Can I disable email alarms in iCal?

Question

I have iCal syncing with a Google Calendar account, and for some reason, some meeting invites that I accept wind up with an email alarm set for 10 minutes before the meeting. This causes iCal to send me an email through Mail.app at the appointed time.

This is a pain in the neck, because Mail.app launches if it's not open (and since I use a different client, it never is), and if I'm offline, Mail.app starts throwing up error messages. And besides, I don't want meeting alarms in my inbox.

Is there any way to completely disable email alarms in iCal? The only option I see is "Turn off all alarms" - but I don't want to turn off the pop-up windows, just the emails. I remove those alarms any time I come across them, but sometimes they slip through.

Answer 1

Login to your Google account, click on the triangle next to your calendar name and select Notifications.

In there you probably have the the default reminder under Event reminders. Delete it.

Answer 2

I've had the same problem using iCal with Google Calendar and Sparrow.

While there does not appear to be an option to diable only iCal's email notifications, you can disable both email and desktop notifications. In the advanced tab of iCal's preferences, select "turn off all alarms". If you don't care about iCal desktop notifications, you're all set.

If you do want desktop notifications, you may need to look into an additional app. I found CalendarBar worked for me. I already used it for quick access to my day from the menu bar. But it can push notifications to you desktop via Growl. There are probably other apps that can do the same thing, I just used what I already had on hand.