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Spirit_VW · Sep 10, 2002, 03:59 PM

Just wanted to get a thread started for iCal tips and such. Here's my (small) contribution:

You can triple-click an Event to get its Info window, rather than select it and click the button at the bottom.

Let's get a good thread going here.

snerdini · Sep 10, 2002, 04:18 PM

You can do the same thing if you double-click the "titlebar" of the specific event.

midwinter · Sep 10, 2002, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
Just wanted to get a thread started for iCal tips and such. Here's my (small) contribution:

You can triple-click an Event to get its Info window, rather than select it and click the button at the bottom.

Let's get a good thread going here.

You can get scroll bars if you change the number of hours displayed in a day. The default is 8-8 (only 12 hours). You can display, apparently, up to 24 hours per day.

Cheers
Scott

jwblase · Sep 10, 2002, 08:17 PM

Has anyone figured out how to import Entourage calendars that have DIFFERENT labels than the default?

I've found that importing from Entourage only imports events with no label.

JB

IamBob · Sep 10, 2002, 08:20 PM

You can crash/hang/duh-loop iCal by looking at it funny. Oh, I guess that's not a tip...uh..is it a feature?

I've only used it for all of 5 mins., sorry!

Anyway, I'm curious to know if you can copy/paste events. My work schedule is kinda wonky (I love that word!

)..

sun., mon., wed., fri....repeat.

Also, the boss man could toss another day my way or give me an extra off. If I could copy/paste things would be a lot easier since this seems to happen often.

Yeah, I know, create a new event for that day and all but..but...that's not as easy as copy/paste or option+drag(!!??).

Is what I want to do easily done and I just missed it?

SupahCoolX · Sep 10, 2002, 09:21 PM

Originally posted by IamBob:

Anyway, I'm curious to know if you can copy/paste events. My work schedule is kinda wonky (I love that word!)..

sun., mon., wed., fri....repeat.

For that, you could create the item on, say, Sunday. Then, in its info window, set it to repeat weekly on those selected days. That's what I did for my classes. I just created the entry on the first day/time of the week I have that class, then set it to repeat every week on each of the days I have it.

IamBob · Sep 10, 2002, 10:15 PM

Cool, thanks.

I had a passing thought that that would work but was distracted by the lack of copy/paste and didn't try it.

Sorry for wasting space/time (space time? - is there a singularity? wth?)...I guess that's the way to go.

I think I've lost it, or never had it - pick one.

ryarber · 10:26 PM

Originally posted by IamBob:
You can crash/hang/duh-loop iCal by looking at it funny. Oh, I guess that's not a tip...uh..is it a feature?

I've only used it for all of 5 mins., sorry!

Anyway, I'm curious to know if you can copy/paste events. My work schedule is kinda wonky (I love that word!)..

sun., mon., wed., fri....repeat.

Also, the boss man could toss another day my way or give me an extra off. If I could copy/paste things would be a lot easier since this seems to happen often.

Yeah, I know, create a new event for that day and all but..but...that's not as easy as copy/paste or option+drag(!!??).

Is what I want to do easily done and I just missed it?

I worked with it off and on most of the day. This is one glaring omission that I was trying to find in there.

Another observation... Make a new entry. Make it an untimed (ie. all day) event. Set the event to repeat, eg. weekly. Now look at it in the monthly views and compare it to the week and daily views. They show up just fine in the weekly and daily views, but not in monthly view. There is a place for them like iCal knows they are there in the monthly view, but you can't see what the title of the event is. I make out call schedules for other physicians in my group and use this feature a lot. I sent a bug report/feature request to iCal feedback on both these items today.

Another feature that is kind of neat is this. Click on the iCal menu and there is a selection there for iCal feedback. It opens your default browser and loads an iCal feedback page.

In the week or daily view, you can open the info panes on events by double clicking on the top bar of a timed event, or by double clicking on the dot to the left of the name on untimed events.

Another thing I found very cool. I was trying to change the default category (ie. calendar) that new entries were placed in. In the calendar subwindow on the top left, click on one of the calendar names and drag it to the top. It is now the default calendar for new entries. Pretty cool there. Maybe this is documented, I haven't really read it yet.

iCal will send emails to your cell phone, etc, even when the iCal app is not running. The only problem is that the Mail.app has trouble doing this every time. It seems that you can tell mail to automatically send the messages to your cell, but when you quit Mail.app, it resets to the default. They should really change this so that both apps need not be running and messages can go without a hitch regardless of the state Mail.app is in.

gralem · Sep 10, 2002, 10:41 PM

I have a nagging questions about iCal. When I send an invitation to outlook users, and they pull up the appointment in outlook, the time is off by 4 hours. It's quite strange. If you look at the text of the iCal.ics file:

DTSTART;TZID=US/Eastern:20020910T114500
DTSTAMP:20020910T134757Z
SUMMARY: [stuff]
UID: [stuff]
ORGANIZER;[stuff]
DTEND;TZID=US/Eastern:20020910T134500

This is for a meeting on 9/10/2002 from 11:45-13:45. It looks like it has the right timezone information. And it comes up in outlook as 7:45-9:45, so the time is off by 4 hours, not 3 (Eastern to Pacific time difference). I don't know if this is a bug for Apple or Outlook or something lost in the translation. Can anyone else verify, give suggestion?

Spirit_VW · Sep 10, 2002, 10:55 PM

Originally posted by snerdini:
You can do the same thing if you double-click the "titlebar" of the specific event.

Yes. I just thought it might be easier for some people to triple-click the main window than aim for the titlebar sometimes. Works either way.

