iCal | Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition

iCal is the Mac OS X calendar application (see Figure 18-32). You may assume that it is a basic application that lets you schedule appointments and events on a calendar and not much else.

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Figure 18-32: The iCal interface.

iCal is simple to use, but its capabilities are quite astonishing, especially when used with the .Mac service. In fact, like the other “iApps,” iCal makes a play to be the ultimate application of its kind, at the very least attempting to exceed your expectations by quite a bit.

Check out this summary of what you can do with iCal:

Create digital calendars containing your schedule, viewed by day, week, or month, to keep track of events, appointment, meetings, deadlines, birthdays, anniversaries, reminders, and other time-related information.
Create separate, color-coded calendars for different aspects of your life, like work, home, school, kids, sports, etc. The calendars can be viewed all at once or in any combination, superimposed transparently on each other.
Invite others to events automatically by email sent by Mac OS X Mail.
Create To Do lists.
Search for events, with the results listed so you can click on an event to go directly to it.
Set alarms to notify you of upcoming events, by sounds, onscreen messages, emails, launching applications, playing a song, or running a script.
Share your calendar with other iCal users on the same computer, or over the Internet, using .Mac or your company’s WebDAV server.
Subscribe to the calendars of other iCal users that have been published on the Internet.
Synchronize calendars on more than one computer or device using iSync.

Working with calendars

iCal gives you two default calendars, Home and Work. You can create other calendars for different aspects of your life or areas of interest.

To create a new calendar, follow these steps:

Click the plus sign button at the bottom left of the iCal window or double-click the white area below the calendars listed in the Calendars list.
A new calendar appears in the Calendars list, with its name, Untitled, highlighted.
Type a name for the calendar.
Press the Return key.

You can rename a calendar at any time by double-clicking its name and typing a new one.

To delete a calendar:

Click the name of the calendar in the Calendars list.
Press the Delete key.

Use a different procedure to delete a calendar that you have published over the Internet; see the instructions for this later in this section.

Working with events

Any item that appears on an iCal calendar is called an event. Once an event is created, its details can be set or later edited in the Info drawer that you can slide out from the right side of the iCal window or hide as necessary.

To add events to a calendar, follow these steps:

In the Calendars list, click the name of the calendar you want to add an event to.
In Day or Week view, drag from the start time to the end time of the new event. As you do so, a colored rectangle forms, with the start and end time appearing. When you release the drag, the name New Event becomes highlighted.

In Month view, double-click the blank area of the day you want the new event to appear. The event appears as a colored bar with its name, New Event, highlighted.
Type a name for the new event.
Press the Return key.

To edit an event:

Create a new event or select an existing event.
Click the Info button at the bottom-right corner of the window. The Info drawer slides out to the right of the window, listing the editable details of the event.

In the Day and Week views, you can also double-click the event’s start-time bar at the top of its rectangle to show the Info drawer.
Edit the details of the event. You can
- Change or delete an event.
- Change the time or day by dragging the event to a new position in the calendar view.
- Change the duration, in Day or Week view, by dragging the event’s top or bottom edge. If it is an all day event, drag its right or left side.
- Change the name of the event by double-clicking its name, and type a new name.
- Delete an event by selecting it and pressing the Delete key.

To automatically delete events after they are due, choose iCal Preferences. The iCal Preferences window appears, as shown in Figure 18-33. Select the Automatically delete events and To Do items checkbox. Enter the number of days after which the items will be deleted, click Yes in the alert box which appears, and close the Preferences window (see Figure 18-33).

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Figure 18-33: iCal’s Preferences window.

To create, edit, or view an event that will take place in a different time zone, follow these steps:

Choose iCal Preferences.
Click on the Turn on time zone support checkbox to turn on the feature.
From the time zone pop-up menu which now appears in the Info drawer, choose Other. A world time zone map appears.
Click on the location the event will take place in. A menu appears with the names of big cities in that time zone.
Select a city closest to where the events will take place. Note that the exact details of time zones change in different areas; for example, some areas keep only a half-hour difference between neighboring time zones, instead of a full hour; iCal knows which ones.
Click OK. The time zone you selected appears next to the time zone label, and will appear in the pop-up menu from now on.

