iCal birthday calendar & iPhone

#1 theprofs

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Posted 15 March 2009 - 04:34 PM

HOw do you see the birthdays listed in iCal from your AddressBook on your calendar on your iPhone?

#2 smax013

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Posted 16 March 2009 - 03:10 PM

Are you asking how to get the birthdays you have entered into Address Book for first show up in iCal and then in the calendar on the iPhone? Or do already know how to get them show up in iCal, but not the iPhone?

If you it merely to get stuff that shows up in iCal on the iPhone, then you need to either set iTunes to sync your calendar (and address book if you want) to the iPhone OR have a MobileMe account that can be set to automatically "push" sync the calendar and addressbook through the phone conneciton or WiFi.

For the former, when you plug in the iPhone to sync it with the computer, go the Devices section of iTunes and select the iPhone from the Devices list. Once that is done, there should be a bunch of tabs across the screen part way down from the top. Select the Info tab. On that tab, you should be able to turn on the syncing of the calendar and contacts.

#3 theprofs

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Posted 16 March 2009 - 05:36 PM

synching iCal is not the problem. I can enter data either on my iPhone, my home desktop, my laptop or my office desktop and the data synchs perfectly all over from my home calendar & my work calendar. However, even though birthday info entered in AddressBook synchs to every calendar EXCEPT the one on my iPhone. That's the problem -- how do you get the birthday info onto the iPhone?

#4 smax013

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Posted 16 March 2009 - 05:42 PM

I would think it would be automatic...but maybe not. When I get some time, I will "play" some with my iPod Touch (don't have an iPhone) and the feature and see if I can figure anything out.

#5 Skybolt

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Posted 17 March 2009 - 06:10 AM

Mine syncs via MobileMe, but if I rememer correctly, without MobileMe once you click on the tab and then iCal, there are options for which calendars you want to sync. Much like you can choose which albums in iPhoto you want to sync, and which playlists in iTunes you want to sync. Not positive, though.

#6 theprofs

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Posted 17 March 2009 - 11:39 AM

The only calendar that won't sync is the birthday calendar. My work calendar, my home calendar, my photos, etc.-- everything else synchs just perfectly. The BIRTHDAY calendar won't

#7 smax013

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Posted 17 March 2009 - 01:30 PM

It appears that there is no easy way to get that Birthday calendar onto an iPhone or iPod Touch at the moment...you can sync it with MobileMe (i.e. the online part), but it will not sync from MobileMe to the iPhone or iPod Touch.

It is possible that Apple might rectify this issue with the iPhone 3.0 software that was announced today and will be released sometime in the Summer. It is not clear yet...they just offered a "taste" of the updates...we should know more as more details become available. They did annouce support for more calendar formats (i.e. if I recall correctly, support for what Google calendar uses).

#8 Skybolt

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Posted 18 March 2009 - 05:47 AM

Hmmm. That is very odd. I am sitting here looking at my iPod Touch first generation, and I am looking at my calendar on it. When I select "calendars" from the top, it shows the calendars that are synced, and there is an entry "Birthdays - Address Book" and the birthdays are all showing up. It shows all of my calendars -- Home, PocketMac, Wire Tap Recordings, etc. all with the appropriately colored "button".

#9 ktula

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Posted 23 March 2009 - 10:08 PM

Yes, in iPhone 3.0 beta, there is a subscription service available for ics-type calendar. I was able to publish my iCal birthdays to MobileMe. When you publish the calendar to MobileMe, iCal will provide two ways for accessing the Birthdays, one is a .ics file while the other is an URL. By entering the full path to the .ics file in my iPhone (installed with 3.0 beta), i was able to see birthdays in the Calendar.

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