Best birthday solution on calendar?

[westbros]

I am trying to find a solution to putting birthday/anniversary details on my calendar for contacts and non-contacts. I use Google Calendar which is then synced to my HTC Desire phone. I have tried doing this by adding contacts' birthdays through Other Calendars on my Google Calendar, but this don't seem to show up on my phone for some reason.

I have seen reviews of EboBirthday, but this seems to be rather buggy, so I will probably stay clear of that.

Can anybody suggest a good solution to the problem that doesn't involve having to enter everybody's birthdays etc manually as an event, every year, which is what I have had to do so far?

Thanks.

 

[wildrose]

When you create a new event with Google Calendar, there is a "repeat" option in which you can specify annually on that particular date. That has worked for me and synced properly with my Desire phone.

 

[Maris]

I've just used the "Contacts Birthdays and Events" calendar from Google and it shows on my phone's calendar, but depending on the view, it shows in different areas. For example, the agenda view, it lists them first. In the weekly and monthly view they show across the top, in the column where the day is.

You do have to select that calendar as one that syncs to the phone in order for it to appear as part of the phone's calendar.

 

[westbros]

I've just used the "Contacts Birthdays and Events" calendar from Google and it shows on my phone's calendar, but depending on the view, it shows in different areas. For example, the agenda view, it lists them first. In the weekly and monthly view they show across the top, in the column where the day is.

You do have to select that calendar as one that syncs to the phone in order for it to appear as part of the phone's calendar.

How do I actually select the additional calendars to sync to my calendar? Do I do this in the Google calendar itself, or in my Android calendar? And how? I would also like to add things like public holidays etc, so this would be really useful.

 

[westbros]

OK, I have worked out how to add new calendars, but now I have come against another hurdle. I want to add some sports calendars, e.g. the fixtures for my favourite football team, etc. I have sorted this out in Google Calendar, but when I try to add these in my phone the option is greyed out. Is there a limit to the amount of calendars the Android calendar can handle? At the moment I have 5 additional calendars on my phone on top of the main calendar. When I first tried to add Contacts' Birthdays, the "OK" button was greyed out. After a few attempts it finally appeared in the list. But I cannot get it to do it for the sports calendars that I want to add.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Chilly McFreeze]

The sports calenders cannot be added, this question seems to come up quite a lot. I've done some investigation and it appears to be because they are only HTML - the only calendars that will sync to your phone are XML and ICAL. With regards to the Birthday calendar you can force that onto your phone by going into Manage Applications, selecting Calendar Storage and clearing the data. You then need to restart your phone and it will download all the calendar information - this is the official Google workaround for this issue - Troubleshooting sync - Google Mobile Help