The event appears in your calendar at the time the event will take place, adjusted for your time zone (based on your computer’s settings in the Date & Time System Preference).

To view all your iCal events adjusted for a different time zone, choose a time zone from the pop-up menu in the upper-right corner of the iCal window. If the desired time zone does not appear, choose Other, and repeat Steps 4–6 above to add a new time zone to this menu.

Events created in a particular time zone automatically shift to the correct adjusted time when you change the calendar’s time zone.

ICal makes it easy to invite someone, or several people, to an event via email. You might want to do this if you are planning a meeting or a party.

Inviting someone to an event is easy when you use iCal. To create and send an invite follow these steps:

Select the event so its information appears in the Info drawer.
Next to the label attendees, click None. It becomes selected and you can now edit the label.
Begin to type the email address of the person you want to invite. As you type the first letters, any matching names from the Address Book appear in a submenu, with any associated email addresses. (If you want a new name to appear in the submenu, add it to the Address Book.)
Select an email address from the submenu. The auto-completed name now appears next to the attendees label, highlighted in a colored oval.
Click elsewhere to deselect the name or click on the name to highlight it again.
To invite more than one person, type a comma or press the Return key after each name.
Click on the triangle to the right of a highlighted name to reveal a pop-up menu with the associated email addresses, and the commands Edit Attendee, Remove Attendee, Open in Address Book, or Send Email.
You can also add attendees by dragging names from Address Book to an event in the iCal window. Click the attendees label and choose Open Address Book from the pop-up menu.
Drag the contacts you want to invite from Address book to the event in the iCal calendar view.
After you have added all of the attendees, click attendees and choose Send Invitations from the pop-up menu. Emails are sent by Mac OS X Mail with the details of the event to the people listed.

Question mark icons now appear before each name to show the attendees have not yet confirmed. These icons change to checkmarks when the invitation is accepted, and X marks when declined.

iCal keeps track of the status of events — Tentative, Confirmed, or Cancelled — with status indicators that appear on the events in the Day and Week views.

You can use iCal to set up weekly meetings. Follow these steps to set up recurrent events:

Select the event so its information appears in the Info drawer.
Next to the label repeat, click None. A pop-up menu appears with the choices None, Every Day, Every Week, Every Month, Every Year, and Custom.
Select the repeat interval you want to use.

If you choose Custom, a box opens to help you configure the repeat interval.
From the Frequency pop-up menu, choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. The box changes to reflect each choice.
Make your Custom selections and then click OK. Your selection appears next to the repeat label. A new end label appears under the repeat label.
Click on the word to the right of the end label to see the choices Never, After, and On date.
Make your selection for when the repeat will end. Your choice will be displayed. If you choose “on date”, the date will appear; click on the date to edit it.

If you make any other changes to a recurring event, a dialog box opens, asking if you want to change only this occurrence of the event, or all occurrences.

You can set an alarm to warn you of an impending event with an onscreen message, an email, or by opening a file of your choice. To receive an alarm before an event:

Select the event so its information appears in the Info drawer. You can only set an alarm for an event that has a due date.
Next to the label alarm, click None. A pop-up menu appears with the choices None, Message, Message with sound, Email, and Open file.
Make your selection for the type of alarm you want.

Depending on your selection, other pop-up menus appear, enabling you to set the details of the alarm. Below the details you see a pop-up menu allowing you to set the alarm time before the start time of the event. You can choose to do the following:
- Select Open file to enable iCal to open an application before the event occurs. Select the application in the Navigation dialog, and the application’s name appears in a pop-up menu.
- To add another alarm, click on the label alarm and choose Add Alarm from the pop-up menu. Then repeat Step 3.
- To remove an alarm, click on the label alarm and choose Remove Alarm from the pop-up menu.

Note

When the alarm goes off, you can choose to “Snooze” it (temporarily silence it and remind you again later) by choosing an item from the “repeat” pop-up menu in the upper- right corner of the iCal Alarm window.

