Adding Calendars
When you first established your Gmail account, you automatically received a calendar. You can also create additional calendars to share information, plan special events, or coordinate a small-group activity. Here’s how.
Configuring New Calendars
Fine-tune your calendar by adjusting its settings. If you didn’t get a chance to configure it immediately after you created it, open the settings menu by hovering over the calendar’s name in the left-side My calendars view, then click the three-dot icon. That icon reveals a fly-out menu that allows you to:
Display this only — to suppress all other calendars in the viewing windowHide from list — to suppress just this calendar from the viewing windowSettings and sharing — to tweak the calendar’s advanced options
Use the three-dot icon to select a color for the calendar as well. That color governs the tint of items in your main window. When you click the Settings and sharing option, you move to Google Calendar’s settings screens, with the focus already applied to this specific calendar. The options group into nine categories, with each category clickable in the drop-down list on the left side of the screen. Each category handles certain types of settings:
Calendar settings — repeats the basic setup info you used when you originally created the calendar. Auto-accept invitations — offers a drop-down with three settings that govern what happens when the calendar is presented with an invitation to a meeting or activity. You can either auto-accept if there’s no conflict, auto-accept all invitations, or ignore invitations entirely. If you auto-accept but there’s already a conflicting appointment, you’re invited to manually accept or decline the invitation. Access permissions — specifies the visibility of the calendar on the internet. If you click Make available to public, anyone (including Google Search!) can read the calendar. You have the chance to specify whether all event details or just free/busy info is available to the world, as well as a Get shareable link option to obtain the internet address of the calendar for distribution to others or for publication online. Share with specific people — lists every user who has specific privileges to access the calendar. Add people who already have a Google Account. You can select whether each individual person can see only free/busy info or all details. You can also grant users edit rights to change or delete events as well as manage the sharing settings of those events. Event notifications and all-day event notifications — prompt Google Calendar to send you a reminder in advance of an event. These cards set your default reminder rules. Set more than one reminder if you need the extra prodding. General notifications — sets fine-tuned alerts for when certain modifications to the calendar are made. Pick your notification type for each default alert, or leave them set to None to suppress notifications. Integrate calendar — with other services. You see a ton of options here, including the calendar’s public address and its iCal link. Remove calendar — either by clicking Unsubscribe (to leave the calendar in existence but removing your access to it) or Delete (to erase it completely, cutting off access as well for people with whom it was shared).
Other Options for Adding New Calendars
When you add a new calendar, you see options to add other types of calendars, too. If instead of adding a new blank calendar, you opted to Browse calendars of interest, you see a list of curated calendars that include public and religious holidays, sporting events, and moon phases. Picking From URL opens a window where you can paste the iCal address of any calendar to subscribe to it. Select Import to upload a local file (in the iCal or Microsoft Outlook’s CSV format).
