Roger Talks Tech

Making the tech in your life work for you

Quickly Hide All Mac Calendars Except for One

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If you have many different calendars in the Calendar app, your screen might appear cluttered, making it difficult to find what you are looking for. For instance, you might want to see only all upcoming birthdays for the current month and not all of the other events on your calendar. To quickly hide all the calendars except for one, hold down the ⌘ key and then click the checkbox for any calendar to deselect all of your calendars. Then, click the checkbox for the calendar you want to display. Events only for that calendar will appear.

Hold down command key and click

To redisplay all of your other calendars, hold down the ⌘ key again and click the checkbox next to any of the other calendars. All of your other calendars will once again be selected.

Command click to redisplay all calendars image

Add or edit a Calendar event on your Mac without using the mouse

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I’ve heard some people claim that the Calendar app that comes packaged with OS X is not very user unfriendly, requiring several clicks with the mouse in order to add or edit an event. This may have been true in the past but no longer. In fact, with the latest rendition of the Calendar application, you can enter or update an event without ever removing your fingers from the keyboard.

Tab through event window

Follow along with the steps below to try it yourself.

Quick Guide: Add a Calendar Event without using your Mouse

  1. Open the Calendar application.
  2. Press the ⌘ + N keystroke combination to display the Quick Entry box.
  3. Type out the event, including date & time in natural language (Example: Dinner with Mom on Friday at 7:00 p.m.).
    Type out event in natural language
  4. Press Return. The event is added and the Edit Event box is displayed.
  5. If you wish to change the title of the event, type in the new title.
  6. Press Tab twice to move to the Location field.
  7. Type the location of the event, if desired.
  8. Press Tab to move to the Event Details area.
  9. Press Return to expand the Event Details area.
    Press return to expand event details
  10. Tab through each field and make any necessary changes to the details.
  11. Tab until you reach the Add Invitees field.
  12. Typing the name of any Attendees you want to invite. Matching entries in your Contacts will display as your type. Press Return when you find a matching contact.
  13. Tab to the Add Notes or URL. Press Return to expand the section.
  14. Type any notes you wish to add to the event.
  15. When finished, press Tab until the Apply or Send button is highlighted.
  16. Press the Spacebar.
  17. Press Esc.
  18. To edit an existing note, navigate to the event you want to edit and press Return. Tab through the event, making any desired changes as noted above.

Add a Quick Calendar Event in Mountain Lion

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The other day in my post about Fantastical, I mentioned how you can quickly add an event using every day language by typing the event into one area. Did you know that you can do the same thing with Apple’s Calendar application? It’s been awhile since I’ve used Apple’s iCal or Calendar application so I’m not sure when this feature was added.

To add a quick calendar button, click the + (plus) button located next to the Calendars button as shown below. Then, type your event in normal language into the text box that appears. For instance, you can type in text such as :

Lunch with Mom on Tuesday at the Olive Garden at 2:00

Add a quick event in Calendar app image

Then, press the Return key. The Edit Info window will then appear, allowing you to make any changes to the event, if needed. If everything is OK, click Done.

Edit Info window in Calendar image

Display your iCal Events as a List

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One complaint that I often hear about iCal, especially from folks who are coming from Windows Outlook, is the ability to view all of their events in one list. It appears at first glance that this feature is not available in iCal. However, there is a hidden way to do this – type a period in the search box and then press Return. This will display a list of all of your iCal events for your selected calendar(s) on the bottom of the page.

Displaying iCal events as a list

To sort your list by date, click the Date column in the window. Once you have displayed your list of events, you can then copy the item list to other applications by selecting the items you want to copy and then selecting Edit > Copy from the menu. You can then paste your list in another document.

I will say that this workaround is not very pretty and the list is not the easiest to read.  For a little better solution, you may wish to check out BusyCal, a popular iCal alternative (that uses iCal data).

Applies to:  Mac OS X

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