Spirit_VW · Sep 10, 2002, 11:00 PM

Another little one - Control-clicking or right-clicking an Event brings up a contextual menu allowing you to change which calendar that Event is part of.

hardcat1970 · Sep 10, 2002, 11:18 PM

you can use ical for your bills reminder by placing them as an all day event, they will go to the top drawer automatically. Then you can set them as a monthly event and boom, you have a bill reminder like those in Quicken.

ryarber · Sep 10, 2002, 11:22 PM

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
Another little one - Control-clicking or right-clicking an Event brings up a contextual menu allowing you to change which calendar that Event is part of.

Their use of contextual menus in this app is downright crappy. Considering all the bugs I've found and all the intuitive features omitted, I'd give this a 2 out of 5 stars AT BEST. It is definitely no Now Up-to-Date. iCal 1.1 better have come a long way when it comes out. I guess it is worth what we paid for it though. It will also be much nicer when iSync comes out. Just being able to have one app to sync all our data on our cell phones, PDA's, etc. will be very sweet. I sure hope that PowerOn software starts to use the vCal and vCard database built into Jag so we don't have to reenter all this stuff for other apps.

torifile · Sep 10, 2002, 11:36 PM

cmd + i will bring up the info window too.

chromos · Sep 11, 2002, 01:16 AM

Am I missing something... but when you publish To Do Items in a calendar, they don't seem to show up in the monthly web view, do they? They only appear in a subscriber's iCal view?

KetanMV · Sep 11, 2002, 01:57 AM

how about getting ical to send email reminders using Entourage and not mail.app?

ketan

Green Leaf · Sep 11, 2002, 08:02 AM

if you select 11 hours and you get scroll bars....how do you see the second 13 hours? You can't scroll there

C.J. Moof · Sep 11, 2002, 10:08 AM

I left mine running since yesterday, and it's stuck on today being Sept 10... my TV made it darn clear this AM that it's Sept 11 again. My menubar clock knows it's 9/11, but iCal is stuck. It got it's head straight after a quit/relaunch, but that's hardly a solution.

Anybody else have the same thing?

Mskr · Sep 11, 2002, 10:18 AM

While you can't cut/copy & paste events (apparently), you can just change the date of the event in the info window. I find this to be much better/easier than cutting & pasting...

Diggory Laycock · 10:30 AM

If you choose your week to not start on a Sunday then the little months view does not reflect this:

Overall though I think iCal is great for a free app. I also like the fact that iCal and Mail are separate apps. Entourage's convergence is a no-no as far as I am concerned - Apps should Concentrate on one thing and do it well.

Diggory Laycock · Sep 11, 2002, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by KetanMV:
how about getting ical to send email reminders using Entourage and not mail.app?

ketan

http://www.saalmann.de/software/iCal/iCal2Eudora.html

looking at this page it looks like the sending is done by Applescript so you should be able to hack something together.

jparisi · Sep 11, 2002, 11:42 AM

anyone know how to make an event extend past midnight? Or least change the event ending date?

snerdini · Sep 11, 2002, 12:07 PM

Originally posted by C.J. Moof:
I left mine running since yesterday, and it's stuck on today being Sept 10... my TV made it darn clear this AM that it's Sept 11 again. My menubar clock knows it's 9/11, but iCal is stuck. It got it's head straight after a quit/relaunch, but that's hardly a solution.

Anybody else have the same thing?

Actually my date completely disappeared until I quit and relaunched iCal.

cpac · Sep 11, 2002, 02:37 PM

Originally posted by gralem:
I have a nagging questions about iCal. When I send an invitation to outlook users, and they pull up the appointment in outlook, the time is off by 4 hours. It's quite strange. If you look at the text of the iCal.ics file:

DTSTART;TZID=US/Eastern:20020910T114500
DTSTAMP:20020910T134757Z
SUMMARY: [stuff]
UID: [stuff]
ORGANIZER;[stuff]
DTEND;TZID=US/Eastern:20020910T134500

This is for a meeting on 9/10/2002 from 11:45-13:45. It looks like it has the right timezone information. And it comes up in outlook as 7:45-9:45, so the time is off by 4 hours, not 3 (Eastern to Pacific time difference). I don't know if this is a bug for Apple or Outlook or something lost in the translation. Can anyone else verify, give suggestion?

Not sure why they don't match up, but the 3 hour difference is probably the time zone thing, add to that the fact that it's still day light savings time and you potentially have your 4 hours.

absmiths · Sep 11, 2002, 03:43 PM

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
Just wanted to get a thread started for iCal tips and such. Here's my (small) contribution:

You can triple-click an Event to get its Info window, rather than select it and click the button at the bottom.

Let's get a good thread going here.

I think it is too late for that... This seems like the iCal whiners thread.

I personally like the ability to drag an event up or down in the day to change it's time.

Spirit_VW · 04:17 PM

Originally posted by absmiths:

I think it is too late for that... This seems like the iCal whiners thread.

Yeah, I know - folks, PLEASE, don't use this thread for iCal complaints and such. I realize there's no rules about this, but myself and numerous others would really appreciate it if you all stuck to tips and tricks. There are plenty of iCal problem threads - let's try to keep this for tips.

bewebste · Sep 11, 2002, 04:51 PM

Originally posted by jparisi:
anyone know how to make an event extend past midnight? Or least change the event ending date?

You can create an event earlier in the day, extend it to the length it needs to be, and then move it down so that the end of the event is past midnight. Kind of ugly, but it works.