Creating appointments on your iPad Calendar

On the previous post we saw the basics of the iPad Calendar

iPad-Calendar-Monthly-View

On this post comes the fun part you were looking for. I’ll be showing you how to create, edit and delete appointments on your iPad Calendar! :))

Applicable to:
iPad versions: iPad, iPad 2, The new iPad
iOS versions: iOS 5 and up

Let’s get going with some hands on examples…

Creating an appointment

Example 1: Lunch event

Regardless of the view that you are at, you can add a new event or appointment onto your calendar by tapping on the plus button


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that is located on the lower right corner. For illustration purposes we will create a lunch appointment as an example.

Tap on the plus button:

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The Add Event dialog box will appear as well as the keyboard.

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Add event dialog box

Tap on “Title” and type “Lunch”. Tap on “Location” and type “S&G Club”. Tap on “Starts / Ends” and a “Start & End” dialog box will be displayed. Make sure the “All-day” button is off.

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Tap on “Starts“. Select a Date and Time by sliding up and down with one finger. Tap on “Ends“. Select a Date and Time by sliding up and down with one finger. When finished, tap on the “Done” button on the top right corner. You will see once again the “Add Event” dialog box appear.

Now, we are going to set a reminder so that you get a notification from the iPad before the event. Tap on Alert. The “Event Alert” dialog box opens.

iPad-Calendar-Event-Alert-Dialog-Box

Tap on “1 day before” and tap on “Done” on the top right corner. You will see once again the “Add Event” dialog box appear.


Skip the “Second Alert” option and tap on “Calendar“. The “Calendar” dialog box appears and you can select the calendar where the event will be stored. Only one calendar can be selected at once. Tap on “Work” and then tap “Done”. The event will be stored on the “Work” calendar.

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The “Add Event” dialog box appears.

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Tap on “Done” on the upper right corner. That’s it, your lunch appointment shows up on your Work Calendar on the iPad.

Example 2: Birthday reminder

There’s more than one way to create a birthday reminder. In this case, we will showcase doing it from inside the Calendar app. The process is very similar to adding an event with the exception that you set up a yearly reminder. Let’s try it!

Tap on the plus button

iPad-Calendar-Add-Event-Button

The Add Event dialog box will appear as well as the keyboard. Tap on “Title” and type “Laura’s Birthday”. Skip “Location”.

Tap on “Starts / Ends” and a “Start & End” dialog box will be displayed. Make sure the “All-day” button is on.

iPad-Calendar-Start-End-Dialog-Box-bday

Tap on “Starts“. Select a Date and Time by sliding up and down with one finger. Tap on “Ends“. Select a Date and Time by sliding up and down with one finger. When finished, tap on the “Done” button on the top right corner. You will see once again the “Add Event” dialog box appear.

Tap on “Repeat”. The “Repeat” dialog box appears. Select every year. Tap on “Done”.


Make sure “End Repeat” shows “Never”. This way the birthday reminder will repeat every year without a time limit.

Now, we are going to set a reminder so that you get a notification from the iPad before the event. Tap on Alert. The “Event Alert” dialog box opens.

iPad-Calendar-Event-Alert-Dialog-Box-bday

Tap on “1 day before (9 AM)” and tap on “Done” on the top right corner. You will see once again the “Add Event” dialog box appear.

Skip the “Second Alert” option and tap on “Calendar“. The “Calendar” dialog box appears and you can select the calendar where the event will be stored. Only one calendar can be selected at the same time. Tap on “Work” and then tap “Done”. The event will be stored on the “Work” calendar.

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The “Add Event” dialog box appears.

iPad-Calendar-Add-Event-Dialog-Box-bday

Tap on “Done” on the upper right corner. That’s it, your Birthday reminder shows up on your Work Calendar and the iPad will remind you on an yearly basis. In a similar way, you can easily create reminders for your Home calendar.

Editing an appointment

The following section assumes you already have an existing appointment in your calendar as per previous explanation and examples.

To edit an appointment, navigate the calendar to the date where the appointment is located and tap on the appointment.

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The Edit appointment dialog box opens up.

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Tap on any of the fields you want to modify. i.e.: tap on “Lunch”. The keyboard appears. Add “& learn”. Tap on “Starts / Ends” to update the time. The “Start & End” dialog box appears. Update the time entries to Starts: 12:15, Ends: 13:30 and tap on “Done”.

iPad-Calendar-start-12-15-ends-13-30-dialog-box

The edit dialog box appears. Tap on “Done” and you will see the updated appointment displayed on you Calendar.

Tip: if you only want to adjust the starting time of the appointment but not the duration, you can tap on the appointment and hold your finger down on it, then drag it up or down to adjust the starting time.

Deleting an appointment

Deleting an appointment is very easy. Tap on the appointment you want to delete, i.e. “Lunch & learn”. The Edit appointment dialog box opens up.

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Press on the “Delete Event” button on the bottom. A confirmation prompt appears that allows to delete or cancel.

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Tap on “Delete Event”. The event will disappear from your calendar.

Searching the calendar

Suppose you know you have an appointment which you marked on your Calendar but you don´t remember its details. You can search through your calendar using the Search box that´s on the top right corner.

iPad-Calendar-Search-box

Continuing with the previous example, we will go ahead and tap on the Search box and type in “Laura”.The search Results panel will appear and you will see “Laura’s birthday” (provided you didn’t delete the example shown before). Tap on “Laura’s birthday” and Calendar will navigate to the date of the event and will open it in Edit mode for you to modify and/or see.

iPad-Calendar-edit-appointment-dialog-box2

This concludes the basic series of posts about the iPad Calendar. Let me know how it goes by posting a comment on the form below. Also feel free to share this article with your friends on Twitter :-))

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