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---
title: Birthday Calendar with ownCloud via CalDAV
date: 2014-09-17T22:56:46+00:00
aliases: birthday-calendar-with-owncloud-via-caldav
categories:
- blog
- 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.
As you know Im 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 friends birthday really su... well, its no good style. This almost happened to me some days ago because I couldnt 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://web.archive.org/web/20160123232734/http://www.sogo.nu:80/downloads/frontends.html) on my notebook, as well as the CalDAV calendars with [Lightning](http://web.archive.org/web/20170918023652/https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/lightning/).
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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 But for Thunderbird there are only some outdated add-ons.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 dont work with TB31 anymore and if you modify the `install.rdf`-file to make them run anyhow, theyre 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 youll 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 hasnt included this in either the webpanel or the documentation. Its a well-working feature since at least one year, so why not including it officially? And if its 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