How to Stay Organized With Google Calendar

• Get organized
• Collaborate with others
• Stay connected wherever you are
• Privacy
• Additional resources

Quick tip: If you’re transitioning from another calendar application, read our instructions on importing your existing events to Google Calendar, or enabling Google Calendar Sync with Microsoft Outlook Calendar.

Get organized

Once you’ve signed in to your new account, you’re ready to start filling in the white space. If you want to just use one primary calendar, you’ll probably want to dive right in to adding events.

Add events

1. Click the Create Event link on the upper-left of Google Calendar.
2. Fill in the date, starting time, end time, location, and description of your event. If you’re using multiple calendars, you can also select which calendar this event should be on from the Calendar drop-down menu.
3. If you’d like to be reminded of your event, set your desired notification setting. You can be notified by email, text message, or a pop-up message on your computer (though this one only works if Google Calendar is currently open on your computer).
4. Click Save.

There are also a few other ways you can create events:

• The Quick Add feature allows you to enter the most basic event details, and interprets how to display your event with minimal fuss on your part.
• You can also create an event by clicking the appropriate time slot in the calendar itself (drag your mouse to alter the length of the event). After entering the event title, you can click Create Event if you’re all done, or edit event details if you want to add more info.

Add calendars

If you’ve got a few lives you’re trying to balance, you can create additional calendars to stay organized.

1. Click the Add button on the left of your main calendar page.
2. Select Create a new calendar from the menu.
3. Enter all the relevant information on the Calendar Details page. Give your calendar a name, description, time zone, and add the email address of anybody you’d like to share it with. (There’s more on sharing calendars later on in this guide.)
4. Click Create Calendar.

If you think you’re going to be working with a few calendars, it’s helpful to assign colors to distinguish your calendars from one another. To do this, click the down-arrow next to the appropriate calendar’s name in the calendar list on the left and select a color from the menu that appears.

Collaborate with others

While Google Calendar can help you keep track of where you need to be at any given minute, it’s also a great tool for collaborating with your friends and family. Here are a few ways Calendar can help you manage your social life.

Share your calendar

You’ll be the best judge of if and how you’d like to share your calendar information with others. But just to get your ideas going, here are a few examples of how you can use the ‘Share with specific people’ feature of your calendar:

• See only free/busy (hide details): You have a calendar for your small business and want your clients to see when you’re free, but don’t want them to see all your appointment details.
• See all event details: You manage a softball team and want everyone to see when your games are. You can share your ‘Softball’ calendar with them, but nobody will be able to change any of the event details and accidentally cause you to forfeit a game.
• Make changes to events: You’re sharing a ‘Hawaiian Vacation’ calendar with your travel-mate and want to help each other plan your tropical itinerary.
• Make changes AND manage sharing: You’re sharing a calendar with coworkers, who may in turn want to share it with their individual managers or teammates.

If one of these options sounds like a good fit, follow these instructions to share your calendar:

1. In the calendar list on the left, click the down-arrow next to the appropriate calendar, then select Share this calendar.
2. Enter the email address of the user with whom you want to share your calendar.
3. From the drop-down menu, select the desired level of permission, then click Add Person .

Note: Once you click Add Person, the person you selected to share the calendar with will receive an email invitation to view your calendar.

Send invitations

Invitations let you circulate information about a particular event (without requiring you to share your entire calendar with others). Here’s how it works:

1. Click on the event to which you’d like to invite guests (or, create a new event).
2. Click the edit event details link.
3. In the Guests box on the right, enter the email addresses of the people you’re inviting (if you’re a Gmail user, you can click the Choose from contacts link to see your contacts list).
4. Select the level of control you’d like your guests to have (e.g. whether they can invite more people to your event, view who else has been invited).
5. Click Save. (Your guests will be able to respond to the event and have the option to leave comments in the event details.)

Public calendars and public events

By making your calendar public, you’re sharing your event information with the entire world. To create your own calendar and add it to the Google Calendar search results, follow the instructions above to create a calendar and check the ‘Make this calendar public’ box.

Embed in your website

You can also embed your public calendar in your website or blog (maybe you have a website for your coffee shop and want to publicize a calendar of upcoming musical performances). Here’s how:

1. Select the calendar you want to embed from your Calendars list, and click the down-arrow next to it (note that you’ll have to make your calendar public in order to embed it).
2. Select Calendar settings.
3. In the ‘Embed This Calendar’ section, copy the iframe code displayed in the white box (pictured below).
4. Paste this code into your website to embed your calendar.

Anyone who views your website will be able to see the events on your calendar, so make sure you don’t embed calendars that contain any information you don’t feel like sharing with everyone.

Stay connected wherever you are

Hopefully, some of your scheduled events will have you doing activities away from your computer. Don’t worry; you can access Google Calendar on your mobile device. Just enter http://www.google.com/calendar in your phone’s web browser to sign in. You’ll be able to view your agenda, add events, and invite others (at this time, you can’t edit or delete existing events from your mobile device).

You can also stay connected via your mobile device by setting up SMS reminders for your events. With this feature enabled, we’ll send you a text message (you have control over how far in advance) with the name, time, and location of your event.

Visit SMS for Google Calendar.

Privacy

We recognize the importance of protecting the privacy and security of your information in Google Calendar. To make sure you’re covered, we recommend reading up on these privacy articles. Please be assured that none of your calendar information will be shared with anyone unless you decide it should be.

Additional Resources

Now that you have the tools to get started, keep in mind that there’s plenty of information available to assist you as you continue to navigate through Google Calendar. We encourage you to discover more features in our Help Center or discuss Google Calendar with our community of users in the Google Calendar Help Group.