Creating Mac Calendar Events

Creating new events in the Mac Calendar app is relatively simple, but there are many options. You can create a new even by clicking in the calendar, or using the Create Quick Event feature. It is easy to modify an event while creating it or later on.

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Video Transcript: So let's take a moment to look at the most basic thing to do in the Calendar app which is to create a new event. It's  pretty simple but there are a lot of different parts and different ways to do it. 
The first thing you want to do is you want to make sure you're in the right calendar because you can have multiple calendars  and whichever one you have selected is the one that the event is going to be created in. You can change it later but it's easiest just to set it right first. If you don't see the list of calendars to the left click the Calendars button here and it reveals  and hides it. 
So select the one you want. Maybe just use one calendar for everything. It doesn't matter. But in this case I have work at home so I'm going to make sure work is selected.  Then I'm going to go and switch to month view. Now you can do day view, week, year, and create events. All of those. But month is the easiest one so we'll use it for this example here. Then just double click in the box where you want the new event to be created. You can see it puts a little temporary new event place holder there and there's a series of fields you can fill in.
So name the event. Then you can tab through the fields or click to move to a new one. An event may or may not have a location. You can change the exact time by simply clicking on the element you want to change. So the date is right in this case but I want to change the time. Instead of 9 I want 11. I can simply type to change that. The ends I can actually choose from a list here or I can type again. I'll do 1 PM. Make sure the AM and PM are set correctly. It's very easy, when you're changing these times, to forget to change AM and PM. You hear all the time about someone getting an alarm for something at 3 AM for a meeting they really have at 3 PM. That kind of thing. 
There are other settings but for the most part this is what you want. You want to set an Alert for either at the time of the event, so you get an alert right at that moment, or for a certain amount of time before it. If you're using iCloud calendar, and you're using the same iCloud calendar on your iPhone, then you'll get an alert, a notification on your phone, as well as on your Mac. So let's have a notification 10 minutes before. But the rest of it I can leave. It's more advanced kinds of thing. 
I do use Notes a lot though . If you click down below you can now enter a note. So this is where you can put meeting notes. Things you need to do that you want to get reminded of at the time you're reminded of the event. That's about it. You do have the ability right here to change calendars. So if you start with the wrong calendar you can change it. But otherwise when you're done simply hit Return and the event is there. If you ever want to edit this event just double click it. This comes up again and you can click on any part of it, like the time there, to change the time of the event. Or Notes and you can actually type notes right in there. Click elsewhere to close it. That's all you need to do.
You can also drag and drop to change the event. So, for instance, since I'm in month view I can drag it to another day and it will keep the same time. If I was, say, in day view I could actually drag this down and up to change the time. I could also just double click on it to get the same information here and edit it. 
Now there is another way to add an event that's pretty simple. You can use this + button here. Just click it and it allows you quickly to create an event and it gives you an example. Movie at 7 PM on Friday. So you can do the same kind of thing. You can say Test Event at 3 PM June 2. You can see it created it perfectly. Just like you wanted it and it allows you then to go in and edit more information right there. 
You can actually type the quick event in a lot of different ways. Lunch tomorrow and it creates it. And it even sets it to noon because you said lunch. Did that one right. Gets that one right. So you can type in lots of different ways and it will get is right. But it always brings up the little box there so you can make adjustments if it didn't quite get it right. 
So there's some shortcuts that are handy to know. If you don't want to hit the + button there you can do Command N and it brings it up right there so you can just Command N, type without having to lift your fingers off the keyboard. If you select an event you can use Command E to edit it or if you'd rather it not just appear in that little bubble there you can do Command Option I and it brings up a complete window here that's different than the bubble. Also you can use tabs to go back and forth to the next event. Shift Tab to go back. When you're editing you can go in and you can use Tab to go between items there. So you can see I'm just tabbing and Shift tabbing to go back. So you can very easily go here. I'll hit Return. Now I'm editing the time and I can tab through those items there. It's very easy to be able to use just the keyboard, for the most part, to be able to navigate around and create new events  and edit existing ones.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Creating Mac Calendar Events”

Dbob5678

7 years ago

Very informative.
How about adding attachments on Mac and have them be accessible on iPhone?
I've done that using a link to a file in dropbox, but how else?
(this allows me to add files to a contacts entry)
Also, would like an advanced calendar topics video.
Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Dbob5678: What sorts of attachments do you want to add and for what purpose? The idea is to have notifications of events and appointments. I think having a file attached to an event is probably beyond the scope of a calendar app.

June Randall

Thank you so much for this tip! I am a fairly new Mac user and you helped me immensely with creating calendar events!

Robert Aucoin

I find using the attachment field very useful. However, attachment will not appear if you are using this app with Google calendar. My use: when I make a hotel reservation, I create a .pdf of the reservation confirmation and then drag the .pdf into the attachment field. I have also used it to drag in files that I might need for a meeting.

Robert: I completely forgot that you used to be able to have attachments to events before cloud-based calendars! Thanks. But I can see why it would be difficult to have them work with those online calendars, especially cross-platform.

dan collins

how can i set an event for the last friday of every month. I've tried to do it with siri, but it responds with I can't schedule event in the past

dan: Double-click in the calendar to create the event on the last Friday of this month. While still editing the event, click the "Add Alert, Repeat, or Travel Time" text. Then set the "repeat" field to "Monthly" and click the "On the" at the bottom, then set it to "last" and "Friday."

Arnie Keller

How do you get the info box to display next to the event on the Calendar. Mine shows up in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Thanks.

Arnie: Perhaps you are using an older version? Or, maybe you are using Command+I. Try double-clicking the event.

Gary: I'm running Version 9.0 (2155.21). Is there a newer one? I was double clicking, but the info box always appears in the upper left hand corner. (BTW, your videos are terrifically useful. Thanks)

Arnie: 9.0 is Calendar from Sierra, so that is the latest. Not sure why the info is appearing as a window for you, sorry.

Thanks Gary. I didn't figure out the exact problem but I did delete the preference files and that fixed the issue. Should have been the first or second thing I tried.

Herbert Hofmann

I travel from asia to us frequently. Entering travel times into calander is a chalange, because I arrive on the west coast two hours before I depart do to the International Date Line. Any sugestions?

Herbert: In Calendar, Preferences, Advanced, turn on "Turn on time zone support." Then you can set the time zone for events.

Comments Closed.

Creating Mac Calendar Events

Comments: 14 Responses to “Creating Mac Calendar Events”

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