If you own a Samsung Galaxy device, you might have noticed an annoying “bug”: duplicate entries in your calendar, especially for recurring events like birthdays and anniversaries. You might also have noticed that these duplicate entries seem to exist only on your phone and not your Outlook calendar (if using Google Calendar Sync) or the Google Calendar itself.
What’s happening is that the calendar app Samsung includes with their phones has a local calendar (“My Calendar”), but the app also syncs to other calendars, like Google Calendar, Facebook Calendar, etc. I’m not exactly sure what happens, but I think when you sync a third-party calendar, like Google Calendar, to your phone, “My Calendar” sees these recurring events and copies them to your phone. Which would be one thing, except the app doesn’t hide those same recurring events from your other calendars, so you get duplicate entries.
If you’re the inquisitive type, you might go to the calendar’s settings. There you’d find checkboxes for each calendar which allow you to toggle each one on or off. One of those checkboxes is for “My Calendar”, so you’d think it’d just be a matter of unchecking the box and going on about your day. But no: although you can uncheck the “My Calendar” box, it will always automatically “re-check” itself. It would appear that you cannot disable “My Calendar”, but Samsung has put a non-working “disable” checkbox in the settings panel, which is always a great UI design.
So… is there a way to fix this? There is if you: a) use Google Calendar; b) have Android 4.0.3 or higher; and c) don’t have any other data in “My Calendar”:
1) Go to Settings > Application Manager > All.
2) Scroll down to “Calendar” and touch it to select. Once at the app’s property page, click “Disable”, then choose “OK” to any warning messages you may see. This step disables Samsung’s crappy calendar.
3) Back at the Application Manager > All page, scroll down and choose “Calendar Storage”. Click “Clear Data” and “Clear Cache” (if your cache is listed as anything other than 0.00B). This step deletes all your existing calendar data.
4) Go to the Play Store and install Google Calendar.
5) You can then go to Settings > Accounts > Google > [Google User Name] and force your phone to re-sync your Google Calendar. Or you can just wait and let it happen automatically in the background.
6) Reboot your phone. This step removes the icon for the old Calendar app from your Apps screen (“Start menu”).
Of course, if you’re a heavy user of the calendar app on your phone, you might want to double-check that there’s nothing on the “My Calendar” app before you clear the data (step 3). You can do that by going to the Calendar’s settings and unchecking all third-party calendars and seeing what data remains. In my case, “My Calendar” contained nothing but duplicated recurring events.
Interesting, I have a similar but slightly different issue.
I have a Galaxy S5 (Android 4.4.2) and have started synching with Outlook. This means my Outlook calander items turn up on my phone which is pretty useful, although it can have slightly odd effects of the phone wanting to tell me at about 4am of an All-day reminder…which isn’t quite what I want!
The bigger issue is my Outlook Reminders panel…and only the Reminders list…now has duplicate entries for everything. So these are reminders for events created on Outlook, synched with the phone and now appearing in S Planner and then dupliocated in the Ou8tlook Reminders list *only*. Note the entires are not duplicated in Outlook’s calander itself, only in the Reminders list and each dupe is somehow linked with the other as when you Dismiss one copy of a reminder, the other also disappears, although interesting after a second or so…as if it’s been removed from some other store.
I tried your trick of deleting the S Planner data and then resynched, and now only one new item, almost certainly added since the last sync, has appeared on S Planner which suggests the phone calander has remember the items deleted and so isn’t reshowing them. Meanwhile, the Outllok Reminders list still has everything doulbed-up 🙁
I MAY have figured it out…IF you put an END DATE AND DAILY REPEAT, the Calendar copies itself. IF you put and END DATE WITH NO REPEAT, it seems to work for me. Hope this is the fix. Cheers!
Thanks Jim. Very clear and helpfull solution to my problem.
Who would like to disable Scalendar on note ?? Google piece of shit new calendar should be banned. What a loosers devs are working in their app section ?? You can build nicer app (with better usability) after some week app coding tutorial.
Just bunch of lamers.
THANKS SO MUCH!!!!
I did exactly as you said, and when I disabled my galaxy calendar, my Google calendar stopped working. This is frustrating, who wants to have duplicate calendars with double notifications for everything.
I have a Galaxy “Light”, and of course it provides no option to disable its inbuilt calendar app, nor even to shut off its notifications.
Samsung really glued the crap back into calendar.
That was helpful! Thanks for the detailed instrux!
Simply going to Settings>Application Manager>All>Calendar Storage>Clear Data worked for me.
Thanks for your info. I believe my problem happened when accidently added my one drive to my wife new A3. I am now have about 8 repetitions of all repeats.
This appears to have worked for me, too! (Settings>Application Manager>All>Calendar Storage>Clear Data )
At least initially. I’ll need to see if it still works tomorrow, etc.
Under application manager, I don’t have an option to select “All” on my s4 mini.
If I delete the entry on my calendar, only one of the duplicates on my briefing deletes.
any chance of a fix for the galaxy s7 please…this is annoying as hell when the solutions dont match…
I dont have an All feature in the applications menu…
Hi had a similar problem with my galaxy s6 edge. I disabled “contacts birthdays” in the device and this prevented double entries.
But now I have a problem, a few contacts I have noticed don’t show the birthdays at all.
Notes: I do not use facebook (not installed), google calendars (disabled) or any other except sync with Outlook only.
How is it possible that some events show and some don’t. But all is shown and coming from my PC outlook. Same on my PC. I do not use other programs for contacts, mail or calendars. Only Outlook.
I did all the steps on my Galaxy j320 as directed and even turned off the Samsung calendar on the Calendar setting and kept only the Google calendar on for birthdays but still my phone is still showing duplicates! I’ve cleared the cache and storage too! What else can I do? Very irritating to see doubles especially if there are more than 1 contact who has the same birthday!
This fixed it instantly – THANK YOU SO MUCH, I was having such trouble trying to get this taken care of! I greatly appreciate it!
I have duplicate Calendar Apps on my Note 4 from AT&T, one I can disable & the other one is Grayed out and can not disabled it, I have alot of information stored on my Calendar and if disabled the one that I can, will I still have ALL MY INFORMATION left on my Calendar ? I do not get duplicate entries on my calendar, but I do get & received Duplicate Text Messages all the time… Can this be tyed together with the Calendar ? Please let me know, Thank you…
I have a different problem with my Google calendar on my Samsung 6. I can enter events on my phone, but they done show up on the shared calendar either on my husband or daughter’s phones, or on the computer. They only show up in all of these places if I enter them from our computer. Very frustrating. Any suggestions? Help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Jim,
For me working only with option search and select all
I MAY have figured it out…IF you put an END DATE AND DAILY REPEAT, the Calendar copies itself. IF you put and END DATE WITH NO REPEAT, it seems to work for me. Hope this is the fix. Cheers!
Came across your post while googling this exact problem for a new Samsung A50. Amazing that Samsung hasn’t fixed this big in 4 years! Thanks for documenting and offering a solution.
Tried to fix BOTH Samsung and Google calendar: repeats on Galaxy Tab4 but failed.
Enter one item and it duplicates it, same time and day. What a pain.
Need also to erase National/Provincial holidays, since it shows 4 or 5 on same day. Need to find a fix.