Isn't it wonderful that Address Book has a function built right in that allows you to merge duplicate entries? This becomes particularly valuable if you use a contact synchronization tool such as Plaxo. It's so useful, you'd think that iCal would have something similar. As you know, if you've run into the problem of having multiple duplicate appointments polluting your iCal calendar, there's nothing built in that will help you out of your mess. Luckily, John Maisey has created both Leopard and Tiger versions of an AppleScript that will sift through the calendar of your choice and kill off duplicate appointments. Don't be alarmed if it doesn't appear to be doing anything when you first run it. In our brief test, it took about 13 seconds to delete 15 duplicate entries, so this script is no speed demon. But what it lacks in terms of speed, it more than makes up in utility.
As with any script or utility that deletes data, be smart and back up your iCal data before you try it.
[Via Lifehacker]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-04-2008 @ 10:05PM
Alan said...
Is there something out there that can do this for iTunes as well? Bonus points if there's a Windows version, as a friend of mine sorely needs it.
Reply
1-04-2008 @ 10:17PM
Rafik said...
Yeah, it's actually built into iTunes. View -> Show duplicates. Go ahead deleting from there. I know there are also a couple of AppleScripts that handle it, if you'd prefer that method. Doing a quick Google search turns up http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php and I'm sure there are others.
1-04-2008 @ 10:27PM
Alan said...
Oh yeah, I knew about View>Duplicates. I'm looking for something a bit more... industrial. We're talking about hundreds of dupes, not exactly something I want to be Cmd-clicking.
On the other hand, if anyone knows a way to sort it so that the dupes are separate (so that, instead of selecting every other track, I only select the second half of all dupes), that would be optimal.
1-05-2008 @ 2:09PM
Michael Rose said...
Check out Media Rage, from Chaotic Software.
1-04-2008 @ 10:40PM
LC said...
Looks like someone is a Canucks fan.
Don't worry, so am I.
Reply
1-05-2008 @ 4:09PM
Jason Clarke said...
Go Canucks! :-)
1-05-2008 @ 8:56AM
Trevor said...
There are also scripts to delete duplicate iCal fields (such as duplicate alarms):
http://vocaro.com/trevor/software/applescript/
Reply