Are you new to Google Calendar or perhaps you just need a refresher?
Either way, you are in the right place because in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about Google Calendar.
Let's get started with adding and editing an event.
To adding new event, simply click on the area of your schedule where you would like it to be placed. I'm going to select 11:00 AM on Wednesday.
By selecting this, it will bring up a mini window where I can immediately start to type in the title of my event. This is going to be the quickest way to add an event.
So for example, maybe I'm scheduling a lunch with my friend Todd. I'm going to enter in that title and then hit enter on my computer and immediately that event is added to my schedule.
However, if we double click anywhere on our calendar, we are brought to the full screen version of that event where we have access to all of the different features and criteria.
And this is where I would recommend you get used to both adding and editing your events.
So here I'm going to start by entering a title. Let's say this is going to be a meeting with my friend Jen, and then down below I can choose if I need to alter any of the times.
Now, if I didn't choose the correct date, I can come in here and select the correct date on this mini calendar selection. And if I need to adjust the time, so for example, maybe it's not going to last a full hour, I'm going to come here and select and reduce this to just a 30 minute meeting.
Now that my dates start and end times are correct, I can then come down and choose if this is going to be an all day event and if it needs to repeat.
Now, the majority of your events are going to fill a particular time slot, but there will be occasions where maybe you are traveling, maybe it's a birthday or some other all day event. If that's the case, you're going to want to check this checkbox. By doing so, it will eliminate any of the times that were currently listed up above.
But in my example, I'm going to leave it as this specific time and maybe if I need to make this meeting reoccurring, I can come here and select this does not repeat dropdown and see the other options available to me.
Now it begins by giving me several choices such as daily, weekly, monthly, and other options available. But if none of these seem to fit what I am looking for, I can come all the way down to the bottom and select this custom option.
So for example, maybe I want to meet with Jen twice a week, not only on Wednesdays, but I also want to meet on Fridays as well. So I'm going to select that day of the week here as well. Down below, I need to choose when this recurrence will end. By default never is selected, meaning that this will continue to repeat week after week after week.
But in most cases, you're going to want to set an end date. I can either choose on, which means I will have to select some date in the future. Maybe this particular meeting is going to end at the end of August or if I don't want to choose a particular date, I can also select after meaning after a number of occurrences. So maybe I'm going to say after nine occurrences, that's when I want this repeat to finish.
When I'm happy with my changes here, I can select done and it will give me a summary up here as well.
Now down below we have a section called event details. By default, you will see this button add Google Meet video conferencing, meaning that we can add a conferencing link directly to this event.
Now if you don't use Google Meet, that's fine as well. You can always copy and paste a Zoom meeting link or some other video conferencing link either in the location or in the description area.
Speaking of location, it can be very valuable to add a specific location to your events.
Let's say for example, I'm going to be meeting with Jen at a local restaurant. I'm going to come in here and start to type in the name of that restaurant and immediately Google will provide some suggestions. Here's the one that I want, and not only will it fill out the complete address, but what makes it even more convenient is that if I come all the way over here to the right and select this preview in maps, it will show me exactly where this restaurant is located. So if I need to find my driving directions or other information about where we're meeting, I can have access to that.
Here on the right hand side of my screen, down below location, we can choose to set a notification time by default within my calendar. I have it set for five minutes, meaning that I will receive a reminder both here on my desktop but also within my phone five minutes before the start of this event. Now maybe if I need to travel somewhere, I need to give myself some additional time. So let me go and change that to 20 minutes here. You can also come down below and add additional notifications if desired.
So for example, instead of just an alert, I'm going to come up here and select email and say that maybe two days in advance I'd like a reminder sent to my email inbox - About this particular event. You can add up to five different types of notifications for a single event, and if you need to change this, you can come over here to the X and remove it.
