Yahoo

Setting Up Your Free Yahoo Account

Getting Started

Start by logging into the Yahoo site at: http://www.yahoo.com You will see the following page. Press the Sign Up link - shown in the Red Circle.

Signing up for your Free Yahoo account

Fill out the required fields on the form shown below. Write down the ID you select for your account. This will be the user name you use in the URL on eTask and any other client application, such as iCal or Sunbird. The ID shown here is janesmithers99. Note that yahoo.com is not part of the ID.

Press the "Create My Account" button - shown in yellow at the bottom of the page. If all goes well you will get the following congratulations page. Press the yellow Continue button to log in.

Press the Yahoo! Mail link on the left side.

Press the Calendar link on the lower left side.

This brings up the "old" calendar view. You are done signing up but you still need to convert your calendar to the "new beta" calendar. See the next section.

Converting to the "All New" Yahoo Calendar Beta

Follow this link to request access to the all new Yahoo Calendar Beta: http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com/m/landing.php This is required to enable CalDAV access for eTask, iCal, and Sunbird. The following page will appear. Press the yellow Get Started button.

Select your timezone and press the yellow Go To The New Yahoo! Calendar button.

Now we're getting close. You should see the new calendar as shown below. The default Calendar is called "Jane_Smithers". This is also the name of the default To Do list. You may use this name in eTask. If you are using iCal on Snow Leopard you will not be able to use the default To Do list for tasks. You will have to create a new To Do list.

Create additional To Do Lists

Press the Plus (+) to the right of the To Dos title as shown below. Each new To Do list is accessible from eTask, iCal, Sunbird, etc.

Confirming your account

At some point during this process Yahoo will send an e-mail to the "Alternate Email" address you specified in the new account form. Press the Verify link near the bottom of the e-mail.

Your browser should now show a page like the following. You are done with the account setup. Please see the next section for important information related to Yahoo Calendars and using multiple Calendars within this account.

Important information on Tasks in Yahoo Calendars

There are a few important things you should know about Yahoo Calendars.

1. The web-based interface is limited. About all you can do is add task summaries. Due dates and other properties cannot be set through the web-interface. Yahoo does support many task properties on their server so using client applications for tasks like eTask, iCal, and Sunbird works very well. Some properties will show on the web-interface once set through a client application.

2. Newer versions of iCal cannot add tasks to the default calendar. You will get an error like "This calendar can only contain events. You can’t add to do items to this calendar." The solution is to add an additional To Do list (as shown above).

3. Tasks marked as complete with iCal will not show as complete in Yahoo. Seems to be an issue between iCal and Yahoo.

Setting the URL in eTask

To set the URL in eTask fill out the account information to include the username (example: janesmithers99) and password. Next fill out only the base URL as follows:

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/janesmithers99/calendar (base URL)

Now press the "Test & Browse" button on the eTask Account setup page. You will see something like:

Note that the icon to the right of "My To Do List" looks different then the one next to "Jane_Smithers". The blue chevron indicates that this is a To Do list. Press this line to select "My To Do List" or whatever list you have created. The selected list will then show in the Blue text box as follows:

Press Save from this screen to select the To Do List. Press Save again from the Account setup page. You are done setting up the account in eTask.

Setting the URL in other client applications

For the above example the Sunbird URL will be:

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/janesmithers99/calendar/Jane_Smithers (for the default calendar)

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/janesmithers99/calendar/My%20To%20Do%20List (for "My To Do List" example)

For some older Yahoo accounts the user name may have included the e-mail address like: janesmithers99@bellsouth.net then the URL would be:

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/janesmithers99@bellsouth.net/calendar/Jane_Smithers

See the Users Guide section on "Test & Browse" to make finding the proper URL easier in eTask.

For iCal use:

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/principals/users/janesmithers99

iCal will find the calendars and task lists automatically