How To Add Birthdays to iCal

If you need help managing your life and time, iCal provides all the tools you need to keep track of important events. The program comes standard on all Macs and has an easy-to-follow, user-friendly design.

Let's talk about how to add birthdays to your calendar. There are two ways to accomplish this goal. The first involves importing birthdays saved in your Address Book, the other allows you to manually add individual birthdays directly to your calendar.

ADDING BIRTHDAYS FROM ADDRESS BOOK:

1. Start by opening the iCal application. The icon for iCal (a small calendar page) can usually be found in the dock and clicking on the icon once will open the program. If your dock does not contain the iCal icon, search the Applications folder for iCal and open the program from there.
2. Select "iCal" from the menu bar at the top of the screen, then click "Preferences."
3. Under the "General" section of the Preferences window, click the check box next to "Show Birthdays Calendar." This will import all the birthdays in your Address Book. The program will create a new "Subscriptions" area with a "Birthdays" group. The colored box next to "Birthdays" indicates the color marker that will highlight your newly added birthdays. The markers will automatically recur yearly.
4. Close the Preferences window. The birthdays should now be visible. To check, simply scroll through the calendar looking for the corresponding "Birthdays" color marker. The birthday boy/girl's name will appear on the birth date specified in the Address Book.

ADDING BIRTHDAYS MANUALLY:

1. Start by opening the iCal application. Select "File" from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
2. Under "File," select "New Calendar." An "Untitled" classification should appear on the left hand side of your screen. Type "Birthdays" into the space occupied by "Untitled."
3. Once you finish typing, the system will highlight your newly made "Birthdays" classification. Scroll through the calendar to the date of the first birthday you would like to enter.
4. Double click on the date you want to select. A "New Event" window will pop up. Click on the words "New Event" and replace them with the name of the birthday boy/girl. Click the check box next to "all-day" to indicate that the birthday is a day long event, then click done. The birthday should now appear on your calendar.
5. Repeat step 4 for each birthday you wish to enter.

You are now ready to add birthdays to your iCal.