General

You can do many tasks in iCal (such as creating a new event or chaning an event alarm) using spoken commands. To see what spoken commands you can use, you need to turn on Speakable Items in the Speech pane of System Preferences, then choose "Open Speech Commands window" from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the speech feedback window. For more information, search Mac OS Help (in the Finder, choose Help > Mac Help).

You can turn of alarms when iCal is not open by selecting the "Turn off alarms when iCal is not open" checkbox in the Advanced pane of iCal preferences.

Calendar

To create a new calendar, double-click in the white area below any calendars in the Calendars list.

To change the order of the calendars in the Calendars list, drag a calendar.

If you point to a calendar (or an event) and press the Control key, you can choose an item from the shortcut menu that appears. Use the shortcut menu to publish or unpublish a calendar, and more.

If you're connected to the Internet, you can subscribe to a number of sports, entertainment, music, and other iCal calendars that are published on the Internet by choosing Calendars > Find Shared Calendars.

Event

To create a new event, double-click in the main calendar view. To create a new all-day event, double-click in the white area above the main calendar view.

To invite someone to a new event, drag the person's Address Book card to the main calendar view.

To invite someone to an existing event, drag their Address Book card to the event's Info drawer.

To create a new event that contains the information in a To Do item or text clipping, do one of the following:

	Drag a To Do item to an empty area in the main calendar view, or to the white space at the bottom of the all-day events area. A duplicate of the To Do item is created as an event.
	Drag the text clipping from the desktop or another application to the main calendar view. The information in the text clipping is added to the Notes section of the event (in the event's Info drawer). You can also drag an event from iCal to a text document to create a text clipping with the information in the event.

To import the events in a calendar file with the ".ics" extension into the selected calendar, drag the .ics file from your desktop to the main calendar view.

To add events from the desktop to a new calendar, drag an .ics file from the Finder to the white area below the calendars in the Calendars list (you might need to drag the bottom of the calendars list down to see the white area in the Calendars list).

To export an event or To Do item, drag the event or To item to your desktop (this creates an ".ics" file). You can view the .ics file using iCal or any calendar application that can read .ics files.

To search for a person who has been invited to an event, type the person's name in the search field. Events to which they are invited appear in the search results list.

To see the time of an event in month view, choose iCal > Preferences, and select the "Show time in month view" checkbox. To hide the time in month view, deselect this checkbox.

To move more than one event on a calendar to a new time or calendar, press the Shift key and click each event that you want to move, then choose Edit > Cut (to delete the original events) or Edit > Copy (to leave the original events where they are). Then click where you want to paste the first event, and then choose Edit > Paste. (The original time between the events is maintained.) The events you select must all be on the same calendar, and pasted onto the same calendar.

To create a copy of an event at a new time, press Option and then drag the event to the new time.

To change an all-day event into a regular event, drag the all-day event to the main-calendar view. You can also change a regular event into an all-day event by dragging it to the all-day event area.

To stop the iCal alarm window from vibrating when the alarm appears, press the Control key and click the alarm clock in the alarm window, then choose Stop.

If you have a recurring event, you can quickly change when the event stops occuring by pressing Control and clicking the event, and then choosing "Stop Recurrence" from the shortcut menu.

If you point to an event (or calendar) and press the Control key, you can choose an item from the shortcut menu that appears. Use the shortcut menu to change the calendar that an event belongs to, copy the event, and more.

To Do

To create a new To Do item, double-click the white area below the last item in the To Do list. If the To Do list isn't showing, click the To Do button in the bottom-right corner of the window.

To create a new To Do item from an event, drag an event to the To Do list (you may need to click the To Do button at the bottom of the window to see the To Do list). A duplicate of the event is created as a To Do item.

To mark a To Do item as completed, click the icon to the left of the item in the To Do list. To see the To Do list, click the To Do button in the bottom-right corner of the iCal window.

To change the priority of a To Do item, click the bars in the priority icon (on the right side of the To Do item in the To Do list). One bar means "Not important," two bars means Important, and three bars means "Very important.

Info window

To quickly open the Info drawer for an event in Day or Week view, double-click the bar along the top of the event (where its start time appears). In Month view, double-click the dot (or "bullet") at the start of the event (only visible if "Show time in Month view" is not selected in iCal Preferences).

To open the Info drawer for a calendar, To Do item, or event in any view, select the item and click the Info button.

Main iCal window

If you're in Month view and you see three dots (an ellipsis) at the top of the day, double-click the ellipsis to see all the events in Day view.

All-day events appear at the top of the day in the main calendar view. You can also create events that span multiple days and appear in the main calendar view. Just drag across the days you want the event to appear. Events that span multiple days (but are not listed as "all-day" events in the Info drawer "type" pop-up menu) only appear on the day they start when you're in Month view.

To switch from Month or Week view to Day view, double-click a date in the main calendar view.