40 Quick Tips for Using Google Calendar
May 20, 2009 53 Comments
Update: This list was published in 2009; for even more cool things you can do with Google Calendar, see our 50 Quick Tips for Google Calendar published in 2011.
- Let the world busy search your calendar. Under Settings > Calendars > Sharing select “Make this calendar public: See/only free busy.”
- Set a 5 day calendar. Under Settings > General, go to “Custom View” and select the number of days you want to display
- Change default view. Under Settings > General, select Day, Week, Month, or configure a custom view for “Default view.”
- Change your Calendar name. Click on the down-arrow next to your calendar and select “Calendar settings.” Choose thefirst option to change Calendar name
- Tasks are now on the Calendar. The link is in the upper-left corner. Read more on Google’s site.
- Attach your meeting agenda. In the event details, select “Add a Google document” (and make sure to share the Google Doc beforehand so recipients can open it).
- Create a notes-only calendar. You can create sub-calendars for lots of reasons, such as notes, checkout items or personal use; select Create in the “My calendars” box at left.
- Set multiple reminders. You can have up to 5 reminders set to different times for each event.
- Change the color of your Calendar. Click on the arrow next to your calendar and select the color you’d like.
- Include a calendar item in your Gmail message. When typing up an email message, click “Add event invitation.”
- Add phases of the moon to your Calendar. Go to “Other calendars” and select Add public calendar
- Save your calendar as a PDF. Click on the Print button. A window will come up that will allow you to select “Save as.”
- Added the wrong thing? After every save you should be able to click Undo at the top of the screen.
- Quickly turn off all other calendars. On the arrow next to the calendar you want to see, select “Display only this calendar.”
- Meeting goes long and need to schedule another? Go to the the original event and select More actions > Duplicate event. This will allow you to send out a copy of the original invite at a different time.
- Have the day’s agenda emailed to you. Go to a calendar’s notification tab and select “Email daily agenda.”
- Add notes to your calendar and still be available in busy searches. Set “Show me as available”
- Hide the Calendar selections. There is an arrow next to “My calendars “and “Other calendars”; click this arrow to hide the list.
- Add a time in the name of an all day event. Either edit using Event details or use quotation marks around the time.
- Should I go to a meeting? When you receive an invite you’ll see a quick agenda view of the day of the appointment in the upper-right corner. You can also click “View calendar.”
- Add your calendar to an RSS Reader. Link it with HTML under “Calendar address.”
- Put your Calendar on your Gmail screen. In Gmail, go to Settings > Labs to enable the Google Calendar gadget.
- Add holidays to your calendar. Go to “Other calendars “and select Add > Add a public calendar.
- Add the Boise State Calendar. Go to Google Sites, click Browse sites, then click Calendar. When you bring up the Boise State Calendar page you can select the calendar you want. Add this to your calendar screen by clicking on the + in the bottom right corner.
- Hide the guest list. If you don’t want others to know who is coming to a meeting, uncheck “see guest list” in an event’s details.
- Put your meeting on the map. Put your address in the “Where” field in Event details. Recipients will have a link to a map to show them where the meeting is to take place.
- Grant friends or family rights to your calendar. Under Sharing, add the email address of a friend or family member and select the appropriate rights.
- Email your reminder. Reminders can be set to email or pop up on your screen
- Busy Search before scheduling. In the “Create event details” screen select “Check guest and resource availability.”
- Move an event to a different calendar. Under the appointment event details, select “Calendar” and change the option to a different calendar.
- Quickly add a task when creating an all-day event. You can switch between Event and Task in the all-day event dialog window.
- Automatically Select a Time. In the Busy Search screen, click “Find next available time.”
- Set your meetings to recur often. In the “Create event details” screen, select “Repeat” and specify the timeframe of the meeting.
- Put your department calendar on to your department web page. Under Calendar details is HTML code to paste into your website.
- Change the owner. Sometimes you may schedule a meeting but you don’t want to manage it long-term. Change the owner by selecting “More actions” under the event details.
- Search your calendar. Click on “Show search options” and select the details you would like to search on.
- Quick add an event. Click on “Quick add” at upper-left in your Calendar, type in the event name and date, and it will automatically add the event on your calendar.
- Display the weather. Set your location and click “Show weather” in Calendar settings.
- Copy an event to another calendar. Under the appointment details, select “More actions.”
- Print out calendar with meeting details. Choose the “Agenda view” and click Print. Make sure to select “Print descriptions.”
I am creating a team calendar for a high school soccer team. I have created the calendar and set the permissions to public. In testing I had my son was able to search and access the calendar and it shows up on the computer under “other calendars”. We have not been able to find how he can then get the events onto his google calendar on his phone. Of course I could set it on his phone with my password for the site but don’t want to give it to all the players and parents. What setp am I missing?
Sharon, to a degree this depends on your son’s phone. On the device, browse to m.google.com. Choose Mobile Apps > Sync, and read about configuring multiple calendars for the type of phone your son uses. In a nutshell, you use Google Sync to choose which calendars show up on the phone.
