Working with Calendars

The Calendars indexing rule provides convenient access to your calendars from Calendar.app, allowing you to create events and reminders right from within LaunchBar.

Selecting a calendar or reminder list
Creating Events
Creating Reminders
Date and Time Specification
Third Party Calendar Utilities

Selecting a calendar or reminder list

To select a calendar or a reminder list, do one of the following:

Select the desired calendar or reminder list directly by typing an abbreviation of its name.
Select either the Calendar 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 and reminder lists.

Once you’ve selected a calendar or a reminder list in LaunchBar, press the space bar to create a new event or reminder.

Creating Events

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

Locations

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

Tip You can press the Tab key to insert the required “@” signs.

Alerts

Alerts can be specified relative to the event’s start date, with a leading or trailing exclamation mark (Examples: !15m, !1.5h, 2days!, 1week!). If no alert is specified, the default alert setting of Calendar.app > Preferences > Alerts will be applied.

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

Create the event

Finally, press Return to create the new calendar event.

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

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 2 weeks`	Creates a multi-day event that spans 2 weeks
`Call John @ tomorrow 2pm 15m!`	Creates an event with an alert 15 minutes before
`Dad's birthday @ Jun 12 !5d`	Creates an event with an alert 5 days before

Creating Reminders

Reminders are created by entering just a description, and an optional reminder date, separated by a right angle bracket.

Tip You can press the Tab key to insert the required “>” sign.

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

Input	Result
`Buy milk`	Creates a reminder
`Buy butter !!`	Creates a reminder with medium priority
`Clean the house > next sun`	Creates a reminder on a particular day
`Watch TV > May 15, 8pm`	Creates a reminder with an alert at the specified date and time

Date and Time Specification

The date an time of an event can be specified in a variety of different formats in different languages. The date and time format preferences specified in System Preferences > Language & Text > Region are taken into account, but lots of other common formats are recognized as well.

If parts of the date are missing, the closest date relative to the current date 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, 7days) or in weeks (1w, 3weeks).

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
`jun 23 9 to 11.45`	June 23, 9:00 AM - 11:45 AM
`Oct 11 5 days`	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/).