I use the basic Apple Calendar, and for 99% of what I do, it is sufficient. However, there is one feature that I’d like to see, and I wondered if any of you out there knew of a program that covers this little feature.
Here’s the feature I want:
I want to be able to select one or more of the calendars that includes “All Day” events, and display those events on a big yearly or better yet, multi-year planner, where each block is a month, and the events are shown as a horizontal bar/line that can cross month boundaries if necessary. (I would include a sample picture if I knew how to do that here.) It would be nice if the start and end dates appeared at the ends of the bars.
I’ve looked at several different tools that I know of, such as BusyCal and Fantastical, but (without downloading and installing, etc.) none seem to have this feature. So: is there anything out there that does this? It seems to me that many people / organizations would like to produce a long-term calendar without having to resort to Microsoft Project or something.
BusyCal can do a single year display with month blocks and multi-day events that cross months, but that’s a close as it comes. At that magnification, all you see is the bar on each of the weeks with subtle rounding at the start and end dates. No text labels for the events.
Here’s an example with a single event in May and June.
Maybe it would help if you could say a little more about why you don’t want to use a project planner. What you’re describing sounds like it is beyond the scope of calendar apps, and right in the wheelhouse of project apps.
Of course, I could be missing something here…you said you want to see a multi-year calendar with months in blocks. Quickly playing with BusyCal (my everyday calendar), it is pretty insistent about displaying 12 months at a time in the yearly view. This screenshot shows the annual view with one calendar’s events displayed:
I’m also wondering about the ultimate destination of such a calendar/planner display. I tried expanding the view above to full screen on my 27 inch iMac, folding in all sidebars so it was just calendar. The bars are still tiny, and that’s with just 12 months displayed (the maximum). If it was paper, I suppose you could output what I understand you want on a plotter to get a usable planner sheet.
I should also note that BusyCal really struggled to put this calendar up in the fullscreen view.
So, my big question is, why a calendar app? Why not a project app?
Makes sense. Your observation below that you may have to script a solution yourself is likely spot-on. I don’t think there’s a broader market for the feature you’re seeking, or even enough demand for a developer to devote resources to it. (I could be mistaken, of course!)
But it’s important to you, and great things emerge from ideas like that.
