Master Calendar

Discover the great new features in OS X’s built-in calendar app

How to use Mavericks’ appointment app

Organising your life in Calendar has never been easier, thanks to practical enhancements in the latest version. They make it easier to plan your schedule and to make sure you leave plenty of time to get to meetings.

You can create multiple calendars and assign each a different colour to help distinguish your commitments for the day, week or month ahead. Create additional calendars by choosing File > New Calendar, and assign colours by right-clicking a calendar in the sidebar and choosing Get Info. Calendars can be selectively hidden to show only what you need.

Click an event to see a summary of it. This doesn’t overwhelm you with spaces for every possible detail that can be added. Places to enter information only appear when you click one of the rows to invite someone to an event, add notes or set an alert, after which they’re shown in the panel for quick review.

Event summaries disappear when you click elsewhere on Calendar’s window, but by clicking and dragging one it turns into a floating window. This lets you look at the fine details of several events, including travel time, to help organise your hectic schedule.

Calendar integrates with the Maps app. Type a location name for an event and Calendar looks for matches in our contacts. Choose one to link it to the event. This shows a small map on the event’s summary. Click it to go to the Maps app to get directions and send them straight to your iPhone. Travel time can be added separately from an event’s real starting time to help avoid scheduling conflicts and confusion if you were to simply set an earlier start time. Alan Stonebridge

1 iCloud integration

If you’ve got iCloud set up on your Mac, your calendars should all appear in the Calendars app automatically. To check it’s set up, go to Calendar > Preferences > Accounts and see if your iCloud account is there. If not, click +, choose iCloud from the list of account types that appear, and enter your Apple ID and password. Switch to the General preferences tab and check that Default Calendar is set to one that belongs to your iCloud account. Now, whenever you add an event in Calendar, it appears on any devices linked to your iCloud account, such as your iPhone.

2

Add new events

Click the + button, type a description of your event and when it is – say, ‘Lunch with Sarah tomorrow at 1pm’ – then press ® . Calendar cleverly interprets natural language to create an event the next day at 1pm called ‘Lunch with Sarah’. A pop-up appears in which you can review the details. Press ® to confirm them, or click the various parts of the panel to add a location, alerts, notes, and to invite people and set repeating events.

3

Alerts

Setting an alert ensures you never miss an appointment (alerts arrive through Notification Center). If you select Custom, you can choose between an on-screen message, email or sound, or open a file. You can choose how far in advance of the event you are reminded about it, or set the alert to occur at a precise date and time. You can set multiple alerts for an event – say, one a week before an event, and another an hour before.

4

Locations

Add a location to an event and the app offers suggested matches. So, if you type Pizza Express, nearby branches of that restaurant chain appears. You can add extra detail to narrow the search. Suggestions can be ignored to store just your text, but if you choose one you see a map. Click it to Maps to get directions, and to send them straight to your iOS device.

5

Day view

Keeping on top of a busy day is easier than ever. Click Day, and you see a list of forthcoming appointments on the left. On the right is an hour-by-hour run-down of the day, showing what events you’ve got scheduled. The white space in between shows when you’ve got free time. On the left is a list of other events around the same day to help avoid overdoing things.

6

Weather

Just below the little map of an event, you see a brief weather forecast – this is really handy for realising you need to grab a brolly before you set off for your appointment.

7

Browsing

Pressing Today at the top-left of the calendar jumps straight to present day, whichever view you’re in. The left and right arrows take you to the next time period in the view you’re in – the next day, week, month or year, or you can press ç+“or ç+‘. You can also go straight to a specific date by pressing ß+ç+T. Enter a date and then press Show.

8

Searching

If you can’t recall when an up-coming appointment is, type a relevant word into the search bar to see all matching events. on that keyword.