Adding a URL to an event is a way of attaching additional information that is on the Web to an event. This feature is especially helpful for online calendars. To add an associated URL to an event follow these steps:

Select the event so that its information appears in the Info drawer.
Next to the label url, click None. The word becomes highlighted and editable.
Type a URL. To add more than one URL, separate each with commas. Or, drag a URL from you Web browser’s address field.
Click on a URL to go to the web page in your browser.

To Do Lists

In our busy modern world, it always seems that and keeping track of what needs to be done is a difficult chore. iCal can help. To create a To Do List and work with To Do items:

Click the To Do button (with the push-pin icon) in the bottom right corner of the iCal window. The To Do list appears to the right of the calendar. To hide it, click the To Do button again.
Double-click anywhere in the white area of the To Do list. A New To Do item appears with its name selected and editable.
Type your desired name for the To Do item and press the Return key.
If you want to assign settings to the To Do item, click the Info button at the bottom right of the iCal window. The Info drawer slides out.
When you complete the item, click the completed checkbox. The word Today appears to the right. When viewing previously completed To Do items, the date of completion appears here. You can also click the checkbox next to the item in the To Do list.
To give the To Do item a priority rating, click the word None to the right of the label priority. A pop-up menu appears with the choices None, Very Important, Important, Not Important. Select the priority you desire.
To give the To Do item a due date, select the “due date” checkbox, and edit the date, month, day or year. The due date appears above the item in the To Do list. If the due date passes before you mark the item as completed, the checkbox in the list becomes an alert icon (a triangle with an exclamation point).
To receive an alarm before the due date passes, click the word “None” to the right of the label alarm. Select from the choices None, Message, Message with Sound, Email, or Open file. If you previously had set a file to open, it will appear below these choices on the menu. You can only set an alarm for items that have a due date.
After the type of alarm has been selected, select the details from the pop-up menus below your selection. Select the amount of time before the item is due.
To switch the calendar the To Do item appears on, click the name of the present calendar to the right of the calendar label. Select from the calendars listed. The To Do item changes its color to match the calendar.

Sharing calendars

You can use iCal to share your calendars with others, and to see calendars others have chosen to share. Calendars published on the Internet can be viewed by anyone with a web browser, or viewed in iCal once they are subscribed to. You can also export your events and send them to someone else, who can import them into iCal.

Publishing a calendar puts a copy of it on a Web server, to be accessed by a URL that you send to those you wish to share it with. If you are a .Mac member, you can publish your calendar to your iDisk. If you have access to a private Web server that is running WebDAV, you can publish your calendar using it, to be shared with other users who have access to the server. Users viewing your published calendar cannot make changes to it; it is “read only” to them.

Exporting a calendar creates a file containing your event information which can be sent to the people you want to share it with, so they can import it into iCal. Once imported, the events can be edited; the users have “read/write” access to them. Changes they make on the imported copy are not duplicated on your original calendar.

You can also use the exported information to backup your calendar or transfer your iCal information to another computer.

If you are a .Mac member, you can share your calendar with anyone you wish via the Internet. Imagine allowing your friends, family members, and business associates to check your availability themselves instead of having them contact you.

To publish a calendar on the Internet follow these steps:

Connect to the Internet. In the Calendars list, click the name of the calendar to be published.
Choose Calendar Publish. A sheet drops down.
In the Publish Name field, type the name of the calendar visitors will see.
Click the Publish changes automatically checkbox if you want changes you make to your calendar to be automatically copied to the published version.
Click the other checkboxes to control which information will be published.
From the pop-up menu, choose where you want to publish your calendar, either on .Mac or on a WebDAV server. If you choose WebDAV the sheet lengthens, providing fields for entering the server’s URL and the login name and password.
Click Publish. Figure 18-34 shows the iCal Publish sheet.

Figure 18-34: iCal’s Publish sheet.
Watch the Status bar to see the progress as your calendar is uploaded to the Web server.
The Calendar Published alert appears, informing you that your calendar was published successfully, and providing you with the URL for it. Click Visit Page to go to it, Send Mail to inform others and give them the URL, or click OK.
After it is published, a broadcast icon (a dot with three short curving lines) appears next to the calendar in the Calendars list.

