Birthday Calendar

Have you ever forgotten a friend’s birthday? Apple has you in mind. Since 10.4 Tiger, Apple has included a Birthday calendar option in iCal that allows you to subscribe to the birthdays of contacts in your Address Book. Follow these instructions if you want to enable this feature.

First, open iCal. Click Cal in the menu bar and click Preferences. Under the General toolbar item, click the check mark that specifies Show Birthdays calendar. The birthdays calendar should appear in the left-hand calendar sidebar. Next, you’ll need to enter some addresses in Address Book. First, open Address Book. Click Address Book in the menu bar and click Preferences.

Under the Template toolbar item, click the Add Field drop-down menu and click Birthday. Close the Preferences window and select a contact in your Address Book. Then, click Edit. You will see a Birthday field which you can populate with your contact’s birthday! As iCal is subscribed to your Address Book’s contact’s birthdays, if you update your Address Book, iCal will be subsequently updated as well.

If you want a more automated way of entering birthdays and you have a Facebook account, you could try Cobook, an app available in the Mac App Store that can sync information between Facebook and your Address Book. Of course, any time you’re modifying your Address Book, make a backup by choosing File, Export, Address Book Archive so that you can restore your contacts if Cobook’s behavior is undesirable.

Once you’re done, sync your Address Book with iCloud, Google, Yahoo, or iTunes and your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch will reflect all the hard work you’ve done on your more mobile devices.