail.com and you are logged on to Google as Jon.Do@gmail.com I think there should be a message saying something like "calendar name is not the same as your Primary Google account so a Secondary calendar will be created - do you wish to do this"
2). When an Secondary calendar is being automatically created - would be nice for a warning notice - I ended up with 5 calendars, all in different states, between 2 accounts
3). Make the "use a different account" a bit more obvious, maybe a red colour warning message when calendar name and account don't match, since for most people the calendar name will be the same as the Google account - no

Just to make clear by what I mean by Primary and Secondary calendars -
Primary is the first one created by Google for your account - you can't deleted it
Secondary ones are extra ones added by you or VMU, which you can unsubscribe (Delete)

So moral of the story, if you have multiple Google accounts, log onto Google Calendar using a web browser and check how many calendars you have.

Leigh

[VueSoft]

How does VMU determine which google account to use ?

The first time syncing with Google Calendar is commanded, VueMinder will default to using whichever Google account was most recently logged in when using your default web browser. If the wrong account was logged in, you can click the "Use a different account" button in the upper-left corner of the "Add Google Calendar" window. VueMinder will only be able to sync with a single account. The "Share this calendar" command can be used on the Google Calendar webpage to share calendars between accounts, enabling VueMinder to access all calendars through a single account.

Suggestion - Not sure if this is possible but for people with multiple Google account may be helpful (I spend 3 hours looking at this ) plus it may reduce your work load.
1) When adding a Google calendar called say Fred.B@gmail.com and you are logged on to Google as Jon.Do@gmail.com I think there should be a message saying something like "calendar name is not the same as your Primary Google account so a Secondary calendar will be created - do you wish to do this"
2). When an Secondary calendar is being automatically created - would be nice for a warning notice - I ended up with 5 calendars, all in different states, between 2 accounts
3). Make the "use a different account" a bit more obvious, maybe a red colour warning message when calendar name and account don't match, since for most people the calendar name will be the same as the Google account - no

Thank you for the suggestions. Due to the way OAuth2.0 works and the limited permissions that VueMinder requests, VueMinder doesn't actually know which account you're using - not even your login name. The only way to get that information would be to request a permission called something like "view and modify account details" - which I think would freak out most people.

I'll see if I can do something on the Add Google Calendar window to make it more clear that only one account can be used, and if you added calendars from other accounts they will no longer sync after clicking the "Use a different account" button.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions.