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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month Apps
I like to track my bills and pay days in iCal so I can keep up with things and stop being late on all my payments. Where I work, pay days are the 15th and last day of the month but iCal doesn't have an option for "Last Day" only "First Day".

To fix this, I went in and created a recurring event for the first and the 15th of each month. Then I quit iCal and edited the .ics file directly (in ~/Library -> Calendars). I changed the RRULE line for that event from:
RRULE:FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=1;BYMONTHDAY=1,15
to
RRULE:FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=1;BYMONTHDAY=-1,15
By changing the 1 to -1, it changed it from the first day of the month to the last day. Of course, the info display looks funny: "every month, each and 15th," but it works great and iCal never notices.
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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: rgray on Oct 01, '04 11:38:05AM
Wow! Thanks. This is the closest I've come yet... You do have to wonder what Apple was thinking that last day wasn't an option.. I get paid the day before the 15th and the day before the last day of the month (15th and last are the dates of record but custom and banking conspire...), unless those should fall on a weekend or statutary holiday or during the week between xmas and new year, and then it falls on the Friday preceeding.... Can you hook me up? ;-}

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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: jessamy on Oct 01, '04 05:40:36PM

haha I *wish*. Because technically that's when I get paid, too. I'll see if I can work something up.

I do know that you can move individual events around so if you notice some on the weekend you can just move it to Friday. Maybe an AppleScript is in order.



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: MasonMcD on Oct 01, '04 11:49:19AM

Alternatively, you could establish a recurring event for most months (recurring every 31st of the month), and doing the 30ths and February by hand. Then you only have to worry about leap years (which you can do as "every four years in February" starting with this past Feb. 29th). It only screws up in 2020, 2040, 2060, etc. but there will likely be an update to iCal by then :)

Then you can just copy and use the recurring events for whatever you want.



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: macsolve on Oct 01, '04 02:35:30PM

Can't you just schedule the event for the first of every month, and set it to remind you 1 day ahead? Then you will get a reminder on the last of every month.



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: fracai on Oct 01, '04 03:15:26PM

I don't know how you'd check this, but I wonder if it's really setting the day as the last day of the PREVIOUS month.

I wonder what would happen if you used 0 ...

KABOOM

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i am jack's amusing sig file



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: Tom Robinson on Oct 01, '04 04:04:07PM

I don't know if this is what you based your hint on, but it seems iCal uses RFC 2445 for its .ics files (which explains why they have DOS line endings and don't use XML).

The negative number 'trick' is an officially documented part of the spec:

The BYMONTHDAY rule part specifies a COMMA character (ASCII decimal 44) separated list of days of the month. Valid values are 1 to 31 or-31 to -1. For example, -10 represents the tenth to the last day of the month.

There's some more interesting examples under 4.8.5.4 though I haven't tried them.

Cheers



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: TheToe on Oct 01, '04 04:24:05PM
That's great!

Now... can I change the snooze options? The current options (1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, etc.) are just unrealistic. Who snoozes an alarm for 1 minute? Why can't I snooze for 30 minutes, or till tomorrow morning?

See linked thread above for more detail. Thanks.

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You might look at Sunbird
Authored by: seedy on Oct 03, '04 03:42:08PM

Which supposedly uses the same filetype as iCal, and has more choices on snooze. But no last day of the month, alas, at least not yet.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html

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Nothing is Disposable



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Make iCal events happen on the last day of the month
Authored by: scotty321 on Oct 03, '04 02:16:50PM

Just wanted everybody to know that Now Up-To-Date by Power On Software is a MUCH better calendar program than iCal, in just about every way imaginable. It not only has every single feature that iCal offers (such as multiple viewable calendars per calendar file, Palm synchronization, FANTASTIC synchronization amongst several computers over a local area or wide area network -- better than iCal's synchronization, full AppleScript support), but it compensates for every feature that is lacking in iCal and adds dozens of its own innovative features (a great "week" view, meeting management, hundreds of printing options, custom repeat options, and much more). There is almost nothing that Now Up-To-Date can't do, and it really shines in the fact that it has DOZENS upon DOZENS of features that iCal does not have. And yes, it allows events to repeat on the "Last Day of a Month"



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Cheap Too
Authored by: seedy on Oct 03, '04 03:27:20PM

It's only $120.

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Nothing is Disposable



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Cheap Too
Authored by: scotty321 on Oct 03, '04 04:36:44PM

Yeah, the only downside is that it's not free.



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