Next, we can choose as to where this event will be displayed. Now by default, any new event will be displayed in your default calendar. In my case, it's called Scott's calendar, but if I select this dropdown, I could say that this should be listed under my family calendar, for example, and it will change to the appropriate default color for that calendar. If I go back to my Scott's calendar, not only can you see that it's changed it to this purple, but I could change it to another color if I wanted to, something different than my default calendar, but I find it's often most helpful to keep the assigned color associated with the respective calendar.
Then below our calendar option, we can choose if we want this event to be shown as busy or free. Meaning are we still available for other meetings or other appointments or do we want to show this as busy?
This is most relevant if you are going to be sharing your calendar with anyone else so that they can see your details and see if someone else can book you at the same time. And the dropdown next to it is very related. Here we can say if we want to keep the default visibility, which in my case happens to be public, meaning anyone that I share my entire calendar with will be able to see the details of this, but if I want to keep it private, I could change it to private here as well. Again, these two options are only relevant if you are sharing your calendar with colleagues or other parties outside of your individual account.
And then lastly, on the left hand side of your screen, you can add a description, you can paste in a link or include a meeting agenda. You can even come up here and add an attachment if you like. Now on the right hand side of the screen, we have the opportunity to add guests to this event.
Of course, this is not a requirement, but there are going to be many meetings or appointments where you want to make sure that others are invited and that they have these same details which you have created here by entering in your cursor and starting to enter in an email address.
You will have access to your Google contacts or you can simply type in a new address if you like. All of your guests, including yourself as the organizer will be listed down below. So if you need to hover over and find out more information, you can. And if you need to remove any guests, you can come over here to the right and select the x.
Down below we have three more options, which we want to review. And these are our guest permissions. Do we want to allow our guests to modify this event? I would say that in most cases you want to leave this unchecked and that only the organizer can modify the event, but the next two may be more optional. Maybe you want to allow others to invite more people to this event. If so, you can leave this checked. And are you okay with sharing the entire guest list With everyone else on the list, you can choose to check or uncheck this option here. When we're happy with making our changes, we can come up to the top and hit that save button.
Now, in this example, because I have included guests, I am prompted with this message, would you like to send invitation emails to Google calendar guests? In most cases, you'll want to say send notifying them both of this event and allowing them to add it directly to their own calendar. But perhaps you've already verbally agreed with this individual and you don't need to send an invitation.
You can choose this option here or go back to editing if need be. In my case, I am going to select send and I am now brought back to my main calendar. Here we can see it has created our new event and it's even showing me the name of the location beside it as well.
Now, if we ever need to go and make changes, we can simply click on this event and once again, we are brought to this mini view of the event, come up to the top and select edit event, and we are brought back to our full screen area here. We can continue to make any changes and then hit save when we are done.
Now, if we need to delete an event, once again, we're going to select that and we can select the trash can item here. Or if you happen to be in full editing mode, we can come up to the more actions drop down and select delete from the options available here.
Now there's one special thing to note when you go to delete a recurring event. Let's go into this event one more time and I'm going to select delete From the more actions menu. I'm going to be prompted with a new screen that says Delete recurring event by default. This event, the first option will be selected, meaning that when I say, okay, it is only going to delete this specific event and not the other eight occurrences of this event.
Of course we have other options available here as well. We can choose this and following events, meaning this and all of the future events will be deleted, or we can choose last option here. And this is most relevant, if you've selected an event in the middle of a recurrence, this option will delete everything as a part of this event.
In many cases, you will only want to delete or edit this specific event, so you can leave this one selected and then select. Okay, and now because I have added guests, I can choose to include an optional message. If I like. In my example, I'm going to say, don't send, I'm brought back to my calendar.
You can see that this event has been deleted, but if I go forward into the future, you can see that my other occurrences of this event have remained.
Now that you're familiar with creating editing and deleting events, let's take a look at the different views that we have available to us. Currently I am viewing my calendar in the weekly view, which is my preferred view, but we have other options available to us. If we come up to the top right hand corner and select this dropdown, we can view a daily view, we can view our weekly view, we can view a monthly view, or we can also view an annual view.
