Birthdays in Address Book

leethomsonleethomson
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Now that Menu Calender can remind me of friends' birthdays, I thought I'd try and put a few into Address Book. However, it seems that when I enter 3/11, meaning 3rd November, as set in System Preferences, Address Book decides to default to the American date format, rendering 11th March.



This could get me into huge amounts of trouble!



Have I missed a preference, or has Apple once again forgotten the entire world?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    sport73sport73 Posts: 438member
    There's a world outside the US? Are you sure?



  • Reply 2 of 6
    evoevo Posts: 198member
    Have you tried this?



    Open "Address Book > Preferences..."

    Change "Address Format" to your country.



    Don't know if it will affect dates or not... I haven't tried it.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by eVo

    Open "Address Book > Preferences..."

    Change "Address Format" to your country.



    That doesn't seem to work. I think the option affects addresses only. Ideally, Address Book should respect International settings in System Preferences, but it doesn't.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    More interesting is if you enter 16/03/04 I get the 16th of May come up. Not sure how that works
  • Reply 5 of 6
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    Another dumb thing about birthdays is that you may not know (or care about) the year of birth. I only need to be reminded when to congratulate my friends and since I ain't working on a pension fund, I am often unaware of the year of birth. However, having someone in Address Book born, say, on November 3, 2004 is beyond sanity.



    The quirk Telomar pointed out works like that: 12/05 is December 5, but 13/05 is May 13. See the difference? The damn thing knows there are only 12 months, so it guesses the order of day & month. Try entering 33/34 and you'll get today of 1934.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    arondalearondale Posts: 41member
    Go into Preferences, then the Templates section. Click on a name (+) sign, then choose custom. Type in Birthday. Now Bday will be in he field and you can type it any way you choose... unless you are wanting to type in shorthand and have it convert it to long form. Is that what you are ultimately trying to do?
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