Adding Events

To add an event or to edit an existing event, just click on the date or click on Daily, Duration, or Periodic at the bottom of the page.

By "click on the date" we mean click on the day number. If you want to create an event for June 3rd, for example, you click on the 3 in the calendar.

Events can include HTML code, including hyperlinks, tables, colors, and images. You can add Popup Text that will appear in a separate smaller window, but your users will need a browser capable of reading javascript to read this popup window. The popup text also appears in full, with any browser, in the List view. Here is more information on Creating Calendar Events.

• Adding Duration or Periodic Events if Calendar does not Show the Edit Bar: If you have set General Settings to not show the Edit Bar, you can still add or edit Duration or Periodic events by clicking on any date and clicking on Duration of Periodic on the form that then appears.
• Event Must Have Text for Popup to Work: You need to enter some text in the Calendar Text box before the Popup Text feature will work. You can't leave Calendar Text blank, because the program needs something to use as the link to the Popup.
• Periodic Events Bugs:
  • The normal recognition of http:// as the start of a hyperlink does not work inside the popup text part of a periodic event. If you want the popup text of a periodic event to include a link to another web site, you need to use the normal HTML tags, like: <a href=http://mypage.mysite.com>My Page</a>.
  • The program actually will not set up a periodic event to occur weekly on more than one weekday. In other words, if you set an event to Repeat by Day of Week and then use Ctrl-Clicks to select more than one weekday name (say, Sunday and Tuesday), the event will actually show up only on the first such weekday name selected (in this example, Sunday). If you want an event to repeat weekly (or every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks, etc.) on two different weekdays, then you have to set up two periodic events (one for Sunday and the same event, separately, for Tuesday). The next version of iCal will correct this.
• Annual Events: You can enter birthdays and other events as periodic events that happen on the same date every year, but it is a bit tricky. In the periodic event form, specify the date range within which the annual event will show by using the "From" area and the "Until" area. The actual date that will recur annually is then determined by the month in the "From" area and the date selected from the pick list under "Date(s)" in the box below the "From" area. Then click the button for Every Year in that box. Note: This is confusing and will soon change.
• Exceptions to Periodic Events: Sometimes your meeting won't happen when usually scheduled (as a periodic event). You can schedule the periodic event, then automatically convert it to individual "daily" instances. You can then delete any of the daily instances. When you create the event with the Periodic event edit page, check the box that says Generate Daily Events before hitting Submit. This will create a series of individual events instead of a periodic event. You can then delete any of the individual instances of the event. Just go back to viewing your calendar, navigate to the month of the event to delete, click on that day, and delete that instance.
  • Be careful doing this. This is a one-way conversion from an event formula to individual events. You cannot reconvert the individual events into a periodic event formula.
  • Also, you can by mistake generate hundreds of daily events, which will be a pain to delete. If you need to delete a lot of such events, you might want to try Offline Editing.
• One Year Extent of Periodic Events as Default: When you create a new periodic event, the form will by default make it persist for 1 year from the first day of the current month (for example, the first Tuesday of every month for 1 year, ending April 1, 2000). You can change this persistence length to whatever you want.
• Colors for Events: You can specify the background color and text color for each event. You can enter any HTML hex color codes. Convenient tables of those codes are located at HexMixer. You can also use color names that are not longer than 8 characters. For example, "skyblue" will work, but "darksalmon" will not. We are working to fix this limitation. We have posted a table of HTML Color Names for reference. Here is an even better table of HTML Color Names.

Editing or Deleting Events

You can edit or delete any event you have authority over. Click on a date or on Daiily, Duration, or Periodic at the bottom of the calendar. You will then see a list of existing events for the day chosen or for the duration or periodic events that affect the current month If the duration or periodic event you want to edit does not show up, navigate to the correct month using the menu at the top.

Click Edit next to the event you want to Edit, and the event details will appear. Make your changes and be sure to hit SUBMIT at the bottom of the frame.

You don't actually need to hit SUBMIT. Anything you have entered in the form is automatically saved, if you click on View Calendar or any of the other hyperlinks (except the links that go to the previous month or next month).

Hitting RESET at the bottom of the form will remove any changes you have made. Hitting CANCEL returns you to the Event List, without making changes to the event you were editing. Hitting DELETE deletes the event you were editing, as does clicking on the scissors next to the event in the Event List.

New Feature: If you edit an existing event and then click the Copy Event box before saving it, the newly edited event will be created, but the old event will not be deleted. This is a fast way to make several similar events to occur on different days, particularly if the days are irregular and cannot easily be tracked with a periodic or duration event. For example, you could create one event, save it, and then edit it (with the Copy Event box checked) to change only its date. You can do this as many times as you need to create the "same" event on various days.

A Bug in Editing Periodic and Duration Events: If you have two very, very similar periodic events (or two very, very similar duration events) scheduled on the same day, you may find that you are unable to edit one of the two events. Instead, if you try, for example, to edit the second event, the edit form will come up for the first event. This happens only when the first 24 characters of both events are exactly the same. Thus, you can avoid this problem by not creating multiple periodic or duration events, which include the same date, which have the same first 24 characters. If this has already happened to you, how can you fix it? Edit the "first event" in the example above so that it no longer has the same first 24 characters as the second event.