MacMost Now 296: New Ways To Edit Events in iCal

Snow Leopard includes a new version of iCal that lets you edit events in two new ways that make it much easier to use iCal as your calendar program. You can also easily import and sync Google and Yahoo calendars.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost. On today's episode lets look at the new ways that iCal lets you edit events. So iCal received some improvements in snow Leopard. One of the big improvement is new ways to edit your events in iCal. this was a bit problem in past. as it wasn't obvious or easy to edit events. Lets take a look. Now in previous versions of iCal the way you will edit events was that you selected it. you simple double clicked it and comes up a pop up window. You still couldn't edit at this point you could see more information. you hit this edit button, then you can go ahead and tab through the information and edit it and press done button you see at the bottom of the screen and you are done. Kind of made it cumbersome to quickly edit this events. But we have got new ways to do it now in snow leopard. The first way is to simple hit command i immediately with the event selected. This goes ahead and brings up this info window here you can tab through the items and change things you want. Then you can go ahead and click command w to close it. This actually makes it possible to edit things without using the mouse. so no using the mouse I am gonna go ahead and i can tab forward events and then shift tab backward events when i see the one i want to edit , i just do the command i and then i can tab through the items in the event, make my changes and then i can do command w to close it. Now if you like using this method rather than old one you can use it permanently by going to iCal preferences and under the events tab click on open event in separate windows. now when i have done that, if i double click on an event instead of getting little bubble it immediately goes right to this inspector window. Now if you have lots of events to edit One of the things you can do is ,open up a floating events inspector that will change with the events select. you can do it with command option i, then you get this inspector window. now what ever i select will appear in this inspector window. you have to click on it and then go ahead and edit things that you can . so it helps you basically goes through events that you got and see all the details about them very quickly instead of having to individually open windows for each one of them. now what we talking about iCal, lets go ahead and take a look at another cool new feature which is the ability to easily add calendars from different online services such as yahoo and gmail. so goto iCal preferences like i just did and click on accounts, click on the plus button on the bottom and then you will be able to go ahead and choose from different account types. a CalDAV a calendars account, Exchange 2007 of course Google and Yahoo.All you need to do then is enter your email address or id and password for either google or yahoo, it will find all you calendars and make them available to you in iCal and it will automatically sync new events back and forth between them. so you have looked at couple of ways that apple improved iCal for snow leopard. Till next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 9 Responses to “MacMost Now 296: New Ways To Edit Events in iCal”

Brian Wilde

15 years ago

Gary;
Can you recommend mindmapping software (free and paid)
I saw your info when i did search on macmost site, but wanted to know the latest.

Using for personal, hobbys tracking type of stuff.
Thnks

Gary Rosenzweig

Not really into mind mapping software, so I can't make a recommendation, sorry.

John

Gary ...

My boss has just offered me the opportunity to work out of my home instead of coming into the office. One condition is that I send him my proposed work calendar at the beginning of each week and as I change it. I will set up a new "Work Calendar" in iCal but I can't figure out how to email it to him.

Can you please tell me how?

Thanks

You would normally publish your calendar online and then let your boss subscribe to it. Then he can view it at any time. That's how iCal and a lot of other calendar software would do it. Otherwise, you could print it out -- print as a PDF that is. And then email the PDF. In fact, you can even print and then select "Email PDF" directly from the print dialog.

Brian Hershkowitz

HI, Gary. Another great thing about John's new Calendar "Work Calendar" is that if he has MobileMe, his boss can view it as a web page, instead of subscribing to it. It is just as up to date as the subscribed version, and his boss doesn't have to be technically inclined or even using iCal to make this work.

Marcia

14 years ago

I sync my Ical with Google. When I try to add a to do item in Ical I get a message that says you can not add to do items to this calendar. How can I get around this?
Thanks, Gary!

I guess that means that Google calendars don't support "to do" items. I don't see any support for it in Google calendars. There is a separate "Tasks" for Google accounts, but it doesn't seem to be a part of the calendar.

Can any one tell me if it is possible to set the default ical "New Event" start time to say 7am? Every time I put in a new event the default start time is midnight and i have to scroll through to get the time i desire.

There isn't a way to set that easily. But You can double-click in the man iCal interface to add an event and it will not use that default. If you double-click in the month view, it uses the current time. If you double-click in the daily view it will put the event at the time where you click.

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MacMost Now 296: New Ways To Edit Events in iCal

Comments: 9 Responses to “MacMost Now 296: New Ways To Edit Events in iCal”

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