iCal: Inviting guests to an event

If you’ve set up Mac OS X Mail, you can use it to invite people to an iCal event. If your guests have set up iCal on their computers, they can receive your event invitation in their iCal Notifications box and add the event to their iCal calendar. Or, they can receive the invitation only via email.

If you’re connected to a CalDAV server through iCal, you can send invitations directly through iCal to people who share the same CalDAV calendar service (for example, fellow employees at your company). To learn about scheduling meetings through this service, see the following page.

Checking when attendees are available for a meeting
To invite attendees to an event:

1. Make sure you’ve created a card for yourself in Address Book (in your Applications folder).
2. To create your own card, open Address Book and click the Add (+) button. Then enter your information (be sure to include all of your email addresses), and choose Card > Make This My Card. (For more information, in Address Book choose Help > Address Book Help.)
3. Double-click the event you want to invite people to, and then click Edit in the event editor.
4. To add the first attendee, click Add Attendees and then type the email address for the person you want to invite.
5. If someone has already been invited to the event, click to the right of the name, and then type the email address for the person you want to invite.
6. If you’re inviting someone whose contact information is stored in your Mac OS X Address Book, start typing their name, and iCal completes the email address for you. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to choose the name and address you want, and then press Return to select it.
7. To invite more than one person, press the Return key (or type a comma) after each address, and then type the next one.
8. If your contacts are stored in Address Book, you can also use the Address panel to quickly add attendees to your event.
9. To remove an address from the attendees list, click the arrow next to the name, and choose Remove Attendee (this doesn’t remove the person from your Address Book).
10. When you’re ready to invite these guests to your event, click the Send button at the bottom of the event editor.

By default, guests receive the event invitation in an email and in their iCal Notifications box if they use iCal (attendees can change this setting in iCal preferences).

If you make any changes to the event, be sure to click the Send button again.

As guests respond to your invitation through iCal, messages from them appear in your iCal Notifications box. To view their responses, click the Notifications button in the lower-left corner of the iCal window.

An arrow appears beside the names of guests who have not responded to the invitation; a checkmark means the guest has accepted; an “x” means they’ve declined; and a question mark means the guest is tentative.

For more information about creating address cards in Address Book, open Address Book and choose Help > Address Book Help.