You added the netball match on your phone. Your partner swears it is not there. Both of you are looking at what you believe is the same calendar.

Nine times out of ten this is one of five settings, and the first two fix most of it.

Work through them in order. The quickest checks come first, and the ones people never find on their own come after.

Key Takeaway: If Google Calendar is not syncing, check these five things in order: that Calendar sync is switched on for the account, that the specific calendar is ticked in your app's calendar list, that secondary calendars are enabled at calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect, that new events are going to the right default calendar, and that you are not looking at an event older than a year on mobile. The most common cause is a calendar that is connected but not selected.

The Five Checks, in Order

Do not skip to the technical ones. The boring checks are the ones that are usually wrong.

Ordered diagnostic list of the five most common reasons Google Calendar is not syncing, from account sync being off to the one-year mobile limit

1. Is Calendar Sync On for the Account

Google's own first instruction, and it is first for a reason. An account can be signed in for mail and have Calendar switched off entirely [1].

On iPhone: Settings, then Apps, then Calendar, then Calendar Accounts, tap the Google account and confirm Calendars is on [4].

Then check your connection. If you are on patchy data or in aeroplane mode, nothing syncs and nothing tells you so [1].

2. Is the Calendar Ticked in Your App

This is the single most common cause and it looks nothing like a sync problem.

A calendar can be fully connected and simply not selected for display. The events are on the device. They are just hidden.

In the Google Calendar app, open the menu and confirm the calendar has a tick beside it. In Apple's Calendar app, tap Calendars at the bottom and check the same [2].

If the events reappear the moment you tick it, nothing was ever broken.

3. Are Secondary Calendars Enabled for Mobile

Here is the one almost nobody finds on their own.

If you are viewing Google calendars through Apple's Calendar app, your secondary calendars, which for most families means the ones actually being used, are off by default. They are controlled from a separate Google page you cannot reach from iOS Settings at all [3].

In a browser, go to calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect.
Tick every calendar you want on your phone.
Save, wait a few minutes, then reopen the Calendar app [3].

This is why a parent can follow a setup guide correctly, watch one calendar appear, and reasonably assume the job is done. Half of it silently was not, and the missing half is usually the school calendar.

We go through that setup properly in how to sync Google Calendar with Apple Calendar.

4. Which Calendar Are New Events Going Into

If your own events are the ones going missing, the problem is not sync at all. It is the default.

New events land in whichever calendar is set as default. If that is iCloud rather than the shared Google calendar, the event saves perfectly and never travels to anyone else.

On iPhone: Settings, then Apps, then Calendar, then Default Calendar. Pick the calendar your family actually shares.

If a partner has ever insisted an event was never there, check this before anything else.

5. Are You Looking Further Back Than a Year

A genuine limit rather than a fault. The Google Calendar mobile app only syncs past events up to one year back. Older events are still in your account, they are just not on the phone. Open calendar.google.com in a browser to see them [1].

When It Is Not a Setting

If all five check out, the remaining fixes are the ordinary ones: force-close and reopen the app, confirm the device date and time are correct, and make sure the app has a current version.

On Android, Google also documents clearing the Calendar app's storage as a last resort, which removes local data and re-downloads it from your account [1].

Two things worth knowing before you go further. A calendar someone shared with you disappears if they revoke access or delete it, and nothing on your device will explain why. And a calendar you subscribed to by URL is read-only and refreshes on Google's own schedule rather than instantly, so several hours of lag is normal rather than broken [2].

The One That Is Not a Sync Problem at All

Worth separating out, because it wastes the most time.

If the event never existed in any calendar, no amount of syncing will produce it. The date was in an email nobody opened, a PDF nobody scrolled to the third page of, or a letter still in a school bag.

That is not a sync failure. That is a step upstream of the calendar, and it is where most missed school events actually come from.

Stopping the Problem Rather Than Fixing It

Once the five checks above are right, your calendars agree with each other. That is the fix, and for most people it holds.

It is worth noticing what it does not touch. Sync moves events between apps. It does not put anything into them.

Every entry still arrived because somebody read something and typed it in. That work is invisible and it is not evenly split. The Office for National Statistics puts women at 26 hours of unpaid work a week against 16 hours for men [5].

Nuet connects to your Gmail or Outlook inbox and creates the events for you, writing them into the calendar you already use rather than asking you to move to a new one. It reads photos, PDFs and voice notes too, so the letter in the bag becomes an entry without anyone retyping it. You choose which senders it reads, and no emails are stored on external servers.

It does not fix sync. It reduces how much depends on somebody remembering.

Funnel showing that a missing calendar event is often lost before the calendar, at the email or letter stage, rather than by a sync failure

FAQ

Q: Why is my Google Calendar not syncing with my iPhone? Usually because the calendar is connected but not selected. Check the Calendars list in the app first, then confirm Calendars is switched on for the account in Settings, then check secondary calendars at calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect [1][3].

Q: Why can I see some Google calendars but not others? Secondary calendars are off by default when Google calendars are viewed through Apple's Calendar app. Enable them at calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect in a browser. This cannot be done from iOS Settings [3].

Q: How long should Google Calendar take to sync? An account you have connected directly should sync within about a minute. A calendar you subscribed to by URL is different and can take several hours to reflect a change [2].

Q: Why did an event I created disappear? It probably did not. It most likely saved to a different calendar, usually iCloud instead of your shared Google calendar. Check the default calendar setting, then look for the event there.

Q: How do I stop missing school events even when sync works? Sync only moves events that already exist. If the date is still sitting in an unread email or a PDF, no calendar can show it. Nuet reads those sources and creates the event, so it does not depend on anyone spotting it in time.