Basic EccoPro Calendar/PhoneBook queries

I used Ecco for many years, then gave it away for most things and have 
only just started reusing it with EccoExt (on Windows 8.1 64-bit).  But 
I'm having trouble remembering how I set some things up earlier.  I hope 
these explanations are clear and that someone can get me back on the 
straight and narrow.

First -- in my PhoneBook, I have many subitems where the item text 
contains a name and the Birthday column has a date (say 19/11/1943) in 
it.  In my Calendar view, there's a Birthdays heading in the Ticklers 
section and the item text from the PhoneBook appears with date 
19/11/2014 and Recurrence "Every 19 Nov".  I can't for the life of me 
figure out how to get newly added birthday subitems in the PhoneBook to 
appear in the Calendar -- obviously, I used to be able to do it and I'm 
sure there is a very simple answer.

Second -- I have a Work Plan Notepad where one of the columns is Start 
Date.  When I have no filter applied to the PhoneBook view, all items 
from the Work Plan appear in the Ticklers section of the PhoneBook under 
the heading Start Dates.  But when I apply a simple filter to show only 
recent Start Dates, all other data in the PhoneBook view (ie, other 
Ticklers and all Appointments) disappear.  What am I missing?

Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia