When I try to insert a contact's birthday, entourage insists on
inputting a year for me. I don't necessarily know the year someone
was born, nor is it any of my business. How do I format the birthday
so that I do not have to have a year included. A day and month are
quite sufficient to send birthday greetings.
If you just enter a month and day, no year, then the year entered by
Entourage will be the current year. Since you presumably know that your
friends and acquaintances aren't newborn babies this should be sufficient.
The reason it does this is that it's converting your text to a true date
data type. That's what allows it to enter the birthday in the calendar, if
you so choose (click the funny-looking icon next to the date). It has to go
_somewhere_ in the calendar, so a year is required. It will make it a
recurring event - every year - beginning that year. If you're only
interested in upcoming birthdays in the future, this year will work fine.
Reminders - which can only exist for calendar events, not for contacts - are
5 days by default but you can change that in the calendar. Yes, it will get
the age wrong too in the contact, but since you're not interested, what does
it matter if the Age is 0 or 1?
If you really don't want to use the calendar, reminders, etc. then instead
of using the Birthday field, use a Custom field (NOT a Custom Date, which
will behave the same way as birthdays). You could even call the Custom field
"Birthday" or "Birth Date" by clicking on the label. You can put whatever
text you want into the field and it will not be converted to a date nor
revise it in any way. It will also show up on the Summary. It sounds like
this is what you might want.
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
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