How-To Geek
How to Setup Birthday Reminders for Your Facebook Friends in Google Calendar
If you want to keep on top of birthdays for all your Facebook friends, but you don’t want to check Facebook all the time, you can import those birthdays into Google Calendar, where you can then setup reminders.
Update: As noted in the comments, you can also export events like birthdays directly from the Events page in Facebook. The instructions have been updated to explain that method instead.
Editor’s Note: of course, if you just want to get an email when your Facebook friends have a birthday coming up, Facebook has that feature under Account Settings –> Notifications. If you want to consolidate everything into Google Calendar, this also works.
This is a guest post by Shankar Ganesh.
Enabling Google Calendar Reminders for Birthdays
Head into Facebook, click Events on the left menu, and then Birthdays.
Now scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find the Export Birthdays link.
This will pop up a dialog with a link, and you’ll need to copy the link.
Now head into Google Calendar, look for the Add button under the “Other Calendars” box, and use the Add by URL function.
Paste in the URL from Facebook.
And that’s all there is to it.
Now, from the “My Calendars” menu in the left panel, click on the small arrow next to the appropriate calendar and choose “Notifications”
You can now use the drop down menu to add SMS or email reminders before a set number of days/weeks.
You can add multiple reminders – may be you can add one that sends you an alert via email a week before a birthday and another that sends a text message a day before a birthday.
Shankar is a geek and writes about how to block Facebook and ditching PDF readers among other things at Killer Tech Tips. Check out his blog to read more.
Great one! Thank you howtogeek!
Except first part of this article, everything has been done by me… Anyway, great job! Thanks a lot!
do NEVER give access to your personal calendar to third party apps!!!
HERE IS THE PROPPER WAY: (sorry for the caps but this tut is ridicules)
If you want FB Birthdays in Google Calendar simply go to Facebook’s Events and click birthdays…
at the bottom of the page just click “Export Birthdays” –> copy the webcal URL
in Google Calendar under the other Calendars section at the left click Add –> Add by URL
there you paste your webcal URL which you copied from FB.. rename ur calendar and you are all set!
furthermore: with this method the calendar stays up to date automaticaly.
:)
@howtogeek please update the post! it doesn’t make any sense, nevermind
anyways keep up the great work!
Thanks Tobi, I never knew about the ‘export birthdays’ function!
I aren’t one to question The Geek but I didn’t think birthday reminders were worth having a third party app on my facebook, so I followed your instructions and it worked flawlessly.
Thanks Shankar and HTG for the post!
@Tobi: Thank you, I didn’t know this was possible. I’ll ask the Geek to update the post.
I’m happy you found this useful, guys! :)
One thing though. I gave fbcal a try some time ago and for some reason i could never get the darn thing to update my cal when i added new friends to fb or new events came in. I guess this method only imports only the current birthday list too?
Kind of a hassle, given the fact that the permissions you give to the app are kinnda` scary at first read.
Does anybody know of a way to make the birthday cal sync with fbs birthday list when adding new friends?
fbCal should sync, but for some reason (I guess the calendar file that fbCal sends to Google Calendar doesn’t validate) it doesn’t work
@Octavian Ghiuritan .. just follow my instructions.. it should stay up to date and sync flawlessly because it’s basically a subscribtion to a webcalendar on Facebook which obviously will stay up to date :)
The method described in the article can’t sync because it is just an export. As far as I know you can’t get it syncing this way.
just tested … works exactly as i described. -> stays up to date :)
btw … this works perfectly for all your other regular facebook events, too. The only problem are private events which will be displayed as “busy” :( …
@Tobi ..cheers to you mate …I just bent my rule on never accepting fb friend requests from weird unknown people to test this :)) just what is was looking for..thanks! Must`ve missed your first comment :)
@Tobi
What’s wrong with using third party apps?
This used to work for me, but stopped working recently. I can’t seem to find anyone else who is having the same problem, or has any ideas for addressing it. Any ideas here? This is where I posted my issue: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=6a4503fb88a76ea3&hl=en
This does not work for me either. I have “Friends Birthdays” under other calendars, but nothing in the calendar.
Wait, wait! It worked! Hurray!
Thank you for the instructions. (I used the url add and not the third party app).
How do I delete some of the birthdays that are not of interest to me?
I have a fair number of FB friends (300 or so) but I only want to track and calendar about 30 or so birthdays on my Google calendar. I do not see a way to delete birthdays I do not want to see.
Any suggestions?
My Facebook birthday would show up in a section of my Motorola Defy. I’d recieve a notification the same way when I received a text or email I could send a msg or dismiss it It had their profile pic just like my contacts did
Thanks for the tutorial, it worked perfect
Thank you very much.
Good luck.
Seems like im the only one unable to sync my events to gcalendar.
How long do u have to wait until the events show up in google calendar? The link given at FB works fine in Ical (on my Imac), but not in Google Calendar. Does anybode know why?
Thanx in advance!
ERIK
Yea it doesn’t work for me either. Friends Birthdays shows up as a calendar, but none of them actually show up on the calendar.
And it does work in Outlook for me.
i hav done export from FB n in google calender i hev done ADD BY URL n COPIED D LINK.
but its not showing me any b’days on google calender
will i get msgs or not????
n will it remain updated???
How to view the FB B’day calender added to Google Calender, i have added it but when i click disply only B’day calender I dont see any frens B’day on the calender, how to display,
Plzzzz help me wot cud be wrong,,,
Nikhil i too hav the same problem,, if urs if fixed plzz let me know how…