Alternately, you can you create calendar appointments on the team calendar and invite all of the team members via their email addresses for each event (use Google Groups to set up a group for your team); for those who use a calendar, they can then have those events show up on their personal calendars, or manually add the information to a calendar.
Is the Daily Agenda only available for everyday – as opposed to only an agenda when you actually have events going on?
The Daily Agenda feature doesn’t keep track of what’s on (or not on) your calendar. It simply emails you an Agenda view of your calendar each morning, whether anything is on it or not.
I understand Google task can automatically be transferred to your calendar once the task is dated. however, if i want to time the task, let’s say at 1pm March 15 i want to make an important call to my boss, that goes to the calendar as a task on the very top, and not at the 1pm slot. How do i transfer it from task to automatically go to 1PM.
Thank you
Google Tasks is a limited task management helper application. It’s not possible to “move” a task with a due date from the “all day event” section of the calendar to a specific time. Instead, you can either create the event manually at a specific time, or send an email to your boss inviting you/him to the call and do the calendar event within the email.
I keep a Department Calendar and one Dept member only wants to see items he is interested in. Is there any way for him to “turn off” or “delete” some items for himself, and not for everyone? Or, do I have to invite him to every function so that he can turn down or accept what he wants? I understand that he could copy the items he’s interested in on to his calendar, and then turn off the Dept calendar, but then we run into the problem of him remembering to turn it back on.
Greetings to Woods Hole! With regard to turning down or accepting what he wants, we generally solve that issue by leveraging the “Make some attendees optional” feature when inviting guests. So, if I really do expect someone to be at a meeting, he’ll get a normal invite, but if I want to leave the decision to attend up to the recipient, then I’ll make her “optional.” She can then pick and choose. There isn’t a way for a viewer to hide items on a shared calendar he doesn’t want to see.
I have two calendars. How to use quick add feature to add event to a specific calendar (not the default one)?
This is a commonly requested feature. Unfortunately, Quick Add is intended only as a feature for your own (default) calendar. Perhaps Google will add functionality to give you more options for Quick Add in the future.
How can users of my website use the google search feature on my embedded google calendar?
Mary, I’m not aware of a way you can do so. An alternative is for people who want to search events within your calendar (if that’s what you’re asking for) to click the Google Calendar button at bottom-right in your embedded calendar. This will open your Calendar within a new tab/window in a browser, and users can search.
Thanks Shad, that really helps.
What do I need to do if our Google calendar is showing “busy” when viewed from our website?
Jan, this is a usually a calendar security issue. Depending on with whom you’re sharing your calendar, it sounds like the Permission Settings are set to “See only free/busy (hide details).” If you change this setting under “Share this Calendar” in your Google Calendar settings area, that should resolve the issue.
Is there a way to share the details of some events, but not others? For instance, I want people to know I am out of office for a doctor’s appointment, but I don’t want them to know any of the details.
Mark any appointment you want to keep to yourself as “Private” in the Event Details screen. See http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=34580&hl=en for details.
Shad -
Great post!
Is there a way to NOT have email and pop-up reminders be automatically generated as a default every time you add a calendar entry?
There isn’t a way to prevent the reminders from automatically being created for every new event, but you can remove or change the reminder from any invitation you receive via the Event Details screen.
I replied too soon; Mark Fitzgerald just pointed out that if you remove the default reminder from the Notifications page in your Calendar settings, the default reminder will not be automatically generated.
Thanks, Mark & Shad, for the info. It’s exactly what I was hoping for!
Is there a way to print the calendar by week and month and have everything that you typed appear in the boxes? When I print, I lose some of the information because it is hidden and does not show on the printout.
There isn’t a way to have everything appear on the printout in a week or month view. Google’s intention, I think, is to give you quick at-a-glance appointment info via printouts, but to keep all of the details available only electronically.
I would like to copy last years google calendar to this years. I have exported/imported but it will copy to last years dates. I don’t want to copy the whole calendar one event at a time
Bob, I’m not aware of an “easy” button to copy calendar events from one year to another. If you have recurring events that transfer over to the new year, you can edit the recurring events and change the dates (or just the end time) to take you through the new year.
Hi Bob!
Here’s a suggestion. Requires a tiny bit of footwork on your part.
1. Go to your calendar’s settings. Click on the PRIVATE ICAL link, and then the link it shows you, and save the .ics file to your hard disk.
2. Open the .ics in wordpad. (under start-programs-accessories usually) Select Edit->Replace, and for the find what type this:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:2010
for the replace with type this:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:2011
Do the same with DTEND;VALUE=DATE:2010…
Save the .ics file.
3. On Google Calendar, go to other calendars -> import calendar. (by the way, I tested this out with a test calendar first!) Give it your .ics filename, pick the right calendar from the dropdown, and import.
Worked great for me. Kind of a cool thing to know!
Hope this helps!
Susan
Susan, thanks for coming through with that impressive Google Fu!
Thanks Susan! This worked great. Thanks so much for taking the time to post this comment
Hi, I ve just moved from outlook to google and still struggling a little. I find that I edit an event and add notes in the description section -save it , but when I go back later the description is empty. Is there a better way to add notes that stick with the event (like the topic for the meeting) or do I need to do something else to be able to get that info back thank you!
