The Calendar Window

The large Calendar Window displays an overview of events and daily notes for a week, multi-week, month, two months or a year. You can use it to view events, view and modify spans (banner events) and move events around. At the top of it is a toolbar with various icons:

The View Selection pop-up menu changes the current view in the Calendar. Choose a view from the popup list when you click on it.

The target icon displays the current week, month or year in the calendar depending on the current view. The current day will be displayed in the Reminders window and in the Events window if it is open.

The left and right arrow buttons jump to the previous or next month. In week view, they jump a week. In month view, three lozenges appear between these two arrows. Normally the central one is selected. If you click on the right hand one, you will get a view showing the end of the current month and the first half of the next month. If you click on the left hand one, you will see the first half of the current month and the end of the previous month. The middle lozenge takes you back to a standard month view.

The slider lets you scroll through the months for the year. If you drag the slider past December or before January, it will scroll into the direction you drag towards, letting you see the year after or before the one currently displayed. Release the slider to update the calendar view.

The 'fast forward' and 'rewind' double headed arrows jump twelve months.

Spans: Banner Events

The span button creates banner events which span several days, referred to as spans. To the left of the span button in the toolbar is a colour swatch. Click on this to pop up a menu of colours. The colour you choose will be the colour of the next new span you create. Click and hold the span button and drag a span out onto the Calendar onto the day you want it to start on. Alternatively, you can click on the day you want the span to start on and click once on the span button in the toolbar. A span will fly out onto the current day.

The new span is two days long. To make it longer, hover the mouse pointer over the span. You will see arrows appear on the left and right hand sides of the span. Click and hold the right hand arrow and drag the mouse cursor to the right, and the span will grow. In monthly or multi-week views in the calendar, drag downwards onto the row below and the span will start to fill that row. You can fill all visible rows if necessary. If you click and hold the left hand arrow icon and drag to the left and upwards, the span will increase in this direction. If you click and hold the span anywhere in its middle, then drag, you can move the span to a new location.

You can have several on different rows. spans can appear up to 8 levels deep in the Calendar window. Two spans on the same level cannot overlap, so if you are trying to make a span longer and you hit the edge of another span on the same level it won't increase any further. To make it continue, click in the middle of the span bar and drag it downwards slightly, then release. It should shunt downwards a row. Now if you select an arrow icon on the edge of the span and drag, it will increase under the span that was blocking it before.

When you click on a span in the Calendar window, a field appears in the Reminders window allowing you to edit the text of the span. There are also start and end dates displayed below this field, click on these to change the date using a date picker. Clicking on the colour swatch next to the field lets you choose a new colour for the span from the swatches menu. You can delete the span by clicking on the 'delete span' button.

Moving Events and the Event popup menu

To move an event to a different day, simply drag the event in the Calendar view to a different day. If you drag a repeating event to a new date, all instances of that repeating event will change. For instance, if you drag one event that is part of a set that repeats every week to a date three days in the future, all the other repeats will move three days into the future. Sometimes you may want only one event in a repeating set to move to a different date. In order to do this, hold down the command key while you drag an event to a new date: an exception to the normal repeat pattern is created. You can also set one instance of a repeat event not to show on a particular day, but leave the other repeats as they are. To do this, right click on the event and choose 'Don't show event on this day' from the popup menu. You can also choose which repeat exceptions to remove from the popup menu, or remove all exceptions for a repeat event.

The Choose Calendars Window

Click on the button with a folder and a triangle in it in the main toolbar to reveal the Choose Calendars window, shown above. Calendars are like folders into which you can group events. Notes entered into the central field of the Reminders Window can not be grouped into calendars, but any events which appear in the right hand column of the Reminders window can have a specific calendar. The Choose Calendars window lets you create, edit or choose calendars. To start with there is one Calendar called 'Default'. Double-click on it to reveal the editing pane at the bottom of the window. You can change the name of the calendar using the first field and enter notes about the calendar in the field below. Click on the 'New' button to add a new calendar.

To set a calendar as the current calendar in which new events will be created, or imported to using the 'Import' menu option, simply click on it in the main list, and it will be hilited. You can change an event to be in a different calendar by using the Calendar popup menu when editing an event in the Reminders window. Click here for more information.

To place a Calendar and all events in it in the Trash, right click on the Calendar name in the main list and choose 'Trash this Calendar' from the contextual menu. To restore a Calendar from the trash, and all events in it, use the actions popup menu in the bottom right hand corner of the Choose Calendars window. This shows a list of all calendars in the trash. Choose the one you want to restore. If you empty the trash using the command in the Find window, all Calendars and events in the trash will be permanently removed.