If you’re like most people, you probably have a pretty good idea of when your friends’ birthdays are, but you might not be so sure about the exact date. Luckily, there’s an easy way to set up birthday reminders for your Facebook friends in Google Calendar.

  1. Open Google Calendar and sign in.
  2. Click the “Calendar” tab at the top of the page and select “Add Event.”
  3. In the “Event Details” field, type in your friend’s name and click “Next.”
  4. On the next screen, enter your friend’s birthday information and click “Next.”
  5. On the final screen, review your event details and click “Create Event.”
  6. Your event will now appear in your calendar! Click on it to view details and RSVP if necessary. ..

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.