German Version: Häufig gestellte Fragen.
created by zencat Birthdayscanner
mark in the Notes of the anniversary in iCal.
Birthday), but I want it to be in my mother tongue -
День рождения,
Geburtstagor
誕生日.
Busy. I want them shown as
Free.
Apple's solution has some serious shortcomings:
Sure.
BirthdayScanner X can generate an iCal-compatible calendar file, which can be imported into about every calendar program.
-> How to import anniversaries to Microsoft Outlook
-> How to import anniversaries to Mozilla Sunbird/Lightning
No. BirthdayScanner X just needs to run to import the birthdays to iCal. iCal itself does the reminding.
Note (if you recently switched to Mac): iCal reminders work if the iCal application is not running. In the background of MacOSX there is a service always running and reminding you of upcoming events. iCal itself does not have to be active for that to work.
Yes. BirthdayScanner X "knows" which anniversaries it already imported. It will only import those anniversaries which are not yet imported, or, if you choose to update existing events, BirthdayScanner X will update anniversaries it already imported.
Note: for this to work, it needs the Creation Mark.
This should not happen. BirthdayScanner X goes to great lengths to prevent duplicates when re-importing. However, there are situations when duplicates may happen:
Wedding Father and Motherto
Wedding Mom and Dad)
created by zencat BirthdayScanner
) from the Notes field of the iCal event or if you deactivated the Creation Mark altogether in the BirthdayScanner X Preferences
See How to remove all BirthdayScanner-generated events from a calendar for details.
Yes. There are two things to consider:
"created by zencat BirthdayScanner"
alone, if possible - here is why.
$Yearsplaceholder, the anniversaries are not created as event series, but as a number of individual events. This means your changes will only affect that one event and not the whole series.
If the event text contains the $Years
placeholder (e.g. "Tom Miller (46 years)"), the anniversaries are not created as event series, but as a number of individual events (this is because Apple iCal cannot deal with an event series whose individual events have changing event texts).
If you do not like this, you should not use event title templates using the $Years
placeholder:
See BirthdayScanner X creates single events instead of event series. Why is that?
created by zencat Birthdayscanner
mark in the Notes of the anniversary in iCal.
This note is needed to prevent accidental data loss when updating the anniversary in iCal. Without this note BirthdayScanner X will refuse to update this anniversary, if you import a second time and something changed.
Of course, if this text bothers you, you may remove it. You even can tell BirthdayScanner X not to create those marks altogether (BirthdayScanner X
-> Preferences
-> Import Settings
-> deactivate Include Creation Mark In Event Notes
).
In this case you cannot update existing anniversaries in iCal; if you re-import, new events will be created and you have to delete the old events in iCal manually.
There are four anniversary types BirthdayScanner X recognizes:
Each of these anniversary types will get its own symbol. The symbols can be changed in the event title settings:
By examining the name of the anniversaries and looking for keywords.
Those keywords can be changed in the Preferences: Preferences
->Anniversary Types
:
День рождения,
Geburtstagor
誕生日.
This should not be a problem for most languages, as BirthdayScanner X should translate terms like "Birthday" or "Wedding Day" automatically.
If it is a problem, as a workaround, you can modify the event text and spell out "Birthday" in your language, for example:
Note that this is just a hack - because now, all events will show 誕生日
, even if they are not birthdays, but name days or anniversaries.
If it really bugs you, just help me with the localization to your language :)
Busy. I want them shown as
Free.
Unfortunately, that is a limitation of Apple's iCal interface. It happens when you import directly to iCal (Import to iCal
). It does not happen when you export an iCalendar File (Export as ICS File
) and import that one to iCal.
So, if it really bugs you, import your anniversaries to iCal via iCalendar file.
The BirthdayScanner X uses an official interface Apple offers third-party-programs to access the iCal database. Unfortunately, this interface is very ineffective. It does not allow for speedy bulk updates and insertions.
Nevertheless, a lot of work went into making the import less slow. Especially a lot of care has been taken to avoid unnecessary writes to the iCal database (e.g. if nothing changed, nothing will be imported).
Things you still can do to speed up the import process:
This is currently not yet possible. Will be implemented in future versions.
Displaying the number of years is currently only supported if you import directly to iCal, not if you save an ICS file.
This should not be a problem anymore as of BirthdayScanner X v 2.4.0 if importing directly to iCal.
If you import into iCal via ICS-File export, you need to deactivate the default alarm in the iCal preferences: "Add default alarm" ("Standarderinnerung" in German).
Tell me...
Yes (see also: License).
If you want to support this project, feel free to donate.
I can try. Send me an email. I am usually quick to reply, unless I am traveling or too deep into some other work.
Me.
BirthdayScanner X is mostly (now) user-driven; that means, it does all I ever wanted it to do, and all feature requests I am currently putting in come from users like you. Feedback is important. Keep it coming...