If you’re like most people, you probably have a Facebook page and a Google Calendar. If you don’t, now is the time to get started! Facebook and Google Calendar are both great tools for managing your calendar. You can set up reminders for events on Facebook and Google Calendar, and then when you have an event that needs to be remembered, you can easily add it to your calendar using either tool. Here’s how to set up birthday reminders on both Facebook and Google Calendar:

  1. On Facebook, open the Settings page and click on the General tab. Under Birthday Reminders, click on the Add New button. Enter a name for your reminder (e.g., “Happy Birthday”) and select whether you want to include photos or not (you can always add them later). Click on the Add button and wait until the reminder is created.
  2. On Google Calendar, open the main window and click on My Events. In the left column, under Birthday Reminders, click on the Add New button. Enter a name for your reminder (e.g., “Happy Birthday”) and select whether you want to include photos or not (you can always add them later). Click on the Add button and wait until the reminder is created.

If you want to keep on top of birthdays for all your Facebook friends, but you don’t want to check Facebook all the time, you can import those birthdays into Google Calendar, where you can then setup reminders.

Update: As noted in the comments, you can also export events like birthdays directly from the Events page in Facebook. The instructions have been updated to explain that method instead.

Editor’s Note: of course, if you just want to get an email when your Facebook friends have a birthday coming up, Facebook has that feature under Account Settings –> Notifications. If you want to consolidate everything into Google Calendar, this also works.

This is a guest post by Shankar Ganesh.

Enabling Google Calendar Reminders for Birthdays

Head into Facebook, click Events on the left menu, and then Birthdays.

Now scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find the Export Birthdays link.

This will pop up a dialog with a link, and you’ll need to copy the link.

Now head into Google Calendar, look for the Add button under the “Other Calendars” box, and use the Add by URL function.

Paste in the URL from Facebook.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now, from the “My Calendars” menu in the left panel, click on the small arrow next to the appropriate calendar and choose “Notifications”

You can now use the drop down menu to add SMS or email reminders before a set number of days/weeks.

You can add multiple reminders – may be you can add one that sends you an alert via email a week before a birthday and another that sends a text message a day before a birthday.