Import a Ward Birthday Calendar with this spreadsheet

I made an Excel spreadsheet to convert a ward birthday list from a clerk office computer into a Ward Birthday calendar for the new lds.org calendar:

http://buildzion.com/index.php/LDS-Item ... Items.html

There is a new version for Calendar Version 2.0:
http://buildzion.com/downloads/WardBirt ... endar2.xls
Note, there is bug currently with 2.0: importing all-day events (google calendar format) results in an event scheduled at 12 AM (which I have reported)

johncpratt1 wrote:There is a new version for Calendar Version 2.0:
http://buildzion.com/downloads/WardBirt ... endar2.xls
Note, there is bug currently with 2.0: importing all-day events (google calendar format) results in an event scheduled at 12 AM (which I have reported)

Please reconsider before using this. View this post (from a member of the Calendar development team), which says in part:

jdcr256 wrote: No holidays or birthdays were included from the v1 data. Our system simply wouldn't be able to handle every ward creating their own holiday calendar and birthday calendar.

I personally don't think that a stake Holiday calendar is a significant resource drain -- a dozen or so events for an entire stake is not a big deal. But if every ward adds hundreds of events for a birthday calendar, that could easily double the number of events on the calendar, which could have a significant impact on system resources.

To be good citizens of the Calendar system, we should be wary of adding so many events, especially when the Calendar development team made a specific effort to remove birthday calendars just recently.

AEbrown:
I had no idea a birthday calendar posed such a hardship, but I wonder: that post also says that a holiday calendar imposed a hardship --could it be that the real issue is actually that the events repeat forever (rather than the number of events per year)?

This newer version of the ward birthday calendar also imports birthdays on a "per year" basis --nothing repeats.

I wonder, did the calendar development team remove all birthday calendars, even for ones that didn't repeat? I hope it is the "ad-infinitum" repeating of events rather than doubling the number of events...

johncpratt1 wrote:could it be that the real issue is actually that the events repeat forever (rather than the number of events per year)?

That can't be the issue, since no events repeat forever under Calendar V2 -- they repeat no more than 2 years in the future, and always have an end date (or max number of occurrences).

But in any case, I'll try to get an answer as to whether the problem is with a large number of events (single or repeating), or only with a large number of repeating events.

Sharing birthdays on the ward calendar has two problems:

a) greatly increases the number in events in the database.
b) shares private information about individuals without their consent or control

It's really better to leave birthdays off of ward calendars.

Thanks. Can I offer a suggestion? Import the birthday list and sync the ward calendar in a 3rd party calendar program, for example:

1) make a private google calendar (not public)
2) Sync the ward calender into it
3) Import the ics file made by the birthday spreadsheet in a 2nd private google calendar
4) Print the combination for the ward newsletter.

I think all bases can be covered in this manner. We hand-edit our birthday list to remove individuals who don't want their birthdays listed (and have been doing this for a long time--I felt sorry for our editor, actually).

Thanks again for the clarification.