How to change the default email address for Apple Calendar Alerts

You can set up Apple Calendar to send you an email reminder for any event. You can go to any event on your calendar, add an alert, and there is a drop down list of email addresses to choose from. But how do you change the default email address?  I was looking everywhere for where to change the email address that Apple Calendar alerts get sent to.

The answer: change your ‘work’ or ‘home’ address in your own contact in Apple Address Book application (Contacts), not in the Calendar Application.

There’s also some good comments below – have a read!

To change the email alert address, edit your 'work' and 'home' email address in Address book!
To change this email  address, you need to edit your ‘work’ or ‘home’ email address in Apple Address book!
  1. Exit from the Calendar app and open the ‘Contacts’ app.

2. Create a new entry with your email address. (If you don’t already have one).

3. Go to the menu called ‘Card’ and select ‘Make this My Card’.

This email address will now appear as the default email address in any new events in Apple Calendar.

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28 responses to “How to change the default email address for Apple Calendar Alerts”

  1. griffin

    I have stuggled with this for years (on and off, of course)! No one had an answer!! Very simple and it worked. Thank you!

    Reply
  2. Robin

    I set a calendar alert for mileage about 7 years ago – changed the email address and it still bounces because it is no longer active. Have looked all over the place trying to find a way to change it.

    Reply
  3. confused

    “change your ‘work’ or ‘home’ address in your own contact in Apple Address book!”

    I assume you mean the Contacts app, yes? …but how do you change “your own contact”? What are the steps to find it in the Contacts app? Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Yes Apple ‘Address Book’ is now ‘Contacts’.
      To find it go to ‘Card’ menu then select ‘Go to My Card’

      Reply
  4. Camilo

    Thank you so much, this worked perfectly…it took me over 20 minutes to find a solution and you gave to all of us, thanks!

    Reply
  5. Joanna

    Thank you, thank you, thank you…. this has been driving me batty!

    Reply
  6. Bev Tankard

    I’ve checked my information in Contacts, but my Calendar still shows an old email address I no longer use, and there are no drop down alternatives!

    Any other ideas folks? Thanks!

    Reply
  7. Ortwin Gentz

    Looks like this issue still occurs in macOS Sierra. I filed a radar: http://www.openradar.me/30310439 (Calendar replies are sent from wrong account)

    Reply
  8. David

    I got to the stage of selecting “email” but when I do so it the screen dialogue says I have ti use Contacts. OK but when I open Contacts how do I select my address? Nothing is clickable so no entry opens in the New Event dialogue.

    Reply
  9. David

    In addition there is no cell for the email address in the Event dialogue box

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Thanks David, I’ve added a few extra steps to the article to make it clearer how to do this.

      Reply
    2. Phil

      To get the email address cell to come up in the Event dialog box, you have to go into the “Alerts” dropdown, then scroll to the bottom and select “Custom…”, then change the selected method default (Message) to “Email”.
      https://lensdump.com/i/8oUGK2

      Reply
  10. Greg

    Curiously only my (unused) iCloud email address will come up and none of the other addresses which I use. How can I set it up to opt for multiple addresses?

    Reply
  11. lucas

    YESSSSSS!!!! I was getting crazy. Every time I accepted an invitation another name shows up on the confirmation email. I’ve been trying to solve this for long time. Thank you.

    Reply
  12. Andrew M

    Awesome!

    Reply
  13. noah

    not sure if this is addressed in the thread. but actually it is the topmost email address in your card that will become the default. so if whatever one you want as default, put at the top of your email list in your contact, if you have several emails.

    Reply
  14. hadjibaba

    I have an imac 10,1 running on el capitan . for several years contacts or what was address book is trashed. I add records manually. 8 times , every few months the groups were trashed and records were moved to wrong groups. All this I think started when I added gmail accounts. Sometimes images were also changed to some other image which was available on line? The last draw was when the ONMYMAC group disappeared , which basically was when I gave up on adding records to contacts. Now with that in mind and in background, my ical or calendar sends alert emails to an old email address. I did what was suggested here and what happened was that it did in fact changed where its sending emails from but not where it is sending the email to . It currently sends alert emails to an old email address which I have disbled not deleted in fear of losing data or emails associated with that old email. So plain and simple , is there a way to change the email address ical sends emails to?

    Reply
    1. Tina Mulholland

      I have this problem, too. An old email address was hacked so have disabled it from Mail on my iMac (High Sierra) but I check it from time to time via the provider website to see if anything needs attending to. It’s almost all junk which I blacklist and trash. So, my calendar alerts are sent from my new email address, as correctly recorded in my Contacts Card, (I did have to correct that, incidentally) but to the old email address. How do I change the To address?

      Reply
  15. ER

    I was sending calendar invites from my iPhone to my staff. They all said that the email went to junk. I used the advice above and it totally fixed this issue. Thank you. I had never looked at my contact card before and never would have thought to look there to fix the problem.

    Reply
  16. Jim Johnson

    How can I have two email addresses to choose from when setting up an ical alert? My wife wants to have events she sets up sent only to her email address, while events I set up are sent only to my eamail address.

    Reply
  17. Erlend

    Hi!

    I have tried this, but it does not work.
    When I send an invite it uses the apple id as sender, not the mail in my contact.

    Suggestions?

    Reply
  18. Paul Phillips

    thanks so much for solving this tricky problem for me.

    Reply
  19. Sara Carlisle

    Thanks! Been trying to figure this out for awhile – very grateful for a fix for this annoying problem :)

    Reply
  20. Mahdi

    This didn’t work for me. Calendar uses the first account added to my calendar which is Google calendar (Gmail) for me.

    Reply
  21. Tanja

    Thanks for that simple solution! Wonder why I couldn’t find it anywhere in
    Apple Help. Thank you!

    Reply
  22. Lohi Karhu

    Wow… what an abstruse “thing” !!
    I’ve looked for this, several times, and yours is the first ‘solution’ that actually works!

    Who’d a thunk it!?

    Reply
  23. Archie Hickerson

    I was struggling with this for hours today and found your instructions and they were right on!!
    OUTSTANDING!!
    Thank you!
    HN

    Reply
  24. J Nile Barnes

    Does not work for Ventura, at least on my machine. It keeps asking me to link my card and I have and deleted and rebooted and done it again and again.

    Reply

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