Scheduling events from electronic messages

A communications device enabled to communicate over a communications network with other devices, comprising:

• a display;
• a user input device;
• a messaging module for exchanging electronic messages with other devices;
• a storage storing electronic messages sent or received by the device;
• and
• a scheduling module configured for identifying by the communications device of a first occurrence of a date in a message body of an electronic message meeting predetermined criteria;
• extracting by the communications device of the identified date from the message body;
• displaying on the display an event scheduling interface for scheduling an event, the event scheduling interface having a plurality of input fields for receiving information about the event;
• automatically populating by the communications device of a date input field of the event scheduling interface with the identified date extracted from the message body, wherein the predetermined criteria specifies that any date contained in a header portion of a previous message embedded in the message body is not to be populated in the date input field of the event scheduling interface.

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions for scheduling an event on an electronic communications device configured for sending and receiving electronic messages over a communications network, the instructions including instructions for:

• identifying by the communications device of a first occurrence of a date in a message body of an electronic message meeting predetermined criteria;
• extracting by the communications device of the identified date from the message body;
• displaying on a display of the communications device an event scheduling interface for scheduling an event, the event scheduling interface having a plurality of input fields for receiving information about the event;
• and
• automatically populating by the communications device of a date input field of the event scheduling interface with the identified date extracted from the message body,
• wherein the predetermined criteria specifies that any date contained in a header portion of a previous message embedded in the message body is not to be populated in the date input field of the event scheduling interface.