Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Problems syncing Google Calendar to Thunderbird/Lightning

  • 1 reply
  • 7 have this problem
  • 28 views
  • Last reply by LukeJohn

more options

Hey all,

So I keep a Google Calendar so I can access my diary from both my phone (android) and my laptop (via Thunderbird's Lightning add-on). After some difficulty with my android app today (which I resolved), it seems I've managed to banjax Lightning: I can view my calendars fine on my phone and in a browser on google.com/calendar, but the Lightning tab on my Thunderbird remains (almost entirely) blank.

I've tried removing and reinstalling/reapplying the individual calendars themselves (there are three, one personal, two generic "Holidays in [Country]" and "Week Numbers") from Lightning, as well as both the Lightning add-on itself (v. 2.6.6) and the additional "Provider for Google Calendar" (v. 1.0.3) you need to make Lightning play nicely with Google.

The calendars are showing up on the left panel of Lightning, so it can see *something*, but it's not displaying individual events - the actual calendar in the centre of the screen remains stubbornly blank.

Creating new "test" events in my browser (or my phone) isn't a problem, but they don't show up in Lightning any more than my pre-existing events do. *New* events created in Lightning, however, will show up in my browser if I hit the "sync" button in Thunderbird, and can be successfully edited and deleted from the browser.

I hope I'm missing something obvious...?

Hey all, So I keep a Google Calendar so I can access my diary from both my phone (android) and my laptop (via Thunderbird's Lightning add-on). After some difficulty with my android app today (which I resolved), it seems I've managed to banjax Lightning: I can view my calendars fine on my phone and in a browser on google.com/calendar, but the Lightning tab on my Thunderbird remains (almost entirely) blank. I've tried removing and reinstalling/reapplying the individual calendars themselves (there are three, one personal, two generic "Holidays in [Country]" and "Week Numbers") from Lightning, as well as both the Lightning add-on itself (v. 2.6.6) and the additional "Provider for Google Calendar" (v. 1.0.3) you need to make Lightning play nicely with Google. The calendars are showing up on the left panel of Lightning, so it can see *something*, but it's not displaying individual events - the actual calendar in the centre of the screen remains stubbornly blank. Creating new "test" events in my browser (or my phone) isn't a problem, but they don't show up in Lightning any more than my pre-existing events do. *New* events created in Lightning, however, will show up in my browser if I hit the "sync" button in Thunderbird, and can be successfully edited and deleted from the browser. I hope I'm missing something obvious...?

Chosen solution

Ok, got this resolved... but I'm not sure why.

I tried checking for updates (for Thunderbird, Lightning, the Provider for Google Calendar, you name it) yesterday when this first happened, but it seemed everything was up to date. First thing this morning, an update for Thunderbird itself was available - installing that (to 31.3.0) prompted an update of Lightning (to 3.3.1), although Google Provider is still v. 1.0.3.

Once the updates were done, I disabled the Provider, subscribed from my calendars, then resubscribed... and have got my events back. Everything's working as it should now.

Hope this helps anyone in the same situation I was in!

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (1)

more options

Chosen Solution

Ok, got this resolved... but I'm not sure why.

I tried checking for updates (for Thunderbird, Lightning, the Provider for Google Calendar, you name it) yesterday when this first happened, but it seemed everything was up to date. First thing this morning, an update for Thunderbird itself was available - installing that (to 31.3.0) prompted an update of Lightning (to 3.3.1), although Google Provider is still v. 1.0.3.

Once the updates were done, I disabled the Provider, subscribed from my calendars, then resubscribed... and have got my events back. Everything's working as it should now.

Hope this helps anyone in the same situation I was in!