Default Birthday Reminder Time

[Donna74]

I thought I was so smart, setting up my birthdays in contacts, then
syncronising them with my phone so I get reminders on my phone and in
Calendar.

Until I realised the reminder is at 12.00 midnight! Is there any way to
change the default reminder time for birthdays so that I don't get woken up
at midnight (besides going into each birthday on calendar and changing them
manually)?

Please help me - May is a shocking month in my family for birthdays.

Thanks in advance.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

I thought I was so smart, setting up my birthdays in contacts, then
syncronising them with my phone so I get reminders on my phone and in
Calendar.

Until I realised the reminder is at 12.00 midnight! Is there any way
to change the default reminder time for birthdays so that I don't get
woken up at midnight (besides going into each birthday on calendar
and changing them manually)?

Please help me - May is a shocking month in my family for birthdays.

Would you rather not be reminded at all, or be reminded X hours before
midnight?

 

[Donna74]

Hrs before would be fantastic - maybe even 48 hrs to give me time to do
something about it. Actually not 48 that would be midnight two days earlier
probably 54 hrs.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Hrs before would be fantastic - maybe even 48 hrs to give me time to
do something about it. Actually not 48 that would be midnight two
days earlier probably 54 hrs.

Ok. I'm just going to write it out step by step, because it's easier that
way. In short, you just set one with a reminder of 54 hours (or whatever
you want) then you drag/drop the others. This looks a lot harder than it
is, so bear with me.

The long version:
Open the Calendar
Pick one of the Birthdays and set the reminder time to be 54 hours (or
whatever)
Go to View - Arrange By - Current view - Define Views
Click New
Call the view Birthdays
"Type of view" should be Table.
"Can be used on" can be set to whatever you want.
Click Ok
Click Filter.
Click Advanced
Click Field - All Appointment Fields - Reccurence
Value should be Yearly
Click Add to List.
Click Field - All Appointment Fields - Subject
Value should be Birthday, Condition should default to contains
Click Add to List.
Click Ok
Click Group By
"Select available fields from" should be All appointment fields.
"Group items by" select Remind Beforehand.
Click Ok.
Click Ok
Click Apply View.

Now, at this point, verify that only your birthday's are listed here. They
should be, but there's always the chance that you've created an appointment
that matches the filter.

Now, you should see one group heading for each amount of remind before time.
Unless you've changed more than the one in the second step, you probably
have 15 and 3,240 (assuming you stuck with 45 hours). Grab the Remind
Beforehand: 15 header and drag it down to the Remind Beforehand: 3,240
header. Note that the tooltip should say Change Remind Beforehand to....

I'm about 99.5% sure that that will change it for all future recurrences
too.

 

[Donna74]

Thanks, you are a legend! It didn't change it for the new one I added, but
now I have the filter set up it is easy to change it when I add more
birthdays in. No more midnight wake ups for me!

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Thanks, you are a legend! It didn't change it for the new one I
added, but now I have the filter set up it is easy to change it when
I add more birthdays in. No more midnight wake ups for me!

d'oh, that's the part I left out. For new ones.. well, this probably isn't
what you want, but, the default reminder time is what gets put on the
birthdays. You could, for example, go to Tools - Options and set the
default reminder time to be the 2.25 days. The problem is, if you don't
remember to adjust it for regular appointments, they'd get set with that
time too.

Unfortunately, Birthdays (in ol2k3 at least) seem to ignore it if you
uncheck the Reminder option, so you'll always get one.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Thanks, you are a legend!

(Oh, and thanks =) )