This yearly view is perhaps not that helpful for seeing anything on your calendar, but it does make it easy to jump to a date in the future. Lastly, we have the option to view a schedule view, which will condense all of our events or meetings into a more linear or list view.
Within the schedule view, you will only see dates that actually have events listed. So for example, here you can see we have things on June 21st, but then it jumps directly to June 24th, meaning that I have no events scheduled between the two dates in between.
And just like our other views, we can click on any of these options here and see a preview or go in and start to edit these events as well.
Now, a bonus tip for viewing your calendar involves making use of the mini calendar here on the left hand side. If we take our cursor and click on a start date and drag it to another date, we can see that stretch of dates at any time. Let's say for example, I just want to see what's happening next weekend. I'm going to click on the 15th and I'm going to drag it to the 16th. Now I am just viewing Saturday and Sunday. What if I want to see the next two weeks together? I'm going to click on the 16th and drag it all the way to the 29th. Now I've got a two week view in front of you. So an advanced way to look at just what you want using the mini calendar.
And an extra bonus tip is to use the G key on your keyboard. This will bring up a prompt called go to date where you can type in any date in the past or future and even use natural language. So for example, I'm going to say next October, I'm not even going to spell October as a whole, and I'm going to hit enter on my keyboard and it's immediately going to bring me to October.
I'm going to say G again, and this time maybe I'm going to say February, 2026 and hit enter and immediately I'm brought to that specific date. Of course, if you always want to go back to today, the easiest way to do so is to make use of the today button here in the top left hand corner.
Lastly, when it comes to viewing your calendar, if you want to maximize the amount of viewing space, you can come up here to this hamburger menu, select main menu, and that will collapse your left hand side panel. This will maximize your viewing of whatever view that you are in, and if you need to expand it again, we can simply select it one more time.
Next, let's take a look at how we can create multiple calendars here so we can manage multiple schedules and also keep our interface nice and clean. Here you can see that I have a number of different calendars, so I can separate my personal calendar from my family calendar to my work calendar, and even my softball league. This makes it nice and easy for me to see the distinction. So for example, here I have listed both my softball practices and a game that I have coming up later this week. But if I just want to focus on my main calendar, I can always uncheck this calendar and just focus on the tasks or the meetings at hand.
To create your own multiple calendars, we want to come down here to other calendars and select the plus button. We have a number of options available to us here, but what we want to select is create new calendar that will bring us into our settings where we need to give this new calendar a name. Let's say, for example, I've just joined a pickleball league, so I want to create a pickleball calendar for all of the things associated with that league.
I give it the name up here. I can add a description if I want to, but it's not necessary. And then if this calendar happens to be specific to a different time zone, then my default, I can choose that here as well.
I'm going to go ahead and select create calendar, and in just a few seconds, it gives me a confirmation message at the bottom of the screen. By selecting the back arrow in the top left hand corner of the screen, I'm returned to my calendar view, and here we can now see on the left hand side, I have a pickle ball calendar.
You will remember when we create our events, we have the options to choose which calendar we would like it to appear on. So the next time I need to add a pickleball game, I will make sure to assign it to that pickleball calendar. And to make it even easier to distinguish the differences between your multiple calendars, we can come over here and select the more dots and change the colors. For example, maybe I want to change my softball league to more of this mustard looking color. I can do so here.
Lastly, it can be very helpful to add other calendars such as local holidays, religious events, or maybe other things that you're interested in. Once again, we're going to select this plus button here, and this time we're going to select browse calendars of interest.
Here, Google has provided us with a number of available options. We can choose if we want to add contacts that have birthday information displayed. We can choose if we want to add regional holidays, either for your own country or maybe other countries as well down below a selection of religious holidays and even sporting events that you can add to your calendar too.
Now, if you'd like to learn more advanced tips on how to use Google Calendar, I recommend you'd watch the playlist on the screen now, and if you have further questions, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
