iCal Preferences

To customize the appearance of iCal calendars and some of their settings, use the iCal Preferences. From the iCal application menu, choose "Preferences…" to open the Preferences window (shown below).

General Preferences

1.	Click the "General" icon in the Preferences toolbar.
2.	From the Days per week pop-up menu, choose how many days a calender shows. From the Start week on pop-up menu, choose the day of the week you want to start a calendar.
3.	From the Day starts at pop-up menu, choose the first hour that's shown on a calendar. From the Day ends at pop-up menu, choose the last hour shown on a calendar. From the Show pop-up menu, choose how many hours are shown at a time in a calendar (in Day or Week view). "Show time in month view" adds the event's start time to a calendar.
4.	Checkmark Show time in month view to include an event time when shown in Month view (shown on the left, above).
5.	Checkmark Show Birthdays calendar to add a Birthdays calendar to the Calendar list. Address Book contacts that include a birthday are automatically added to this calendar. A great feature for those of us who have a bad track record for remembering birthdays. A birthday event (with a birthday cake and candle) shown in Week view.
6.	Select Synchronize my calendars with other computers using .Mac to enable syncing. Click the ".Mac…" button to start the sync process. If you have a .Mac membership, you can synchronize iCal to your .Mac account to keep a current copy of all calendars available. To set up another Mac with your iCal info, just use iSync to sync your calendars to the new computer. See Chapter 11 for details about syncing and iSync.

Advanced Preferences

1.	Click the "Advanced" icon in the Preferences toolbar.
2.	Turn on time zone support lets you change calendar time zones in two different waysfor an individual event, or for iCal in general. Learn more about setting iCal time zones pages 362363.
3.	Hide To Do items with due dates outside the calendar view limits the number of items in the To Do list by not showing items that have been assigned a due date that's not visible in the current window.
4.	Hide To Do items_days after they have been completed. Choose how many days you want to pass before To Do items are hidden. Don't checkmark this option if you want old To Do items to always show.
5.	Delete events_days after they have passed. Choose how many days you want to pass before iCal deletes old events.
6.	Delete To Do items_days after they are completed. Choose how many days you want to pass before completed To Do items are deleted.
7.	Turn off alarms when iCal is not open. If you share a computer, you may not want your alarms to bother other users. Otherwise it's helpful to have alarms work, even when iCal is closed.
8.	Automatically retrieve invitations from Mail. Choose this option so iCal's notifications feature will work when you send or receive invitations. See page 349.