This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Calendar
In the old days, the only way to get events on the iPhone's calendar was to either type them on the phone or sync the iPhone with iTunes and ask it to copy your events from computer to phone. Thanks to the introduction of Exchange and MobileMe push synchronization, the iPhone's Calendar is a smarter application than it once was. In this section, I take a look at all the ways you can put life's events on your iPhone.
Managing many calendars
With the iPhone 2.0 and later software, the Calendar application can display more than one calendar—but it won't when you first launch the application. Instead, it shows your default calendar, as you configured it in the Mail, Contacts, Calendar setting. To view a list of all the calendars on your iPhone, just tap the Calendars icon in the top-left corner of the screen. To view another calendar, tap that calendar's name. Or view all your calendar events by tapping the All entry.
Viewing events
Calendar is capable of displaying events in three views: List, Day, and Month. They're laid out like so.
Month
Tap Calendar, and by default, you'll see this month's calendar, with today's date highlighted in blue. Other days maintain a gray, businesslike appearance. Tap another day, and it adopts the blue box, while the present day gains a deeper gray hue. To return to the current day, either tap it (if you're viewing the current month) or tap the Today button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. To move to the next or previous month, tap the Previous or Next arrow, respectively, next to the month heading. To scan ahead more quickly, tap and hold on one of these arrows.
Any days on the calendar that have events appended to them bear a small black dot below the date. Tap a day with a dot, and the events for that day appear in a list below the calendar (Figure 4.15), each preceded by its start time and colored dot, indicating the calendar to which the event is attached. (Each calendar is color-coded.) Tap an event in this list, and you're taken to the Event screen, which details the name and location of the event, its date, its start and end times, any alerts you've created, and any notes you've added to the event.
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Figure 4.15 Month view with two events.
To edit or delete the event, tap the Edit icon in the top-right corner of the screen. Within the Edit screen, tap one of the fields to change its information. (I discuss these fields in "Creating events" later in this chapter.) To delete an event, tap the red Delete Event button at the bottom of the screen; then tap the Delete Event confirmation icon that appears.
Day
Tap the Day view button, and as you'd expect, you see the day laid out in a list, separated by hours. The day of the week and its date appear near the top of the screen. To move to the previous or next day, tap the Previous or Next arrow, respectively. To scan back or forward more quickly, tap and hold the appropriate arrow.
Events appear as colored bars (again, each calendar is color-coded, and that coding is reflected here) in the times they occupy and are labeled with the name of the appointment and its location (Figure 4.16). Just as you do with events in Month view, tap them to reveal their details; to edit them, tap the Edit button.
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Figure 4.16 Day view with two events.
List
List view shows a list of all the events on your calendar, separated by gray date bars. Each gray bar bears the day's abbreviated name (Fri or Mon, for example) and the month, date, and year of the event. The event's title appears just below, preceded by its start time and colored dot indicating its calendar association. Once again, tap an event to view its details. Tap Edit to edit the event or delete it via the Delete Event button (Figure 4.17). List is the single view that provides a Search field for finding events quickly.
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Figure 4.17 Editing an event.
Creating events
Creating events on the iPhone is simple. Just tap the plus icon in the top-right corner of the screen to produce the Add Event screen, where you'll find fields for Title & Location, Start & End, Repeat, Alert, Calendar, and Notes. In more detail:
- Title & Location. The title of the event will appear when you select the event's date in Month view. Both an event's title and location appear in the Day-view list. And in List view, you see just the event's title. As with any other field on the iPhone, just type the entries and tap Save when you're done.
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Start & End. The title is explanation enough. Just tap the Starts field, and enter a date and time by using the spinning wheels at the bottom of the screen (Figure 4.18 on the next page). Ditto with the Ends field. If the event lasts all day, tap the All-Day On/Off switch.
Figure 4.18 Set the duration of your event.
- Repeat. You can create an event that occurs every day, week, 2 weeks, month, or year. This method is a convenient way to remind yourself of your kid's weekly piano lesson or your own wedding anniversary.
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Alert. A fat lot of good an electronic calendar does you if you're not paying attention to the date or time. Tap Alert and direct the iPhone to sound an alert at a specific interval before the event's start time: 5, 15, or 30 minutes; 1 or 2 hours; 1 or 2 days before; or on the date of the event.
You can create two alerts per event—useful when you want to remind yourself of events for the day and need another mental nudge a few minutes before the event occurs. Regrettably, you can't change the alert sound; you can only turn it on or off in the Sound Settings screen.
- Calendar. Using this command, you can assign the new event to any calendar you have on your iPhone.
- Notes. Feel free to type a bit of text to remind yourself exactly why you're allowing Bob Whosis to dominate your Thursday afternoon.
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Syncing events
Your computer and your iPhone have a nice sharing relationship with regard to events. When you create an event on one device, it's copied to the other, complete with title, location, start and end times, alerts (likely called alarms in your computer's calendar program), and notes.
As I explain in Chapter 2, you can pick and choose the computer-based calendars you want to sync with the iPhone within iTunes's Info tab. If you have an Exchange or MobileMe account, calendar events associated with those accounts are pushed to your iPhone (and the iPhone pushes right back those events that you create on it).
Deleting events
Quite frankly, deleting events by using the iPhone's interface is a pain in the neck. As I mention earlier in the chapter, you tap an event, tap the Edit button in the Event screen, tap the red Delete Event button at the bottom of the screen, and then tap Delete Event again. This procedure is a very inefficient way to delete events, particularly lots of events that have expired. You're better off letting iTunes lend a hand.
To do so, plug your iPhone into the computer and then select it in iTunes' Source list. Click the Info tab, and configure the Calendars delete option to read Do Not Sync Events Older Than X Days, where X is the number of past days you're willing to keep expired events on your iPhone. When you next sync your iPhone, events that occurred more than X days before the current date will be removed from the phone (Figure 4.19).
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Figure 4.19 It's easier to delete lots of events through iTunes.
If you'd like to delete multiple future events, delete them from your computer's calendar. If you're using a nonpush account, when you sync your iPhone, the events will disappear from the iPhone's calendar as well. When Exchange and your MobileMe account are set up to synchronize calendars, deleting events either on the server or on the iPhone will cause the event to vanish from every synced service and device.
Subscribing to a calendar
You can also subscribe to Web-based calendars with your iPhone, which supports both CalDAV and iCal formats. To do so, follow these steps:
- Travel to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and tap Add Account.
- Tap Other in the Add Account screen.
In the Calendars area of the Other screen, choose either Add CalDAV Account or Add Subscribed Calendar.
Which you choose depends on the kind of calendar you want to subscribe to. iCal calendars are generally available to the public and require only that you have a server address in the form example.com/example.ics. iCalShare (http://icalshare.com) is a repository for such public calendars.
CalDAV calendars are server-based and require that you know the name of the host server and have a user name and password for that server.
- Enter the required information to subscribe to the calendar.