Chapter 21. Never Forget a Birthday Again

With so many friends, relatives, co-workers, and other people in your life, it's easy (but embarrassing) to forget someone's birthday. Perhaps the easiest way to remember birthdays is to write them on a calendar at the beginning of each year. Then as you flip through each month, you can see exactly who has a birthday on what day. But that's old school. After all, you've got a Mac! You can use a combination of the programs iCal and Address Book on your Macintosh to help you remember dates.

Address Book lets you store the names and birthdays of important people, and iCal offers a Birthdays calendar that you can check monthly to see who has a birthday and when. When you add a new name and birthday (or delete an old one) in Address Book, iCal automatically updates its Birthdays calendar to keep it accurate year after year. With the help of your Macintosh, you'll never forget someone's birthday again (unless you forget to check the birthday calendar in iCal, that is).

Project goal: Keep track of birthdays in a calendar so you'll never miss one again.

To track birthdays automatically, you'll use the following programs on your Macintosh: