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Editing and deleting

Every edit to a repeating event applies either to one occurrence or to the whole series. Calendite asks which.

Deleting

A repeating event offers two delete options that do different things:

What it does
Delete this occurrence Removes one date. The series carries on.
Delete Removes the whole series: every past and future occurrence, and any inner or variant events hanging off it.

Delete this occurrence only appears when the event repeats. A one-off event has just the one option, because for it the two are the same thing.

Deleting one occurrence doesn't really delete anything

Removing a single date does not erase a record. It adds an exclusion to the event's rule. A WD event with 25 December removed becomes, in effect, WD, !2025-12-25.

Two consequences:

  • It's reversible. The date can be brought back from Add / Remove Events (see Building repeats).
  • You can read it. Open the rule and the exclusions are right there, so it's obvious why a Thursday in March is missing.

That's the opposite of how most calendars work, where a deleted instance becomes an invisible record you can never find again.

Editing

Editing an event edits the whole series. Change the time on your Monday standup and every Monday standup moves.

If you want one day to be different, you have three options:

You want Use
One date gone Delete this occurrence
One date added that the rule wouldn't produce Add / Remove Events
A recurring shape that differs, such as different hours on certain days A variant event

There's deliberately no "edit just this one occurrence" that silently forks a copy. If the difference is a one-off, change the dates. If it's a pattern (Early Shift, Late Shift), use a variant, which stays linked and stays maintainable.

Deleting inner and variant events

  • Deleting an inner event removes it. Its parent is untouched.
  • Deleting a variant removes that variant. The base event and the other variants are untouched, and the base will now fire on the days the variant used to cover, since nothing is suppressing them any more.
  • Deleting a base event takes its variants and inner events with it.

An inner event only exists inside its parent, so there's nowhere for it to go.

Editing a base doesn't update its variants

Covered in more detail in Inner and variant events, but it belongs here too because it surprises people:

Changing a base event's time, duration, title, tag, colour or location does not change variants that already exist. Those values were resolved and stored when the variant was saved.

The exceptions that do flow through:

  • Alerts: add an alert to the base and existing variants get it.
  • Tags: a variant with no tags of its own follows the base's.
  • Visibility: variants inherit per view by default.

If you change a base's hours and want the variants to follow, edit them.

Ending a repeat rather than deleting it

If something has finished, you usually want to keep the history rather than delete it. Use the Ends control on the event instead:

  • Never
  • On a date
  • After N occurrences

Past occurrences stay on the calendar; the series just stops producing new ones.

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