Astro Gold MacOS 5 User Guide

Once you have created a Dynamic Listing you can then export those events to either a calendar on your computer, or one in the cloud.  

If you want to send the events to a calendar in the cloud you'll need to make sure you have iCloud calendars enabled on your Mac. To do that then see below, otherwise skip to How to export Events to a Calendar.

 

>> To enable iCloud Calendars on your Mac

1)Open Calendar by clicking on the Calendars icon in the taskbar . This will open the "Calendars" window. If you have no existing calendars on your Mac, and iCloud calendars are not enabled either, it will look similar to below...
 

 

2)On the Calendar menu click on Preferences

 

3)A dialog similar to the following will be displayed...

 

4)In the left-hand list click on the iCloud entry, then click in the checkbox labelled Enable this account, then close the dialog.

 

5)The Calendars window will be displayed, this time showing your iCloud account calendars in the left hand column, similar to below...

 

>> To send Dynamic events to a Calendar

1)Generate a Dynamic listing (see Dynamic Event Information for how to do that)

2)Click on the Share icon which pops up this dialog then click on the Send to Calendar dropdown menu option.
 
If you have exported events to a calendar previously these items will have the previous values preselected for you, and if you want to continue using those you just need to add events to be exported.
 
However if this is the first time you are exporting events to a calendar it will display a dialog similar to the following, with no account calendar selected, and no existing or future events (this is because no account or calendar have been selected).

 

3.There are two parts to setting up for exporting dynamic events to a calendar:

a.Selecting an account, that contains calendars, to use

b.Selecting a calendar in that account to export events to
 

4.In the "Selected Calendar" section of the dialog (at the top) click on the Select button. This will open a further dialog.  

 

5.As it says, in one of your calendar accounts you can either create a new calendar (called "Astro Gold") or select an existing calendar. You do this in two steps.

a)Click on the dropdown list with "+ Create new calendar" displayed in it. This will show you all the calendar accounts available and the calendars in them.

i.There will always be the [On My Mac] account displayed.

ii.And if you have enabled iCloud Calendars (see here for to do that) the [iCloud] account will also be displayed.

iii.If you have previously created one or more calendars in either account you will see them listed under that account. And always "+ Create new calendar" will be an option in these lists too.

 
NOTE: It is recommended that you opt to create a new "Astro Gold" named calendar which is reserved just for these types of events, initially anyway, in order to keep your existing calendars clean and unaffected (i.e. choose the "+ Create new calendar" menu item).

 

iv.Click on the calendar under the account you want to use. You'll be returned to the dialog above with the calendar you chose displayed in the dropdown list.

v.Click on the Select button.

 b) The dialog will close... and then reappear. If you are happy with the selections you previously made click the Select button again - otherwise repeat the steps in (a) above.

6.You will now be back at the main "Send To Calendar" dialog.

a.If you haven't actually generated any dynamic events yet -as in step (1) above- or you did but this is the first time you are exporting events to a calendar then "Existing Calendar Events" and "Addable Future Events" will be showing 0. This doesn't mean there are no events to export, it's just that the total for them isn't showing yet.

➢Clicking anywhere away from the "Send To Calendar" dialog will cause it to close. If you previously had generated some dynamic events then clicking again on the Share icon , and selecting the "Share To Calendar" menu item the "Send To Calendar" dialog will be re-displayed and this time the "Addable Future Events" will show how many dynamic events from the current date or later have been generated.

b. If you have previously generated some dynamic events -as in step (1) above- then "Addable Future Events" will be showing how many dynamic events from the current date or later have been generated. This will be showing now as an account and a calendar have been selected.

7.Click on the Add New Events button. The addable events will be added to the selected calendar, and the "Add New Events" button will be replaced with three different buttons, shown below.

8.The "Append New Events" button will always be displayed if there are pre-existing events in the selected calendar. Since in this scenario there have just been 438 events added to the currently selected calendar, then that condition applies now, so this button is displayed.

a)If you were to now select a different calendar to add these generated events to, and it had pre-existing events in it which you wanted to keep, then you would click on the "Append New Events" button to do just that.

b)If however you didn't want to keep those pre-existing events you would not use this button.

9.If the "Replace Existing Events" button is clicked then whatever events are in the selected calendar will be replaced by the currently generated events.

10.If the "Clear Existing Events" button is clicked then whatever events are in the selected calendar will be removed.

11. In the "Export Options" section you can specify your preferences, if you want an interpretation of the event to be stored with each event click on Include Interpretations text until the checkbox is ticked. If you don't want them then click until the checkbox is unticked. You can also do the same regarding specifying event alarms to be active in the Calendar (Set Event Notifications) along with setting the amount of notice you'd like for the alarms.

12.Once you have finished adding events to your calendar, and specifying the "Export Options", click on the Save as iCalendar File button. This will open a dialog that looks similar to that below. Navigate to, or create if necessary, the folder where you want to save the iCalendar file (that will contain all the events you are exporting) then click on the Save button.
 

13. Open the Calendar you saved the events to and see them displayed on the days they occur.

14.Also, now that you have saved the events as an .ics file, if you want to send the events to someone else you can email it as an attachment. When the email is opened the attached file can be saved to the device it's received on, then (usually) just double-clicking the saved file will load it into the default calendar on that device. That always occurs if MS Outlook is the default calendar, for other calendar types a different process may be required.