---
title: Birthday Calendar with ownCloud via CalDAV
date: 2014-09-17T22:56:46+00:00
aliases: birthday-calendar-with-owncloud-via-caldav
categories:
  - english
tags:
  - email
  - guide
  - server
  - tools

---

Not a big issue in this blog post but an important one. Maybe I can save you some valuable time if you ever look for such a function.

{{< figure src="/img/blog/thunderbird-lightning.png" class="text-center small pull-right" >}}

As you know I’m a heavy user of [ownCloud](http://owncloud.org) and you also might know that synchronisation is a big topic for me. And the third thing you should know that forgetting a good friend’s birthday really su... well, it’s no good style. This almost happened to me some days ago because I couldn’t check it on my Notebook with Thunderbird. My setup looks like this: All contacts (with birthday tags) in ownCloud, and these CardDAV address books are synced with my Android phone and Thunderbird/[SOGo-Connector](http://www.sogo.nu/downloads/frontends.html) on my notebook, as well as the CalDAV calendars with [Lightning](https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/lightning/).

For Android there are [several free software apps](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=birthday&fdid=org.birthdayadapter) which enable the inclusion of birthdays from your contacts into any calendar app. Some calendar apps even can do it theirselves. But for Thunderbird there are only some outdated add-ons. All of them don’t work with TB31 anymore and if you modify the `install.rdf`-file to make them run anyhow, they’re very buggy or just nonfunctional. And if you look in your ownCloud instance (where contacts‘ birthdays are visible in the calendar tab) for a downloadable/syncable calendar you’ll reach the same conclusion like me: There is none.

But there is!

And I only detected it while digging in some github issue threads. [This post][1] contains the rescuing link to a CalDAV/ICS calendar in any ownCloud version (I tested it in 7.0.2). Just modify and use following address in any application which supports CalDAV sync:

`http(s)://YOUR-OC-URL/remote.php/caldav/calendars/YOUR-USER/contact_birthdays`

And you know what? It works like a charm! No need for external add-ons or apps, no need for manual creation of birthday reminders, no need for apologising for (almost) missed birthdays. I just wonder why ownCloud hasn’t included this in either the webpanel or the documentation. It’s a well-working feature since at least one year, so why not including it officially? And if it’s a calendar technically, then it should also be possible to disable displaying the contacts‘ birthdays in the webpanel calendar app – a still non-existent „feature“.

So next time you have no excuse for forgetting a birthday – except for your ownCloud server's outage ;)

[1]: https://github.com/owncloud/contacts/issues/67#issuecomment-30401668