Working with Calendars

The Calendars indexing rule provides convenient access to your iCal calendars, allowing you to create events and to-do items within LaunchBar.

Selecting a calendar
Creating Events and To Do Items
Creating Events
Creating To Do Items
Date and Time Specification
Third Party Calendar Utilities

Selecting a calendar

To select a calendar, do one of the following:

Select the desired calendar directly by typing an abbreviation of its name.
Select either the iCal application, the Calendars category or the Calendars indexing rule, then press Right Arrow (or press the space bar) to browse a list of all available calendars.

Creating Events and To Do Items

Once you’ve selected a calendar in LaunchBar, press the space bar to enter a new event or to-do item.

Events

Events are created by entering a description, followed by a date and time specification, separated by an @ sign. For example:

Optionally you can specify a location, separated by another @ sign. For example:

To Do Items

To-do items are created by entering just a description, and an optional due date, separated by a right angle bracket.

You can press the Tab key to insert the required @ sign more conveniently. And if you press the Tab key again, the @ turns into a >.

Finally, press Return to create the new iCal item.

If you press Command-Return instead of Return, the newly created item will also be opened in iCal, so you can review and optionally amend the item.

Creating Events

Input	Result
`Car service @ Feb 15`	Creates an all-day event
`Meeting with John @ Jun 2 2010`	Creates an all-day event
`Meeting with John @ Jun 12 3-5pm`	Creates an event with a start and end time
`Dinner @ Joe's Cafe @ Tue 7pm 2h`	Creates a 2 hour with a location
`TV Show @ next Sunday 20.15`	Creates a 1 hour event at the specified time
`Trip to Paris @ Mar 13 5d`	Creates a multi-day event that spans 5 days
`Holiday @ Mar 13 2w`	Creates a multi-day event that spans 2 weeks
`Call John @ tomorrow 2pm 15m!`	Creates an event with an alarm 15 minutes before
`Dad's birthday @ Jun 12 !5d`	Creates an event with an alarm 5 days before

Alarms are specified relative to the event’s start date, with a leading or trailing exclamation mark (Examples: !15m, !1.5h, 2d!, 1w!). If no alarm is specified, the default alarm setting of iCal preferences will be applied.

Note that alarms will always be set to occur before the the event’s start date.

Creating To Do Items

Append 1-3 exclamation marks to set a priority.
To enter a due date, separate it with a right angle bracket.

Input	Result
`Buy milk`	Creates a To Do
`Buy butter !!`	Creates a To Do with medium priority
`Clean the house > next sun`	Creates a To Do with a due date
`Pay taxes > May 15 !3d`	Creates a To Do with an alarm 3 days before due

Date and Time Specification

If parts of the date are missing, the earliest possible date in the future will be used.
Durations can be specified as a time range (3-5pm, 11:30-13:30), in minutes (30m, 45min), in hours (2h, 3.5h), in days (3d, 7d) or in weeks (1w, 3w).

Input	Result
`today`	Today, all-day
`tomorrow`	Tomorrow, all-day
`Mon`	Next Monday
`next fri`	Next Friday
`Apr 4`	The next 4th of April
`Aug 17 2011`	August 17th, 2011
`dec 24 8-10pm`	December 24, 8 PM - 10 PM
`Fri 8:10 30min`	Next Friday, 8:10 AM - 8:40 AM
`Oct 11 5d`	5 days, from October 11 to October 15
`Mar 13 2009 2w`	2 weeks from March 13, 2009

Third Party Calendar Utilities

Instead of LaunchBar’s built-in calendar event creation method you can select an alternative calendar input method in Preferences > Actions > Options. You can choose between LaunchBar, Fantastical (http://flexibits.com/fantastical) and QuickCal (http://quickcalapp.com/).