If you want to stop publication of your calendar, select the name of the calendar, choose Calendar Unpublish, and then click Unpublish. The calendar’s broadcast icon disappears. It remains available on your computer. People who subscribed to it will still be able to see the last published copy, but no one will be able to subscribe to it.

To subscribe to and update someone else’s Calendar:

Connect to the Internet.
Choose Calendar Subscribe. A sheet drops down.
Enter the URL for the calendar you want to subscribe to.
If you want your copy of the calendar to be automatically updated when changes to it are published, put a click in the Refresh checkbox. You can also set the calendar to auto-update in the Info drawer: select the calendar and from the Auto-publish pop-up menu, choose after each change. (To update the calendar manually, select it, and choose Calendar Refresh at any time you wish.)
Check the other checkboxes to control whether you will receive alarms or see To Do items.
Click Subscribe.

Watch the Status bar, shown in Figure 18-35, to see the progress as the calendar is downloaded from the Web server. The calendar you have subscribed to appears in the Calendars list with a curved arrow icon next to it.If you want to rename the new calendar, double-click its name. You cannot make any other changes to it.

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Figure 18-35: iCal’s Subscribe sheet.

You can also subscribe to any of the general interest calendars available at iCalShare.com. These include holidays, professional sports team schedules, Movie openings, DVD releases, rock band tour dates, TV schedules, moon phases, and Apple Store events. If you create your own general interest calendar, you can upload it to this site to share it with the world.

You can export your calendar information as a file which can then be imported by any iCal user you send it to. This is another way of sharing your calendar. Figure 18-36 shows the iCal’s Export command.

To export your calendar information:

In the Calendar list, click the name of the calendar.
Choose File Export.
Select a name for the file and a destination for it to be saved to.
Click Export. The exported file appears as an .ics file (for iCal Standard).
Send the file to the person you want to share it with, transfer it to the Mac you want to import it on, or store it in a archive folder as a backup.

Figure 18-36: Using iCal’s Export command produces an .ics file.

You can also import calendar information. Follow these steps:

Choose File Import.
Navigate to the .ics calendar file you want to import. The Add Events dialog appears.
Select the calendar you want to add the imported events to.
Click OK.
You may briefly see a progress bar as the events are imported. The new events appear in the calendar you chose.

Printing calendars

You may find you have a need to print calendars to distribute them to others in a format that does not require a computer. You can also put them in an organizational notebook, scribble updates on them, and transfer the changes when you get back to your computer.

To print a calendar or a To Do list:

In the Calendars list, check the calendars you wish to print.
Choose File Print. The Print dialog opens as shown in Figure 18-37.

Figure 18-37: iCal’s Print dialog.
From the third pop-up menu, choose iCal.
Set the dates, times, and items you want to print. You can print calendars, To Do lists, and the mini-month view.
Click Preview to check what you will print.
Click Print.

iCal Tips

In iCal 1.5.1 and later, you can quickly perform the most common actions with an enhanced set if iCal specific keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can skip to the next day, week, or month by pressing z + Right Arrow. Or, to duplicate a selected event, press z + D. Anyone who uses iCal frequently may save quite a bit of time by using the shortcuts. You can print a comprehensive list of them from iCal Help, and post them nearby until you learn them. As Apple says on its Web site, “Efficiency is iCal’s highest priority.”
To change the order of calendars in the Calendars list, drag them to where you want them.
You can copy and paste events in the main calendar window. To select multiple events for copying, hold down the Shift key as you make your selections. Press z+C to copy, as usual. Click where you want to place the first event, and press z+V to paste. The original time difference between the events is maintained.
To see a handy shortcut menu by holding the Control key while you click on an event. You can choose Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate, switch the event to any calendar, make an All Day Event, Stop Recurrence, or Email Event. Selecting this last choice opens Mail to a message which looks like Figure 20-39. All you need to do is supply an address, and all the recipient needs to do is click on the .ics file included as an attachment to have it added to his or her calendar.
In Month view, if you see an ellipsis (...) at the top of the day, it means all the events in the day could not be shown due to size limitations. Double-click the ellipsis to see all the events in the Day view.
Events that span several days can be created by dragging an All Day Event across the desired days.