Penny
Penny, I can’t replicate your calendar issues. Adding/editing description text works fine at any time on my end.
i work at a school and would like to set up a booking form/calender for the recording studio so that students can book sessions online.
My question is how can i stop students deleting events created by other students?
please heellpppp!
Mark, assuming your students are all using Google Apps, they can create an appointment on their own calendar and then choose the “Add Rooms, etc.” option in the Event Details of the appointment to add the studio calendar to the appointment. This way you don’t have to give them any management rights to the studio calendar.
I have embedded the calendar on my site and trying to turn weekends off (to make more space for Mon-Fri). Although I could turn weekends off on calendar itself, they still show on calendar on my site. Is it any way to show only weekdays on my site calendar page?
Under Calendar Settings (at top-right in Calendar), set “Show weekends” to No.
Thanks to your tips! I’ve been searching how to customize our google calendar so it would only display Mondays to Fridays only. Haven’t use the meeting feature. I will it one of this days.
Under calendar settings there is an option called “Show Weekends” Select no. This only works for the week and month views, but not for the custom view.
Is there a way to have an event that’s on two calendars, but just shows up once? For example, my son’s school has a Google calendar that shows all school events and my son has his own calendar for his events. Sometimes I want to see all of the school events on my screen, but sometimes I just want to see my son’s. If an event is both a school event and an event for my son, I don’t want to see it twice.
If you’re subscribing to both calendars, you’re always going to see events appearing on both calendars. Beyond color-coding your calendars so it’s immediately apparent which calendar items you’re looking at, another option could be for your son to mark school events on his calendar as “Private,” which (assuming “Make this calendar public” is unchecked in his sharing settings) would at least prevent you seeing duplicate events when looking at both calendars.
…another thing that I started doing… if both you and your son can both see his school calendar, then there’s really no reason for him to duplicate those same events on his own calendar. If he’s doing it just because he wants the reminders/alerts, then as Shad mentioned, he could make short, private calendar entries just for the events that he wants the notifications.
Hi Shad, Thanks for all these tips.
I’m using one single calendar for both my Business and personal meetings. I want to share my calendar with my assistant, and allow her to change events. However, I would like to mark some events as personals and hide the content of these events to my assistant (these specific event should then be displayed as “busy” when seen by anybody else than me).
is there any way to do this ???
thanks
Laurent
Laurent,
If your assistant has full rights to manage your calendar (change events), she’ll be able to see the content of any event you label as “Private.” One workaround would be for you to create a separate calendar you would only use to display your private events and allow your assistant to view (not manage) that calendar; your assistant could then block out any of these private events on your public calendar for you.
- Shad
Can I see my partners calendar in the same way I see my calendar if I click the shared calendar in the left hand icon bar. Outlook 2003 & 2007 does this and is essential for our business
Yes, you can, provided your partner shares his/her calendar with you.
Hi Shad,
do you know of a way to disallow double-booking of a resource on the Gmail calendar? Or even to set “Show only available” throughout the domain so that we don’t have people over-riding each other’s reservations of meeting rooms?
thank you. I am not part of the university, just wandered across your helpful site.
Michael, beyond asking schedulers to bear the responsibility of checking a resource’s availability prior to booking, you can also configure a resource calendar to deny new appointments when a resource is already booked (Settings > Calendar Details > Auto-accept invitations).
Is there an easy way to schedule on-going meetings throughout the year? In GW there was a calendar provided so we could select dates rather than every Monday or Tuesday, etc.
Hi Valencia. There is no “custom” recurring event feature in Google Calendar. However, I know it’s something a lot of people have been asking for (especially former GroupWiser users), so I hope Google finds a way to add this feature in the future. You can always suggest features to Google by going to Settings > Labs in Google Calendar and clicking the link for “Give feedback and make suggestions about Calendar Labs.”
DITTO Valencia’s request!!! I’ll submit the feedback to Google – and Shad if you are able, PLEASE keep this on the list of items we need from them. That one item is probably the biggest pet peeve about my job, because what used to take minutes now takes hours or days because of interuptions. Thanks!
Stephanie, keep in mind “recurring appointments” seems to mean different things to different people. A recurring appointment follows a pattern of logic; while Google Calendar may not allow for all patterns of logic when creating recurring appointments, it certainly does allow for most patterns of logic. The feature of picking dates at random to set up repeating appointments was fairly unique to GroupWise, and certainly not something found in most other major calendaring systems.
Number 14: I see how to quickly turn them off but how do you quickly turn them back on? Without having to click on each one individually?
You can quickly turn them off, but Google Calendar doesn’t remember which ones you turned off, so the only way to turn them back on is to click one at a time.
This is a very useful reminder of the functionality of Calendar -and advice to keepprivate family friends events off the main public one. Good work!
#24 should read “Google Sites.” I’ve updated the post. Click “Sites” at the top-left in any Google Apps application, then click “Browse sites within boisestate.edu” at the bottom of the screen. Locate “calendar” on the left, then choose “Boise State Calendars.”