What SYNCDATE can't do

Everything on this page is a real limit in the product today, not a plan gate you can pay to remove. Plan limits are on Plans and limits; this page is about things no plan changes.

Three calendars won't mirror through two syncs

Sync A↔B and sync B↔C, and A and C never see each other. B gets everything, but the copies B receives are not passed on — a copy is not a source. So the outer two calendars stay blind to one another, and the setup looks half-broken.

This surprises people because the arrangement looks like it should work. It's the single most common way a multi-account setup goes wrong.

Do this instead: one Mirror sync containing all three calendars. Every calendar in a Mirror is both a source and a target, so all three see each other, and nothing has to hop.

The catch is that a Mirror holds fewer calendars than a Push does — 2 on Free, 4 on Plus, 5 on Pro — so three calendars in one Mirror needs Plus or better.

Out of office and focus time only work on Google

Only Google marks out-of-office, focus time, working location and contact birthdays as special event types. On Outlook, iCloud and other CalDAV accounts these arrive as ordinary events, so the Special event types checkboxes do nothing at all for them — they cannot leave an Outlook out-of-office block out, and they cannot bring one in. An Outlook out-of-office block syncs like any other event, and the only way to keep it out is a rule that matches its shape rather than its type: skip all-day events, or skip events whose title contains a word you choose.

That is the part worth being precise about. "The filter only works on Google" still implies an Outlook user is getting the default skip behaviour. They are not. The control is inert for them, and its unticked state is not a filter that is being applied — it is a filter with nothing to match on. Both shape-based rules live under Exclude events, as All-day events and Title contains.

On Google, the four checkboxes do work — but the default depends on when your sync was made:

• A sync you create today starts with all four unticked, and nothing in the list syncs until you tick it.
• A sync that already existed when we added these filters was left alone deliberately, so it would keep behaving the way its owner expected. Those syncs carry all four types ticked, and still sync them.

So "these are skipped by default" is true of new syncs and false as a blanket statement. If you're not sure which yours is, open the sync and read its own Special event types list — the ticks tell you.

iCal and ICS feeds are read-only

A feed you subscribed to by URL can only ever be a source. Nothing can write back to it — that's how the format works, not a restriction we added. A sync containing a feed is a Push with the feed on the source side, and Mirror is greyed out.

If you want two-way sync with iCloud, connect it as a CalDAV account instead of subscribing to its ICS link. Same calendar, a connection that can be written to.

Filters apply to the whole sync, never to one calendar

Appearance settings can differ per destination calendar on Pro. Filters can't, on any plan. There is one setting each for:

• which events are skipped (all-day, title contains, free events)
• the accepted/maybe/all reply filter
• the day-and-hour rules
• special event types
• how far ahead the sync reaches

So "send only my accepted meetings to work, and everything to personal" isn't one sync. It's two one-way syncs pointed at each other, each with its own filters, and that costs you a second sync against your plan's count.

Day-and-hour rules use each event's own time zone

If you tell a sync to skip anything outside 09:00–17:00, that's 09:00–17:00 where the event is, not where you are. A 10:00 meeting created in New York while you're in Berlin is inside the window, because it's 10:00 in New York.

There is no setting for this. It matters if you travel, or if colleagues in other time zones create events on a calendar you sync.

Two more things about these rules:

• One time window per sync. You can't have 09:00–12:00 and 14:00–17:00. If you set more than one, only the first is kept.
• All-day events are never excluded by an hours rule, because they have no clock time to compare. Use the all-day filter for those.

Past events: one month back, once

Copy past events offers None, Past week, or Past month, and it only runs the first time a sync starts. Changing it later doesn't reach back and fetch anything.

There is no full-history backfill, and no way to ask for one. If you need three years of history in another calendar, SYNCDATE isn't the tool for that job — export and import it directly.

Repeating events ignore your sync window

A weekly standup copies as one repeating event, including occurrences years beyond your window, because the whole series transfers as a single event with its repeat rule attached. There's nothing for the window to apply to.

That means a Free plan with a 30-day window can still show repeating events five years out. It's not a bug and it can't be narrowed.

Colour is approximate between providers, and sometimes absent

Google has 11 event colours. Outlook has no event colour at all — it has categories, six of them by default. CalDAV takes any hex value. A colour crossing between two of those lands on the nearest match, not the exact one.

Where there's no sensible match, the copy comes out with no colour rather than a wrong one. Setting an Outlook category name on a sync that also writes to Google means the Google copies are uncoloured, silently.

Outlook copies showing grey is the common version of this. The copy carries a category name; if that category doesn't exist in your mailbox, Outlook has no colour to draw. Create a category with that exact name yourself (right-click an event → Categorize → All Categories → New). We can't create it for you — doing so needs permission to change your mailbox settings, which is far broader than calendar access.

We can't stop your calendar's own reminder

Setting Reminders to Off means the copy carries no reminders of its own. It does not stop a calendar-wide default. Google's "Notifications for this calendar" and Outlook's default reminder apply to everything in the calendar and sit outside anything a sync controls. Turning that off is a change in your calendar app.

This comes up regularly and there is no setting on our side that fixes it.

Only Free and Busy cross between providers

Outlook has Tentative, Working elsewhere, and Out of office as availability states. Our model has two. Those finer states arrive as one or the other, and the exact original label doesn't survive.

An account belongs to one SYNCDATE login

You can't move a connected calendar account from one SYNCDATE account to another. Disconnect it from the first, then connect it to the second. If a connection reports "Account already connected" and you don't recognise the login it belongs to, email vlad@syncdate.app.

We can't get past your organisation's app policy

If your IT admin blocks third-party calendar apps, only they can unblock it. We can't request approval on your behalf, we aren't told when approval is granted, and there's no workaround — a tool that bypasses your company's app policy is one your company is right to distrust. The workspace admin page is written for them to read.

A very large deletion pauses the sync instead of finishing it

If a single run would delete 100 copies, the sync stops and emails you rather than continuing. It's a guard against a source calendar disappearing and taking every copy with it.

The consequence: a legitimate bulk cleanup can leave a sync paused partway, with some copies removed and some still there. Re-enable it and it finishes.

Deleting copies isn't undoable from inside the app

Narrowing a sync — removing a calendar, switching Mirror to Push, tightening a filter — deletes the copies that no longer belong. You get a count before it happens. Read that number, because nothing in SYNCDATE puts them back.

Things we're asked for that don't exist

• Syncing a calendar to someone else's account. SYNCDATE syncs calendars you own, between accounts you've connected to your own login.
• A window narrower than 30 days. The choices are 30 days, 1 year, and unlimited.
• Two-way sync with a feed URL. See above — connect it as an account instead.
• Choosing which reminder times a copy gets. You can copy the original's, use the destination's default, or have none.