Best way to keep track of birthdays

On 22-11-07 19:07, Sally Thompson wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:05:17 +0000, NoSp wrote
> (in article ):
>
>> What's the best way of keeping track of birthdays on a Mac?

> I use iCal for birthdays, with an alarm, and it works very well. I have mine
> set to give an alarm (message with sound) 5 days before (but you can choose
> the number) so that I have time to go and buy the card and post it!

Good idea!

> To set
> the alarm, you need to display the "information" for the event. I don't keep
> the year of birth except for children, but you could add that in the "Notes"
> at the bottom of the info window. The alarm message stays on the desktop
> until you close it; if it's in your way you can ask for a reminder in a
> defined number of minutes or days.

How are you able to set the alarm?
Here, all my birthdays belong to a separate and appropriately named
"Birthday" calendar. If I click on the "Info" button when I've selected
a birthday a drawer slides out on the left hand side of the window with
a crossed over pencil at the top, indicating that it's not possible to
edit it.
Also, I see no way of adding an alarm, and there's no "Notes" available
either.

Are you using a different version than 2.05 or have some add-on stuff
which enables this perhaps?


> I don't use Address Book for this purpose at all.

Then how do you enter birthdays?

I've been reading the "help" function as well as searching the web for
more information on the subject, and as far as I know this is the way to
enter birthdays on the Mac without any additional software.
 >> Stay informed about: Best way to keep track of birthdays 

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:44:07 +0000, NoSp wrote
(in article ):

> On 22-11-07 19:07, Sally Thompson wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:05:17 +0000, NoSp wrote
>> (in article ):
>>
>>> What's the best way of keeping track of birthdays on a Mac?
>
>> I use iCal for birthdays,
<snip>
>
>> To set
>> the alarm, you need to display the "information" for the event. I don't
>> keep
>> the year of birth except for children, but you could add that in the
>> "Notes"
>> at the bottom of the info window. The alarm message stays on the desktop
>> until you close it; if it's in your way you can ask for a reminder in a
>> defined number of minutes or days.
>
> How are you able to set the alarm?
> Here, all my birthdays belong to a separate and appropriately named
> "Birthday" calendar.

Mine too.

If I click on the "Info" button when I've selected
> a birthday a drawer slides out on the left hand side of the window with
> a crossed over pencil at the top, indicating that it's not possible to
> edit it.
> Also, I see no way of adding an alarm, and there's no "Notes" available
> either.

How very odd. I've experimented with all my settings, and cannot repeat that
behaviour. Are you sure you have actually selected a birthday (or other
event) and not just the calendar title? I ask because I accidentally just
did this and was surprised to see no alarm information, nor any notes!
> Are you using a different version than 2.05 or have some add-on stuff
> which enables this perhaps?

My version says Version 2.0.5 (1069). No add-ons.

>> I don't use Address Book for this purpose at all.
>
> Then how do you enter birthdays?

Directly into iCal. (File - New Event). Perhaps that's the difference? If
you import them from Address Book then maybe you can't edit them? Just a
guess here. If you try entering a birthday directly into iCal, does it make
a difference?

The only other thing I can suggest is that you have a corrupted Prefs file,
in which you case you should move it somewhere safe, re-start iCal and see if
that helps. Have you also tried setting up a test account and seeing if you
get the same behaviour in that? (In fact I would do that before moving your
Prefs file.)


--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
<http://www.freerice.com/index.php>
Give free rice to hungry people by playing a simple word game
 >> Stay informed about: Best way to keep track of birthdays 

On 23-11-07 01:50, Sally Thompson wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:44:07 +0000, NoSp wrote:

>>> I don't use Address Book for this purpose at all.
>> Then how do you enter birthdays?
>
> Directly into iCal. (File - New Event). Perhaps that's the difference? If
> you import them from Address Book then maybe you can't edit them?

Aha! I understand now.
It's just like you've said all along: you haven't entered the birthdays
via Address book at all, but entered them as new events and told iCal to
repeat the events every year, right?

I guess that should work, but I see a couple of problems:

- how can I print a birthday-list? I can do that from Address book
- Address book's layout is designed for adding all sorts of information
in a tidy manner: names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, email
address etc. All that information in one place. By using your method you
lose all of that.

