I don’t know about you, but remembering birthdays has always been tough for me. And now being 7+ states away from my family, it’s even tougher. Mom’s not around to drop those little hints about [Dad/Sister/Uncle/Grandmother/Niece]’s upcoming birthday into everyday conversation. With the Birthday Calendar in Windows Live Calendar, I don’t need to worry about forgetting another birthday. And with event reminders, I even have enough time to find that perfect gift (or find out from Mom what the perfect gift is) and get it in the mail.

Picture of the Birthday Calendar

See birthday events when the Birthday Calendar is selected

So how do birthdays magically appear in calendar? Birthday events are included in the Birthday Calendar for:

  • Your network (profile and Messenger) contacts, or at least the ones sharing their birthday info with you.
  • Your “regular” contacts (contacts on your People page that aren’t network contacts) if you’ve added their birth dates to their contact details.

It takes a little while for birth dates that you add to your ‘regular’ contact’s details to appear on the Birthday calendar. Browse the web, think about a great gift, check your calendar after a few hours, it should be there.

Add reminders

Reminders are sent 12 hours before a birthday event by default. But if you’re like me, you may need a little extra lead time. Luckily, reminders can be set anywhere from 2 weeks before, to no reminder at all for each birthday event. Since the birthday event is set for a day, not a particular time during the day, the event “occurs” at the beginning of each day, or 12am. If you leave the default reminder of 12 hours, then you’ll get the reminder around noon the day before a person’s birthday. To change the reminder, open a birthday event and select an option in the Send reminder list.

Picture of the event details for a birthday

I need to get this reminder as soon as possible

Select reminder delivery options

You can also choose how you get reminders: in Windows Live Messenger “toasts”, e-mail messages, text messages on your mobile phone, or any combo of the three. Before you start spamming yourself with event reminders, it’s important to know that your reminder delivery options apply to all of your calendars, not to specific calendars or individual events. So while it may be great to get reminders about someone’s special day sent to you everywhere, realize that you’re going to get reminders for all your other events as well.

To change where your reminders are delivered to:

  1. On the Options menu, click More options.
  2. Under Set your reminder time, click Change how you get reminders.
  3. On the Windows Live Calendar alerts page, click the Basic Delivery tab and choose one or more options.
    -or-
    If you want your change your reminder delivery based on your Messenger status, click the Custom Delivery tab.
    To receive reminders in a text message, you may need to set up SMS for Windows Live. Click Set up an MSN Mobile account to start. (Sometimes the web moves faster than we do—we’re working on updating this page to match our latest release.)

So with a little updating of your contact details and maybe changing some reminders, you’ll never forget another birthday too! OK, now I have to IM my Mom and find out what I should buy. I hope it’s something I can buy online—I don’t I have time to go to the post office.

-Dawn Hollingsworth

The Windows Live Team

Update: Unfortunately, Windows Live Calendar is experiencing some unexpected issues with birthday calendars and calendar subscriptions. Some users are unable to view or update the Birthday Calendar. And some users with calendar subscriptions have reported problems with missing data or delayed updates.

The Windows Live Calendar team is working hard to resolve these issues as soon as possible.  We apologize for any inconvenience. (March 24, 2009)

Update 2: The subscriptions issue has been resolved. (March 25, 2009)