Kevin Cullis: How to Start a Business Mac Version

Image via Wikipedia

Here is a list of some of the best tips for using iCal on your Mac.

• Calendar colors. Keep the number of colored calendars to a maximum of 4-6 and add metadata (tags or special characters) in your ToDos and Events to further “drill down” what you are doing. This can be great for searching content or calendar items
• “Pencil-in” things with special characters. Digitally “pencil in” your appointment with special characters (such as ¿, -, , ???, or the simple # character) at the beginning of the event name. Seeing the special character means you can quickly identify those items that are not “in stone” just yet. This also helps when searching for lists of items.
• Numbers (minutes or list). Adding a number  and a dash (1-Event) can show you how much time you expect your efforts to take in a ToDo list or can be a numbered list.
• Hidden event popup. Just drag and drop the event window to a new location.
• Add additional lines of event text. One of the hidden features of iCal is using the OPT + Return key to add another line of text in the event title. You can sort of add “tags” to you title.
• Google Maps direction and mileage. I cut and paste certain directions AND the total mileage (for IRS tax purposes) into the notes section for documentation and when I sync the info with my iPhone.
• Travel time alarm. If I have to travel to an event and it’s local I add time in before the event of when I need to leave for the event. Such as a 45 minute alarm and needing only to travel 35 minutes giving me 10 minutes of “grip and grin” time with others. If you have a flight to catch, use a separate event with an alarm so you can catch your flight.
• Presentation File Opened on alarm. If you are giving a presentation have iCal set an alarm to open up the presentation that you are giving. Just make sure you don’t move the file.
• Repeatable events. You can repeat the events. Changing the event repeat rate, daily, weekly, or more brings up further options to choose from.
• Invite others to an event. By inviting others using Mail program you can get multiple people
• Notes. In the Notes section of an event enter in both the address of the event and the phone number, each will become links that will access either the phone or Google Maps when you click on one or the other.

Here are some tips for ToDo lists in iCal

• Printing a ToDo list in iCal. Do a Command – P to print out iCal and then select “List” from the drop down menu. Under the Options pane you’ll then have a check box for the ToDo listing.

Apple Mail program data detectors. Using Mail’s data detectors you can

• Mail’s data detectors. Using Mail’s data detectors can help preload iCal events into iCal. Mouse over a date and a drop down arrow will give you a choice of “Create an iCal event” or “Show this date in iCal.” I prefer the “Create” menu as I can make changes to the event right in Mail.

Mail detectors. Set up correctly (you can keep the field names such as data and address, but it is not necessary). Data detectors REQUIRE almost the exact field names as Address Book has it:

• Date: October 25, 2010 – 6:30PM-9:30PM, or Oct 25, 2010 at 5:30 AM
• Address: MacGetit.com, 123 Main Street Unit B, Anywhere, CO 80000 (if you place your name first, it will show up as a contact, if you place your company name it shows up as a company, i.e. it connects with the address one line above the street, whatever you have there it will take that).
• Fax: 303-555-1234
• Phone: 303-555-2345
• Cell: 303-555-4567

Terminal tips for iCal. iCal defaults events to 30 minutes of duration. Using Terminal, you can change the default to 15 minutes.The defaults command below sets it to 15 minutes. You should quit iCal before running this to see the result. Open Terminal, enter the following and press return:

defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15

Then open iCal. New events entered by double clicking or pressing Command-N will have the default time of 15 minutes. Obviously, you can set different values. To remove this setting altogether, enter the following in the Terminal and re-start iCal:

defaults delete com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event'

Related articles

• Put Your iCal Calendar On Your Desktop With Blotter [Review] (cultofmac.com)
• Week Calendar 3.0 Is A Powerful iCal Alternative for iPhone (macstories.net)

As an entrepreneur on a Mac I recently received over 700 contacts to add to my contact database in Address Book, but they were not in the usual vCard format that it likes to take natively. So, I had to see what it takes to get it done.

After reading a few sites I found that Address Book takes csv (comma-separated value), LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format), and tab-delimited files under the File > Import menu function.

However, there are some steps that need to be done before you embark on a one step process.

1. Ensure your data is up-to-date. Make sure that the data you’re exporting to Address Book is up-to-date.
2. Export the contact data. From the File > Save As… function of a spreadsheet  or File > Export  in most database programs, export the data into a file. Export the contact names into one of the three formats that Address Book takes: csv (comma separated value), tab-delimited, or LDIF.
3. Verify the contact data. When you get an exported file you need to check the field names in the headers against the ones Address Book uses. Address Book has the names of the fields, such as “work address” or “cell phone,” that might be different from the exported file headers (a spreadsheet row) where it might say “business address” or “mobile phone.” Whatever the case, open the file in a spreadsheet and make the necessary changes in the header row to reflect what Address Book has. Otherwise, your data will not import completely or correctly. Also, delete all other rows or data records that are not needed.
4. Add a Note for Address  Book now. When importing a number of contacts it is best to add a note in the Notes section for Address Book and you to remember, such as where and when you got the data from. Add a column in the spreadsheet titles “Note” and add the short note such as “Joe’s data, 08/15/10″ and repeat it for all of the rows.
5. Save the file as csv or tab-delimited. Once you have checked your data and added a note you can save the file.
6. Open Address Book and import. Now you need to open Address Book and go to File > Import and select the file to import.
7. Check field names. Here is where you line up Address Book’s field names with the header of the file to ensure that they are the same. The address field is the only field that has multiple fields of “street,” “State,” and “Zip” for “home” or “work” address. If your fields do not show up correctly, repeat step 3 above. Also go through some of your records to double check your work.
8. Click OK. Clicking on the OK button will now import your contacts.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions you’d like to have answered.

When it comes to dealing with your contact information there are a lot of programs that you have to share information with, but often sharing information, especially contact information, is not so straight forward when it comes to a Mac’s Address Book. While Address Book’s vCard is an industry standard, sometimes you need to do a little bit of tweaking to get the Address Book info just right into another program such as a database or spreadsheet.

I have found an answer to this problem, Export Address Book 1.5.1. These scripts programmed using Apple’s technologies allows you to export anything and everything from your Address Book and to customize the output fields just the way you like it. The developer has done a great job with this solution and up to this date, is the best solution for getting the data out of Address Book and into a file that anyone and any program can read and import into the program of choice.

While some entrepreneurs may be “overwhelmed” with the options if you “Select All” with everything it is pretty straight forward to get the data to the person that needs the info.