iCal birthday reminders

[JonDownin]

Hello all! I have looked extensively to no avail. Is there any way to have iCal give me a reminder or alarm when people's birthdays that are in iCal are coming up? This would be of great help if it is possible. Anyone have any insight into this issue? Thanks.

[realityisterror]

I'm almost definitely sure it's not possible, which is quite annoying if you ask me... It's pretty pointless to integrate both alarms and birthdays, and not have them work together.

Submit feedback to Apple to let them know you'd like this feature too.

[Applespider]

There is functionality in Automator to select anyone who has a birthday in the next week/month, you might be able to do something to get a list mailed to yourself with any upcoming birthdays.

I suspect if you used Find People with Birthdays from the Address Book Actions and then Get Details - like name/birthday and then use the Mail facility to create a new message to send to yourself.

Save that action as an app and run it at startup and you should get an email to warn you of birthdays.

[JonDownin]

Originally Posted by iGary

Yes - set up a Calendar called birthdays.

For each birthday, go under "Alarm" and set to your heart's desire.

The special setting for birthdays under iCal offers no alarm option when you go into details for the full-day event.

Originally Posted by Applespider

There is functionality in Automator to select anyone who has a birthday in the next week/month, you might be able to do something to get a list mailed to yourself with any upcoming birthdays.

I suspect if you used Find People with Birthdays from the Address Book Actions and then Get Details - like name/birthday and then use the Mail facility to create a new message to send to yourself.

Save that action as an app and run it at startup and you should get an email to warn you of birthdays.

I checked this out already and it very well may be possible, but automator is a bit of a beast in-and-of itself. It is a little hard to figure out. I'll try messing around with it a bit more.

Thanks all for your suggestions. It seems there is no obvious way to get this done.

[iGary]

The special setting for birthdays under iCal offers no alarm option when you go into details for the full-day event.

It doesn't?

[Applespider]

nope... the ones that pull in directly to iCal via Address Book don't have Alarms associated with them for some bizarre reason.

I did come across this little app though Dates to iCal which might do what you want without too much work on your part.

[JonDownin]

Originally Posted by iGary

It doesn't?

I'm not sure about the best way to take a screen cap, but I can assure you I don't have the option that is present in your pic. My birthdays are set up through Address Book, are your's set up the same way? The only option I have are "from & to (date)," "repeat & end," "calendar," and "url (?)."

[xcell]

Originally Posted by realityisterror

I'm almost definitely sure it's not possible, which is quite annoying if you ask me... It's pretty pointless to integrate both alarms and birthdays, and not have them work together.

"Show Birthday calendar" is an integrated function in iCal. I am asking myself why create a new calendar just to get the reminder function working? Pointless, indeed, if alarms and birthdays are not working together.

[mkrishnan]

Tryin' to party like it's 2006?

[xcell]

Originally Posted by mkrishnan

Tryin' to party like it's 2006?

Guess the party's over then (?)

[Macheon]

I came across this same issue. I solved it by exporting [from File menu] the Birthday calendar that came from Address Book, and then I made a new calendar and imported [from File Menu] the events into the new calendar. And Wah-lah, I had all the birthdays on a calendar and I could set up an alarm for each one.

[xcell]

Originally Posted by realityisterror

I'm almost definitely sure it's not possible, which is quite annoying if you ask me... It's pretty pointless to integrate both alarms and birthdays, and not have them work together.

Submit feedback to Apple to let them know you'd like this feature too.

pretty pointless - indeed!
Work-arounds for a birthday alarm? WHY DOES APPLE NOT JUST ADD THAT FUNCTION???
Mr. Bussman proved that it´s not that difficult - THANKS Andrew!

[maestro72x]

Script worked great!

[brewj]

The Script works great but I can't figure out how to specify a time for the event. I don't really want to be woken in the middle of the night by my phone or my laptop.

[brewj]

Ahh but of course all you have to do is change the trigger interval which is in minutes.

[iGary]

Originally Posted by JonDownin

Hello all! I have looked extensively to no avail. Is there any way to have iCal give me a reminder or alarm when people's birthdays that are in iCal are coming up? This would be of great help if it is possible. Anyone have any insight into this issue? Thanks.

Yes - set up a Calendar called birthdays.

