how do you change color of an event in a calendar in ical

Michael Montalto wrote:

So you propose that I create a new calendar and then select that calendar every time I have to make an appointment in that calendar and then change to a different calendar each time I have a different type of event.

OR the software developers over at Apple make my life easy instead of me jumping through hoops and I just click on an event and click a button to color it whatever I want.

No, this is ALL the fault of Apple and their naming system. It APPEARS that you have to create a new calendar each time you want a different event type in a new colour, but that's because Apple in their "wisdom" calls all such things 'Calendars'.

The only calendar you see in iCal is a combination of those other "calendars" with each one being a different colour. What they should have done - it would be FAR LESS confusing - is simply call those 'sub calendars' event types which makes much more sense.

So no, you DON'T have to click each "calendar" to see a type of event - you in fact see them all together. There's only one calendar. Just create a new "calendar" (event type) each time you want something to be in a different colour, and you will see it in the "calendar" list on the left. But what you actually see in the main view is a combination of all of those together. THAT's the real calendar.

barbarafromtarrytown wrote:

how do I change the color of an EVENTt in ical

The color of an event depends on the used calendar for that event; e.g. blue for office, magenta for holidays or green for private. (see left pane of iCal)

To change the colors you have to change the color of the calendar.

For that right click on the calendar (left pane), choose "get info" and change te color there.

Lupunus

this seams like a HUGE user request. I know im syncing Ical with my google calendar for my work schedule which is color coded based on days off and people covering out of normal shifts. This does not show in ical and is such a huge dissapoitment. You would think that after over 5 years of this being a feature request that apple would take this easy win and add the feature to ical as people have been asking for. Just seaching the internet to find out how to do this myself the first post i came on was from 2005! PLEASE APPLE ADD COLOR TAGGING TO EVENTS!!!

this seams like a HUGE user request. I know im syncing Ical with my google calendar for my work schedule which is color coded based on days off and people covering out of normal shifts. This does not show in ical and is such a huge dissapoitment. You would think that after over 5 years of this being a feature request that apple would take this easy win and add the feature to ical as people have been asking for. Just seaching the internet to find out how to do this myself the first post i came on was from 2005! PLEASE APPLE ADD COLOR TAGGING TO EVENTS!!!

boivinr wrote:

PLEASE APPLE ADD COLOR TAGGING TO EVENTS!!!

😕 Um, color tagging events has always been a feature of iCal. Go into iCal. In the upper left-hand corner it says "Calendars." Go under "File" and create a new Calendar--iCal will give it a color, but you can change that. If you do this in iCloud, you simply pick "edit" and click on the color, and you've a huge range of choices as to what color you want it to be.

So, now you've got calendars--the family events calendar (named "Family") the "Days Off" calendar and the "Appointments" calendar...each with their own color. You can see them all when you click on "calendars" there on the left-hand side. And, in your case, can create calendars for each person at your work to know when they'll be on or off work. "John's calendar" and "Susan's calendar."

You create an event, and among the choices you have (date, time, alert, notes) is one that says: "Calendar." It will show the default calendar with it's color, but offer you up and down arrows to pick a different calendar (you can change the default calendar, by the way, under preferences). You use those arrows and pick "John" calendar and the "event" of John being on-shift from 10pm-10am on December 12th appears on the calendar in orange. Create an event and give it the "Susan Off" calendar and her time off will appear in green. Give several events the "appointment" calendar and they'll all be blue (or whatever colors you've picked for these things).

Yes?

Now whether you can sync your iCal to Google and match up the colors is a whole other story. But you can--and have for as long as I can remember---color code your iCal events.

this is not color tagging of events... thats color of the calendar it self... google calendar allows you to change the color for each meeting with in the same calendar.... This is also the case in MS Outlook. iCal will only allow you to change the color of all events to the same color in one calendar which means you have to have multiple calendars to have multiple colors... what a cludgey process...

I shouldent have to have a calendar for peoples days off to have them in one color, a calendar for people covering shifts that they dont normally work so i can put them in another color, and another calendar for normal shift shift schedules and one last one for requested coverage which hasent been covered... this requires four calendars in iCal to accomplish were in Outlook or Google this is one calendar...

boivinr wrote:

this is not color tagging of events... thats color of the calendar it self... google calendar allows you to change the color for each meeting with in the same calendar.... This is also the case in MS Outlook. iCal will only allow you to change the color of all events to the same color in one calendar which means you have to have multiple calendars to have multiple colors... what a cludgey process...

It's what Apple decided to do for whatever reason, and I figure there is a logic behind it--one that suits others even if it doesn't suite you.

However, if you dont' like it, this isn't the place to complain. Send an e-mail to Apple. Send it, even, to Tim Cook. They do read such things and they do make changes. We, here, can't do a darn thing. We can only tell you how to do what you want to do with the current program, as is.

PLEASE APPLE ADD COLOR TAGGING TO EVENTS!!!

Please use a different program for your calendars, this is not a feature of iCal and probably never will be.

I've started using iCal for the very first time after nearly 20 years of using Macs (I'm just not a "To Do" person!)

Like you, I assumed that you could set each event to a different colour. After all, you can set the 'label colour' of any document in the Finder, and I assumed you could do the same thing in iCal.

I'm shocked and stunned to find that you can't. It's SUCH a basic requirement. I speak as a new user of iCal, so there's no need for all you long-time users of it to jump on me and say "It's never been there" - my feeling is it SHOULD be there, and those who prefer not to could ignore it, like document labelling in Finder. Then everyone would be happy.

(And how come all pictures of iCal as an app show events in different colours - is that a lie?)

Oh wait - I've worked it out. Although you create different calendars with different colours, each "calendar" isn't really a calendar - it's a category (or "label" if you prefer). When you create an event, Apple gives you a choice of which "calendar" to assign it to. What they REALLY mean is which "category" to assign it to. You only ever see one calendar view, which includes whatever is in all those other "calendars", with their different colours.

Apple's nomenclature here is counter-intuitive and confusing, but once you "get" it, it's logical enough to use.

Unfortunately, you can't.

I use Google Apps as a back end for my business and I want to use all of the built in features of OSX but color coding my events within the same calendar is a must for me. If others were looking at my work calendar as an example, they wouldn't care what colors are specific to me, but since I have Green for production events, yellow for meetings, and red for anything important, I know at a quick glance exactly what I'm doing AND what I can move around without a problem.

I love my Mac but this is simply stupid and draconian thinking. Adding the ability to change a COLOR (espcially for of all companies...Apple) to an event is a fundamental need of the application and something Apple needs to incorporate into the new release of OSX Mavericks.

Make a production events calendar, color it green, put production events on it. Make a yellow calendar, put meetings on it, rinse and repeat.

You get 1 extra step (choosing which calendar to put something on) and one less step (you don't have to choose the color)

Net result is a wash.

So you propose that I create a new calendar and then select that calendar every time I have to make an appointment in that calendar and then change to a different calendar each time I have a different type of event.

OR the software developers over at Apple make my life easy instead of me jumping through hoops and I just click on an event and click a button to color it whatever I want.

Apple is about simplicity and ease of use. The approach you're suggesting sounds like it came from a Steve Balmer. I would prefer to use Calendar on my Mac rather than the Google App.

Bottom line is I'm stuck using Google Calendar until Apple let's me pick a frigging color per event rather than making 18 separate calendars.

It takes one click to select a calendar and (your way) one click to select a color.

If you can't adjust to that you are out of luck with the Apple Calendar, use Googles.

Unfortunately, that is my only current path until Apple adds this feature to the Calendar.