Dates to iCal

Don't forget another anniversary

Dates to iCal 2 is not compatible with OSX 10.9, Mavericks or later.

Dates to iCal 2 is a replacement for Apple's birthday calendar for iCal. It has a range of features to allow the user to choose what, and what not, to sync to iCal from Address Book.

As well as automatically syncing birthday dates from Address Book, Dates to iCal 2 can sync anniversary and custom dates. It can set up to five alarms for each date in iCal and can also set different alarms for birthdays and anniversaries. It allows the option of only syncing from one Address Book group. This application also allows for the titles of the events sent to iCal to be modified to the user's preference.

Version 2.3 of Dates to iCal is localized into French, German, Italian and Spanish. My gratitude goes to Mathias Hofmann, Boris Lewandowski, Joerg Czanderle, David Poves, Daniel Montoya, Michael Fördere, Corentin Cras-Méneur and Roberto Miola for their help in these translations.

As of version 2.2 Dates to iCal is able to access non local Exchange and CalDAV address books in Address Book. It has extra title formatting 'tokens'. The application is now internationalized. It now uses the Sparkle framework to keep the user updated of future releases.

To start Dates to iCal, open the application, make the settings required (settings are divided into 'General', 'Titles' and 'Alarms' tabs) and then quit. Users with a large number of dates in Address Book may prefer to quit iCal before activating Dates to iCal, as iCal can become unresponsive due to a large number of events being added at one time. Dates to iCal will then run in the background as required to keep the 'Anniversary' calendars in iCal in sync with updates in the user's Address Book.

Dates to iCal 2 is shareware, registration is £4 per machine. The application runs in demo mode for two weeks before it needs registering.

Update details

2.4.3 (16 March 2013)
Fix for OSX 10.8 Calendar interface issues.
Fix for failure on event deletion when the event had previously been deleted.

2.4.2 (13 March 2013)
Fix for events not being deleted from CalDAV calendars in OSX 10.8.

2.4.1 (23 February 2013)
Fix default alarm being removed in OSX 10.8 when no additional alarms are set.

2.4.0 (18 February 2013)
Set events as 'free' time in OSX 10.8.
Fix launchd permissions bug blocking background syncing for some users.
Fix repeating alarm bug in OSX 10.8.
Addressed reported duplicates on upgrade issue.
Removed reminder only calendars from calendar picker.
Other small bug fixes.

2.3.3 (24 January 2013)
Fix bug blocking operation under OSX 10.7 introduced in version 2.3.2.

2.3.2 (17 Jan 2013)
Fix Address Book smart groups sync bug.
Changed case of text "birthdays" to lower case.
Corrected some text in German interface.
Now 64 bit only.

2.3.1 (24 Jul 2012)
Shows Address Book/Contacts.app smart groups.
Fix missing calendar bug.
Compatible with OSX 10.8, Gatekeeper.

2.3.0 (18 Oct 2011)
Localized into Italian.
Can filter by custom date labels.
Dates without a year no longer show 'age', 'ordinal age' or 'year' tokens.
No longer adds default iCal alarm to new events.
Now uses company name for surname token when card flagged as company.
Fix incorrect 'year' token text bug in English version.
Fix alert sound chooser bug in Lion.

2.2.6 (24 Jul 2011)
Fix Calendar Picker crash bug with Lion/MobileMe.

2.2.5 (22 Jul 2011)
Fix crash bug under Lion.
You are recommended to update to this version before updating to OSX to 10.7.
No longer Universal binary, Intel only.

2.2.4 (22 Jun 2011)
Localized into French, German and Spanish.
Fixed registration bugs.
Extra work done on memory management.

2.2.3 (14 Mar 2011)
Fixed 'managed object model' crash on slower systems.

2.2.2 (13 Mar 2011)
Fixed Calendar Picker window showing in background.
Fixed crash at end of sync due to over releasing.
Improved memory management.

2.2.1 (1 Mar 2011)
Fixed failure to launch in OSX 10.5.
Fixed crash due to unattached window.

2.2.0 (28 Feb 2011)
Can now see non local address books.
Added new calendar picker to help pick non-local calendars.
Added additional event title tokens: "ordinal age", "middle name", "organization" and "year".
Application internationalized.
Crash on quit bug addressed.
'Calendar does not support events' bug addressed.
Sparkle update framework added.
Other minor bug fixes.

2.1.0 (28 Jul 2009)
Allows for separate iCal calendars for birthdays and anniversary events.
Syncs much faster than previous versions.
Sub-groups now sync from Address Book as wel as the top level group linked.
Many other bugs are addressed in this version.

2.0.2 (30 Jun 2008)
Fixed bug where processes could be left behind after application deleted.
Added punctuation corrrection. (tracker 0000004)

2.0.1 (5 Mar 2008)
Fixed demo expiry bug.
Added apostrophe-s modification.
Recommended update from version 2.0.0

2.0.0 (21 Feb 2008)
Initial release.