iCal and Address Book

August 23, 2007

If you use iCal, you are probably familiar with the ability to invite others to events, and send yourself email reminders of events. If you aren't familiar with these features, you should get to know them. First, check your Address Book (Blue or Brown book icon with an @ on it), and find your "My Card" entry (under Card-->Go to My Card, or Make this My Card). Make sure you have filled out your email address here, or none of this works.

Today my wife asked me to set up an email reminder for her, in my iCal. I have an event every three weeks that she doesn't need on her calendar, but needs a heads up reminder a couple of days in advance. Well, you can't do this. iCal will send reminders only to email addresses on your My Card entry.

So, being the clever guy that I am, I decided to add my wife's email address to my card, and mark it spouse. That did the trick. I was able to set up an email reminder for her after that. Then she changed her mind, and wanted the event on her calendar-- she asked me to invite her to the event instead, and she'd just set up the reminder herself. Fine, so I removed the reminder and stuck her name in the Attendees field.

Only problem was, iCal no longer allowed me to send her invitations. This puzzled me. It was showing her name when I brought up the attendees. After staring at it, quitting iCal and tinkering for a few minutes, it dawned on me that iCal was thinking that the invite was to myself, since the email address was on my card. Sure enough, I removed her email from my card, and immediately afterwards, I was able to invite her to the event.

One last thing. She won't be able to set up reminders on the event I invited her to, since I control the event. What she will have to do is accept the event, and add it to her calendar. Then she will need to copy the event, and paste it a second time into the calendar. Then she will have to delete the original event (and choose do not notify back to me). Now she will be able to edit the event and add a reminder.

Sure would be nice if Apple allowed you to set a reminder on any event that appears in your iCal, regardless of how it got there.