Sharing Calendars
Life is much easier when everyone is on the same page — be it your company or your family. Calendar offers two ways to share your calendars with others: publishing and exporting.
Publishing and sharing a calendar
When you publish a calendar (or share it, if you are using iCloud), you place a copy of it on the Internet or a local WebDAV server. Other users can then access it through Calendar, another third-party calendar application, or a standard web browser using any computing platform.
To publish a calendar:
1. Open the calendar list and then find the calendar or calendar group to which you want to publish in the calendar list.
2. Right-click (or Control+click) the calendar and select Publish from the menu. The Publish calendar window appears (shown in Figure 8.5). The Publish option only appears for local calendars, not iCloud or other network-based calendars.
8.5 Publish calendars to share them over a network or through the Internet.
3. When the window opens, type a name for your calendar if you don’t want to use the default.
4. Type the information for the server you will be using to share the calendar into the Base URL field. Type the server login name and password to gain access to it.
5. When the options are set to your liking, click Publish.
To share a calendar to iCloud:
1. Open the calendar list and then find the calendar or calendar group to which you want to publish in the calendar list.
2. Right-click (or Control+click) the calendar and select Share Calendar from the menu. The Share calendar as window appears.
3. When the window opens, type a name for your calendar if you don’t want to use the default.
4. Determine whether to share the calendar with everyone or only the people you invite to see the calendar.
5. Click Share to share the calendar with iCloud.
Exporting a calendar
Exporting a calendar is a good way to move calendars from one computer to another. You can also edit calendars that you’ve exported, although you cannot edit calendars that you’ve published from another computer.
To export a calendar, follow these steps:
1. Open the calendar list, and then click to select the calendar or calendar group from which you want to export the calendar list.
2. Choose File→Export→Export to open the Save As window, as shown in Figure 8.6.
3. Give a descriptive name to the file, choose a location to save it, and then click Export.
4. Share the exported calendar by e-mailing it, placing it on a shared server, or any other way you can think of.
The default format of exported calendars in Calendar is ICS. ICS files can be imported into almost any third-party calendar application, so you don’t have to worry about your Windows or Linux pals not being able to view your calendar. Likewise, you can use your friends’ calendars in Calendar if they export them from their applications using the ICS format.
8.6 You can export calendars from Calendar and import them onto other computers.
Backing up a calendar
It’s always a good idea to back up your calendars in case you need to restore them sometime in the future. The Calendar Archive feature is just the tool for such a task; all your calendars are backed up in this single file.
Here’s how to create an archive:
1. Choose File→Export→Calendar Archive to open the Save As window.
2. Give a descriptive name to the file.
3. Choose the location to which you want to save the file, and then click Save.
There’s no need to perform this procedure if your calendars are stored on an external server, such as Google. Those calendars are automatically backed up.
Subscribing to calendars
It stands to reason that if some people are publishing their calendars, then there must be others subscribing to them. There are two ways to subscribe to calendars. This is the easy way:
1. Choose File→New Calendar Subscription from the menu.
2. Type the URL of the calendar to which you want to subscribe in the Calendar URL field.
3. Click the Subscribe button to see the information window for the calendar, as shown in Figure 8.7.
8.7 Subscribing to calendars is a snap with Calendar.
4. Decide whether to remove Alerts, Attachments, or To Do items (which I recommend if you don’t know the person who created the calendar). You can also choose how often the calendar should automatically refresh in case there are any changes made by its creator, as well as a location for the calendar. (If you are using iCloud you can choose between iCloud or your Mac.)
5. Click OK to complete the subscription process.
This is the even easier way:
1. If someone sends you the link to his or her calendar in an e-mail, or if you click the link to a calendar from a web page, Calendar automatically begins the subscription process.
2. Click the Subscribe button to see the information window for the calendar.
3. Decide whether to remove Alerts, Attachments, or To Do items (which I recommend if you don’t know the person who created the calendar). You can also choose how often the calendar should automatically refresh in case there are any changes made by its creator.
4. Click OK to complete the subscription process.
Printing calendars
If you’re like me, you understand that, while the concept of a paperless office sounded pretty cool in the 1980s, it most certainly — and to some degree, thankfully — hasn’t come to fruition. Sometimes I just like to have a printed page in hand as opposed to being tied to my desk or lugging around a laptop. I love my Mac, but we’re not permanently attached at the hip. Calendar can provide you with great printed calendars to use for yourself or to give to others. This is a great tool for offices and schools, or any other organization or team, for that matter. Another plus — printed calendars are much easier to hang on your fridge than your computer screen is.
To print your calendars, follow these steps:
1. Choose File→Print.
2. Select from among the myriad options shown in Figure 8.8, and then click Continue. Table 8.4 lists the printing options and gives brief explanations of them.
3. Click Print in the Print window.
8.8 The Calendar printing options.