For each birthday, go under "Alarm" and set to your heart's desire.

[euphotic]

Well there's another App that's called MenuCalandarClock. As of this post ver 2.7.5 if for Tiger and ver 3 is for Leopard OS.

Find it at: http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html

It does many things but lets just get to an un-detailed:

How to have MenuCalandarClock copy ALL your 'Address Book' birthdays to iCal instantly for you to then set custom alarms as you wish:

1) Download the FREE trial version for your OS and install it.*
2) Open iCal and click on the + button at the bottom left corner
to make a new calandar
3) Name it MCClock Birthdays (...or whatever you like-you can change it or it's color at anytime)
4) Open the MenuCalandarClock Preferences by clicking on the calendar at the top right of your monitor (by the 'spotlight' icon) and clicking ""+",".
5) Click on the Birthday Cake icon
6) Make sure that the "Copy birthdays into this iCal calendar:" is checked, select the iCal calendar you created from the pop-down menu and click on the "Copy Now" button.
6) DONE! Now go in and set the custom alerts or buy the app to have it do it automatically.

* If you decide you want to unlock the extra features for the $19.99 registration and you're planning on upgrading from Tiger to Leopard soon, do it after you upgrade to Leopard. Otherwise you'll have to pay again for the Leopard MenuCalandarClock version.


More info (if you like reading):

MenuCalendarClock is able to write birthday dates that are in the Address Book application into a specified iCal calendar (and keeping the iCal calendar up to date). Checking 'Copy birthdays into this iCal calendar:' activates this functionality. You may then chose a local calendar to write the birthdays into. The 'Copy Now' button forces immediate copy action.
You may even automatically set an alarm for the birthday entries. To do this check 'XX days in advance' and specify the number of days where you will be notified before a birthday day. Adding a sound to the notification is also possible (check box 'add sound to message'). This feature is only available in the registered version.

More info (if you like video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk3Qb0lgM4s):
and
http://revver.com/video/220538/revie...calendarclock/

[macnovice211]

Displaying birthdays on an iCal calendar in the Help section of address book tells you how to select a box in iCal to do this.

[karenflower]

Originally Posted by aristobrat

Replying to a post that's almost two years old only to state what was already said almost two years ago = epic fail.

Haha.

I find the iCal Events dashboard widget to be incredibly useful at notifying things ahead of time.

[andrew.bussman]

I wrote a script that adds an alarm to each one of the events in the "Birthdays" calendar:

tell application "iCal"
	tell calendar "Birthdays"
		set all_events to every event
		repeat with this_event in all_events
			tell this_event
				delete every sound alarm
				make new sound alarm at end with properties {trigger interval:-21600, sound name:"Basso"}
			end tell
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell

Hope this works for you!

[berestede]

Andrew
That looks like a very neat solution ... but I have no idea how to set up and/or run a script. Is this a simple process and if so do you think you could spell it out for dummies!?
Many thanks

[xjw]

Andrew,

great solution! I would like to add an email reminder to my email adress, but can't figure out the applescript snytax.

should be something like:

"
make new mail alarm ... ?
(to MYEMAIL, at TIME_X, subject Ys_BIRTHDAY)
"

Is there a resource for ical and applescript or can anyone help?

[Jugdys]

Originally Posted by andrew.bussman

I wrote a script that adds an alarm to each one of the events in the "Birthdays" calendar:

tell application "iCal"
	tell calendar "Birthdays"
		set all_events to every event
		repeat with this_event in all_events
			tell this_event
				delete every sound alarm
				make new sound alarm at end with properties {trigger interval:-21600, sound name:"Basso"}
			end tell
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell

Hope this works for you!

I am still having trouble with this. I am using Snow Leopard and pasted it to a document but when pasted it does not look exactly how it did in this post. Am I missing something?

[andrew.bussman]

Originally Posted by Jugdys

I am still having trouble with this. I am using Snow Leopard and pasted it to a document but when pasted it does not look exactly how it did in this post. Am I missing something?

Try the script I've attached. It should work for you.

[turim]

Hi!

Thanks for the script, Andrew!
I have just ran into the problems that Apple are so kind to give us, conserning the Birthdays in Addressbook and iCal.
I have now used your script and altered the trigger interval to -720, which means only 12 hours before (suiting me better).

Again, thank you