Sharing family calender!

Thanks, DB. Look forward to trying this -- will report back. Haven't had any probs syncing with Palm, other than the fact that certain custom fields in the Palm Desktop address book entries aren't recognized by Apple Address Book.

Re WARNING FOUR: What exactly do I do to back up iCal?

In iCal 2 (in Tiger) you just select "Backup Database" under the File menu. In Panther, I forget. I'm sure you can export.

You could also drag a copy of the iCal folder to somewhere. It's in your User Library but I forget where in Panther.

Do you backup any of your data? You really should have an external backup of crucial data. Either to CDs, DVDs or easiest is an external hard drive.

Make sure you can backup or everything else you do can be lost at any time.

I hope it's not too late. After tellin you all this, and thinking about folks reporting problems syncing between Panther and Tiger, and after some experimenting, I'm going to suggest you NOT try to sync until you upgrade to Tiger.

It make perfect sense that their would be problems. For example. iCal under Tiger is actually quite a different creature. The calendars are stored in a different format and location, there are Calendar Groups, and various other differences. So why wouldn't there be problems. How can you sysnc a groupp from Tiger to iCal in Panther?

So, I hope this isn't too discouraging but it does make sense to be safe than sorry.

I hope the thread is helpful for those in Tiger.

Thanks for your thorough explanation. In thinking this through, I think my wife and I can accomplish a close enough approximation to a truly shared calendar by each having his/her own "family calendar" ("Family Cal Dad" & "Family Cal Mom"), each subscribing to the other's, and making them the same color. The reality is, my wife handles all the kids' commitments. She just needs to add the few of her other personal commitments that I need to know about, and I'll post the few of mine she needs to know about to my Family Cal Dad. Not worried about misbehaving when logged on as her, but I've been doing this long enough to choose not to risk getting blamed for data loss! (I mean, my marriage is strong, but data loss is data loss ...)

BTW there is no "backup database" function in Panther, just "export." Can you explain the difference, if you don't mind? And do you happen to know whether Tiger runs at acceptable speed on a G4 867 MHz Powerbook, 640 MB of RAM?

Sounds like a good solution for now.

BTW there is no "backup database" function in Panther, just "export." Can you explain the difference, if you don't mind? And do you happen to know whether Tiger runs at acceptable speed on a G4 867 MHz Powerbook, 640 MB of RAM?

Backup allows you to backup everything (all calendars) in one step, and it saves everything in one package.

Export only lets you "backup" one calendar at a time.

I have Tiger running on a 600 mhz G3 iBook w/ 640 MB and it's fine. Not as responsive as this iMac, but fine for me.

Gentlemen, As an alternative I saved this post from a weblog that may or may not present a good alternative solution. I have not tried it, but if you feel adventurous, let me know how well it works. The original link to the material, quoted below can be found at: http://blog.saalmann.de/categories/ical/

Quote:

Montag, 28. Oktober 2002
How to move your iCal files to another folder and maybe
let several people write to one calendar
iCal really wants to keep the iCal files in ~/Library/Calendars/.
If you try to replace an individual calendar with an alias or a
symbolic link, it will read the calendar alright, but overwrite
the alias/link when saving.
A solution to this is to create a symbolic link to the Calendars
folder! Do as follows (at your own risk, don't blame me if you
miss the date of the century):
- Quit iCal
- open Terminal.app (located in Applications/Utilities/)
- type 'cp -r ~/Library/Calendars/
~/Library/CalendarsBackup/' and press return (this creates a
copy of your iCal files)
- type 'rm -fr ~/Library/Calendars/' and press return (this
deletes your original iCal files)
- type 'cp -r ~/Library/CalendarsBackup
/Users/Shared/Calendars/' and press return (replace
'/Users/Shared/Calendars/' with the folder you want to have
the files in)
- type 'ln -s /Users/Shared/Calendars/ ~/Library/Calendars'
and press return
- start iCal and see if things are working
- You still have a copy of the original files in
~/Library/CalendarsBackup/! - remember to change the file
privileges of the .ics files so everyone can access them in the
way you want them to.
You can use this technique to share a calendar between
several persons. It does not come close to a real groupware
thing, but is workable in a family setting for example.
Everyone enters their dates on the livingroom computer and
the calendar is then subscribed by everone.
It should work as long as you only access it locally, as there
usually is only one person logged in at a certain time. It will
not work if you place the files on a fileserver volume and have
several people access it with iCal at the same time
(subscribing via WebDAV will work of course).
Unfortunately, this solution does not work for individual
calendars, only for the whole folder.
Important: There are possibly some privacy issues with this
solution, as others might gain access to all your calendars.
Beware.
PS: This post was inspired by Simone Bettini of eVectors.
10:04:32 AM
October 2002
Sun Mon TueWed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
Sep Nov
Archive pages
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002

Beware this is dated (2002). While the principles may still work, iCal data storage is now significantly different.

whether Tiger runs at acceptable speed on a G4 867 MHz Powerbook, 640 MB of RAM?

I'm running it on a g4 466 mhz with 768 ram, and it's ok. it seems that the ram is quite important. after I added 256, I saw a big increase in screenperformance (windows and programs opening faster). I would like a faster mac though (anyone? 🙂 )