Then again you get the ability to set an alarm individually for each
entry. I find it so odd that Apple didn't incorporate this into the way
they designed birthdays to be entered. After all, Apple is trying to
promote the Mac, its operating system and applications as something for
people who aren't into computers and does things the way people do them.
Well, why on earth do they leave out obvious functionality?
Is it because they want to be able to list up a whole lot of new
additions to the next version they want to sell you?
I'm a little frustrated with them right now

Perhaps there's a way I can copy all of the birthdays I've entered into
Address book (which is then automatically sync'd with iCal, entering the
birthdays there) over to a new (or existing) "normal" calendar?
A little complicated for many people I guess, but with that method I
could get the best of both worlds.
I do however need to remember to manually do this every time I add a new
person to my address book.
I wish Apple had done it right from the start though!
 >> Stay informed about: Best way to keep track of birthdays 

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:57:46 +0000, NoSp wrote
(in article ):

> On 23-11-07 01:50, Sally Thompson wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:44:07 +0000, NoSp wrote:
>
>>>> I don't use Address Book for this purpose at all.
>>> Then how do you enter birthdays?
>>
>> Directly into iCal. (File - New Event). Perhaps that's the difference?
>> If
>> you import them from Address Book then maybe you can't edit them?
>
> Aha! I understand now.
> It's just like you've said all along: you haven't entered the birthdays
> via Address book at all, but entered them as new events and told iCal to
> repeat the events every year, right?

Exactly so.

> I guess that should work, but I see a couple of problems:
>
> - how can I print a birthday-list? I can do that from Address book
> - Address book's layout is designed for adding all sorts of information
> in a tidy manner: names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, email
> address etc. All that information in one place. By using your method you
> lose all of that.

I use Address Book for all the above /except/ birthdays. If you have a .Mac
account you can publish your calendar to that, and presumably print from
there. Otherwise, you can print a list of birthdays although it's a bit
unwieldy. Select the appropriate calendar, choose Print, then View: List.
Where it says Time range put Starts "on date" and choose 1st January 2007,
and Ends "on date" 31st December 2007. Check only the calendar you want,
then fiddle around with the options to get it as you want. Unfortunately you
will get a list with all dates, whether there is a birthday on it or not.

You can also Export a calendar, but having tried that I realised that if you
open it in some Application other than iCal there's a lot of extra baggage
you would need to strip off before you could print it. Depends on how often
you need to do this.

> Then again you get the ability to set an alarm individually for each
> entry. I find it so odd that Apple didn't incorporate this into the way
> they designed birthdays to be entered. After all, Apple is trying to
> promote the Mac, its operating system and applications as something for
> people who aren't into computers and does things the way people do them.
> Well, why on earth do they leave out obvious functionality?
> Is it because they want to be able to list up a whole lot of new
> additions to the next version they want to sell you?
> I'm a little frustrated with them right now

I can't imagine why you can't add alarms to birthdays you incorporate from
Address Book. As I said, it isn't something I felt the need to do, but there
may be a way somehow. Worth browsing round some of the OSX hints web sites
to see if anyone else has asked this question.

> Perhaps there's a way I can copy all of the birthdays I've entered into
> Address book (which is then automatically sync'd with iCal, entering the
> birthdays there) over to a new (or existing) "normal" calendar?

I can't find a way to do this, but you could try Exporting the calendar, then
importing it back into iCal into a different Calendar. Worth experimenting a
bit I would think with some test data.

> A little complicated for many people I guess, but with that method I
> could get the best of both worlds.
> I do however need to remember to manually do this every time I add a new
> person to my address book.
> I wish Apple had done it right from the start though!



--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
<http://www.freerice.com/index.php>
Give free rice to hungry people by playing a simple word game
 >> Stay informed about: Best way to keep track of birthdays 

In article , NoSp wrote:

> What's the best way of keeping track of birthdays on a Mac?
>
> I would like to be told about a birthday prior to its date, and I would
> like to know how old that person is about to become.
> I've had a look at iCal along with Address book, but it seems that
> although I can enter the birthyear in Address book, only the current
> year is displayed in iCal, meaning I have to guess that person's age.
> Also, I see no way of setting an alarm for birthdays in iCal.
> Preferrably I would like to set individual alarms for each birthday.
>
> So will iCal and/or Address book do what I want, or should I look for
> another application?
>
> Oh, I also need to be able to save all birthdays to a file which I can
> give to other family members (regardless if they have a Mac or PC). I
> guess either PDF, HTML or some other "common" format will do.

I would prefer to use built-in tools for their integration and
similarities, but I got used to using Claris Organizer, which later
became Palm's Desktop application (for synching their PDAs).

It's very handy, even if you don't use one, and it used to be a free
download. May still be.
It has many useful functions, nice customization, and a load of extra
data fields for increasing it's usefulness:
serial numbers, spouse names, anniversaries, web sites

It's most useful output format is tab-return, but it does vCard and
CSV, too. You can output any assortment or sequence of fields.
 >> Stay informed about: Best way to keep track of birthdays