I never understood three levels of calendars. Don't want to.
I want a single calendar that will allow me to enter dates and events and times . . . and will synch with my iPod Touch . . . and won't overly complicate my life.
Is that possible?
Thanks up front.
Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.5 years
This gives me a leg up already. Thank you!
Here's the rub though. I have three different calendars (why?) -- I renamed them with nonsense names just because of frustration. But each of the three seems to hold different kinds of information.
I haven't worked out which kind is held by which calendar (one seems to mainly contain weekend dates). But I also don't much care.
I would love to have all of 'em in one. I want to eliminate two (or more . . .), so anything that appears in the calendar on my machine will also synch with my iPod.
I have my three (under my login name), each of which I can make disappear. I also have My Calendar which I cannot seem to be able to influence in any way.
And I have no iCloud account or connection or interest.
Is it possible to get one calendar, with all data, that synchs to another device? Hard-wired is fine.
Well, you can "combined" all the calendars by dragging the items from one calendar to another. That's easy.
What's not so easy is synching the calendars over any sort of "wired" connection. I don't think you can use iTunes to do this any more. You'll need to sync over-the-air, be it by iCloud (easiest), Google Calendar, or I guess Exchange.
Well, there's good news and bad news. I'm glad that my iPod should be able to synch all. I depend on it for Contacts and Calendar.
As has been suggested you can drag an event to a different calendar or you can also edit the event information and choose a different calendar for it to appear on. But your iPod touch is capable of syncing all three of you calendars.
But I have dozens and dozens of events in my calendar. First, dragging many or most of them from one calendar to another sounds really odious. Isn't that the kind of task computers were supposed to obviate? And second . . . if I have one calendar open, how do I open a second or third?
Sorry to be such a pain, but it seems you're really on the track. Hope you won't let go of the rope. <g>
Calendars can be stored in one of two locations. Locally, on your Mac, or on a server like iCloud or one provided by your IMAP email provider.
Only your server based calendars can be set to synch to your other devices such as your iPad.
If you open the Calendar app and look at the your calendars in the side bar you'll be able to tell where your various calendars are located either "On My Mac" or "iCloud" (or other IMAP account.
So to simpkify things, eliminate any locally stored calendars and just use iCloud or whatever other server based account you may favor.
Matt
Message was edited by: Matthew Morgan
cafox513 wrote:
This gives me a leg up already. Thank you!
Here's the rub though. I have three different calendars (why?)
By default, Calendar creates a Home and Work calendar for you. Perhaps you created a thrid at some time.
I would love to have all of 'em in one. I want to eliminate two (or more . . .), so anything that appears in the calendar on my machine will also synch with my iPod.
As has been suggested you can drag an event to a different calendar or you can also edit the event information and choose a different calendar for it to appear on. But your iPod touch is capable of syncing all three of you calendars.
Is it possible to get one calendar, with all data, that synchs to another device? Hard-wired is fine.
Yes. With your iPod connected to your computer you'll be able to sync using iTunes. Select the iPod in the iTunes sidebar and click the Infor tab. There you'll see the option either sync all or some of your calendars.
Matt
All the calendars appear in the sidebar by name. So you just select an item and drag it to your "soon to be lone" calendar on the sidebar.
Yes, this is more tedious than it should be. But creating a bunch of calendars and spraying events across them all creates the effort in the first place ;-)
Aha! Okay, William, I'll have a crack at this . . . as soon as some other tasks starts driving me crazy, I'll switch to calendar event dragging.
Thanks a ton for this!
I do wish Apple had warned -- or informed -- me of the different flavors of calendar a few years ago.
So why not just sync all your calendars for now and just slowly transition to one if that's what you desire?
You may also find that multiple calendars can be useful. Work related event on one calendar. Personal events on another. Since you can pick and choose which calendar or calendars to view there really is no reason to have to combine all your events on a singal calendar.
In the Calendar app on your Mac, calendars that have check mark next to them in the sidebar are the ones that will be visible. Same on the iPad.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is no virtue in combing all you events onto a single calendar. Quite the opposite. Use differnt calendars to organize events around work, personal, childs sports schedule etc.
Matt
There's method in my madness . . .
I have no work-related events. I'm retired. And the tiny distinctions between events aren't of interest. Besides, who wants to flag SEE ANOTHER DANGED DOCTOR rather than NEW SERIES STARTS ON PBS or REMEMBER TO RECORD THE RACE SUNDAY? <g>
Moving slowly, though, from multiples down to one -- now that's a mighty good idea! Thanks for that.
That really might be the best stategy.
Make sure that all new event are created on the calendar of your choosing.
Eventually you'll be able to rid yourself of the others if that's what you want.
Matt
You can export each calendar to a .ics file by going to File>Export>Export. These files are not calendars as such, but just lists of events. So then you can create a new empty calendar and import each .ics file to it. Once you are happy with the data you can delete the old calendar.
It might be a good idea to make each calendar a different colour so you can see where the data came from.
Well . . . I'm back. (I'm also Chucky, but we'll ignore that for now.)
THE QUESTION: Is there any way to get Calendar to really synch with my iPod? So when I make a chance on the Mac, it will be reflected when I try to Synch through iTunes? So far, I'm coming up way short on my attempts.
In my MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion, I have this list:
On My Mac
CAF
Something else (a dumb name I assigned to indicate how dumb I thought multiple, unexplained calendars were)
My calendar
Subscriptions
Birthdays
In my (pretty old) iPod Touch, I have something different:
From My Mac
All from My Mac
Untitled (green button)
Something (blue button)
Something else(blue button) (Hey, it was a bad day when I was assigning new names)
Other
Birthdays
On the Mac, CAF and Something else have exactly the same info; removing either one wipes out everything on the other. AND THIS WILL NO LONGER SYNCH WITH MY IPOD. Sorry to raise my voice, but ever since I got a Calendar function with my first Mac I haven't understood what it was trying to do, and what I had to do to live with it. Now it's worse, as synchronization seems to have left the room.
Birthdays doesn't do anything but sit there. What's a subscription? Does someone in Cupertino know when my wife's birthday is?
Is there anywhere in Appleland a step-by-step explanation of how Calendar is set up, and how to work with it?
Addendum:
My Calendar on the Mac doesn't seem to do anything either. Probably it's a friend of Birthdays?
Birthdays are taken from your Contacts information automatically. It may therefore double up on any manual system you might have. You can turn it off in the preferences. I think My Calendar may be coming from Google or another external source? You could uncheck all your calendars and look at them one at a time, to see if some are redundant, or colour code them better. Make .ics files for backup.
I noticed (banging around on keys and cursor buttons) that there is a relation -- supposedly -- between Birthdays and Contacts. But there's nothing in my Contacts that has birthday information. Oh well . . .
I have checked which Calendars show which data, clicking them on and off. I have two, basically identical, in my Mac. Three or more (with different names) in my iPod.
Still confused. But thanks for the help you gave.
How can I combine all calendars into one?
