Searching for and Filtering Calendar Events

At the bottom of the calendar display, you'll see an "Options" link. Clicking on that link brings up a popup window, where you'll find links named Search for Events, Event Filter, and Source Filter.
(Note: if Javascript is disabled in your browser, instead of a popup you'll get a new page loaded in the browser window.)

The Search for Events and Event Filter links display a form where you can specify criteria for matching events. You can match against text in the event, and you can also restrict the match to events in specified categories. For Searching, you also enter a date range.

You can choose one or more Event Categories as search or filter criteria. If you do, only events in those categories will be considered. If no search text is specified, only the Event Category criteria is used, and if no category is selected, only the text is considered.

If both text and categories are specified, both criteria must be met. For example, specifying "urgent" for the text, and choosing the "Lunch" and "Dinner" categories would find only events with "urgent" in the text that are also in the Lunch or Dinner category.

For Event Filtering, when you press the Filter button the normal calendar display is shown, but only events containing the filter string are displayed; you can navigate around the calendar normally. A link is displayed at the top of the calendar to turn the filter off.

For Searching, pressing the Search button produces a list of matching events in the specified date range.

In both searching and filtering, you can choose to match only in event text, only in popup text, or in either place. You also have the option of doing a case sensitive or case insensitive search.

Searches and Filters can use full Perl regular expressions to describe the text you're interested in. If you've ever used special characters like * or ? to match filenames, you've used a basic form of regular expressions.

Here are some examples:

A . matches any single character, and a * means 'match 0 or more of the previous thing'. So, 'a*c' would match 'aaaac', but would not match 'abc'. 'a.*c' would match both 'aaaac' and 'abc'.

The Source Filter is used to easily and quickly change which included events you're currently interested in. A list is displayed, showing all the calendars and Add-In files that this calendar is including events from.

A checkbox is displayed next to each calendar or Add-In; simply select which included calendars or Add-Ins you want to turn off, and press the 'Filter Now' button to do so. You can turn them back on in a similar fashion.

This makes it easy to temporarily turn off events you're not interested in, without having to go to the 'Settings' menu. (It's also useful for users who don't have permission to change the calendar's settings, but aren't interested in seeing all the included events.)

Each person viewing a calendar has control of which included events they'd like to see; their choices won't affect other users.

In some situations, you may might to provide a link that has a predefined Event Filter. For instance, you may have a calendar that includes events from 10 other calendars, but for this particular link you only want to show events from two of those included calendars. You can use the special "IncludeOnly" parameter to specify that all other calendars should be filtered; the value of that parameter should be the calendars you want displayed, separated by dashes. For example:

    http://domain.com/Calcium?CalendarName=AllCals&IncludeOnly=ThisCal-ThatCal