Apple iCal: An insider's guide

One of these days you'll get organisised, right? Jokes aside, maintaining a calendar of events for work and home is always a bit of a juggle. One calendar might be located on your mobile phone, another one at work, one on your home computer, and probably the most important one stuck to your fridge. iCal can be used to sync all of these different calendars into one and you can even sync other people's schedules. No longer will you forget your partner's birthday, your wedding anniversary, or even your great aunt's birthday bash.

Enter iCal, a free application (now in its third iteration) that comes shipped with Mac OS X Leopard. By default the application is easy to find as it shares a default space on the Apple Dock. If you can't find it, view the applications folder in Finder and click on iCal.

The interface displayed when you first open iCal should look like the above image without the inserted calendar events. On the left pane is the Calendar box that, as the name suggests, lists your different calendars and ones you may subscribe to (we'll get to calendar subscriptions in a minute). To begin with, set up various calendars you think you'll need. By default there is one for work and home, but you may want to add a new one for birthdays and anniversaries, or for your local sporting team. To add a new calendar click on the + button at the bottom of the Calendar column and give it a suitable label.

Adding events to iCal
The main column, which can be viewed by day, week, or month is where you'll add and subtract events in your schedule. We've found using the weekly view is the most intuitive way to look at a calendar, but feel free to set your own view according to personal preference. To add a new event, make sure you've selected a calendar from the left Calendar column then double-click on the time and date the event is set to start. A new box will appear in the colour corresponding to which calendar it is and will allow you to edit the space with a name. For more advanced editing, double click the new event block and more options will be available.

As shown in the image above, you can add in detailed information for each entry and invite people you know to events. You can also give the event a date, set the length of time, add in the location, repeat it for multiple days, give yourself an email reminder before the event, add relevant attachments associated with the event, and add URLs and notes. While this advanced editing is handy, most day-to-day tasks can be used by dragging and dropping and resizing events on the calendar interface.

One of the more useful iCal editing features is creating an alarm, or a set of alarms, to an event. When creating or editing an event choose the type of alarm you want from the drop down menu. iCal will allow you to select email, message, open file, or even run a script as options. As an example, you may want to choose "Open a file" and select a favourite song from your iTunes library to play as an alarm. Stop? Hammer Time? Advanced users may want to choose the "Run a Script" option which can run AppleScripts or Automator functions. This can open up an array of options to use as an alarm, for example, you may want to set a regular script to open a document or application for certain regular meetings. Or, you may want to automatically set an alarm to have MC Hammer play as an alarm for going home at 5.30 every day.

Sometimes organising yourself is only half the battle. If you need to share a calendar event with a friend or work colleague then its easy to share it from iCal. Select the iCal event you want to share and right-click (or Control-click) and select the Mail Event option. The primary email application, usually Apple's Mail, will open and auto-fill an email with the iCal event. You may choose to edit the subject and body of the email and select the recipient(s) of the iCal event. Your friend or colleague who receives the email will see the name, date and time of the event. If the recipients open the attached file and has a calendaring application like Microsoft Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, or another similar application then the event will be automatically added to their schedule.

Add a to-do list
iCal includes a to-do list which can integrate with Apple's Mail program. To insert to-do items, either add them via Apple's Mail program or add them via iCal. The two programs will sync with one another. Inside iCal the panel can be hidden. Click on the tack button on the bottom right of the application to view the pane.

To add a new to-do list item, double click on the right panel, or click on File > Add new to-do item, or use the keyboard shortcut of Command +K. To edit an entry simply double-click the to-do field. If you're one that needs to keep on top of things with reminders, the to-do functionality adds a nifty feature that will send an email, sound an alarm, open a file, or even run a custom script to remind you of important tasks.