FOR GOOGLE CALENDARHACKS

10HELPFUL

Google Calendar is more than a simple time management service that reminds you of your appointments (though it does that well). Properly tuned, Google Calendar is an indispensable communications tool, informing friends, family and colleagues of your commitments, and informing you when all the other important people in your life and work are available. The key to unlocking the potential of Google Calendar is to make it as simple as possible to create your own events, and to monitor the events of others. Below we outline 10 basic tips, tricks and tweaks to get the most into and out of Google Calendar.

Introduction

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Like all the core Google Apps, Google Calendar can function perfectly well without an Internet connection. All it requires is that you’re running the Google Chrome browser and have a few settings enabled. Once set up, you can view any of your past appoints while offline, and even RSVP for future events; your responses will be saved and then sent once you’re reconnected to the ‘net.

Internet outages won’t make

you late when you can view

Google Calendar offline

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If you’re not using Google Calendar on a touchscreen device, you can very quickly add, delete, edit or respond to events with Google Calendar’s keyboard shortcuts. And if you can’t seem to remember what the shortcuts are, just remember this one: [CTRL]+[/] on a PC (or [CMD]+[/] on a Mac) will bring up the list of Google Calendar hot-keys for easy reference.

Power through time-

management tasks with

Google Calendar’s keyboard

shortcuts

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Skip the long entry form with

Google Calendar’s Quick Add

eventsGoogle Calendar’s event-creation form has a rather intimidating number of fields, allowing you to set very specific parameters about times, locations, agendas, attached files, recurrence and a number of other attributes. That can be overkill if you just want to mark down a reminder for lunch with your spouse on Tuesday. Fortunately, GCal’s Quick Add let’s you simply enter all the relevant data in the event name field—literally, type in “lunch with Pat at Seviche on Tuesday at noon”—at Google Calendar will parse out the data and populate the correct fields. It’s as easy as can be.

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Start your day right with a daily

email of your Google

Calendar agenda

Google calendar can help you plan your day without ever visiting Google Calendar; just get an email of your daily agenda of appointments sent to you every morning.

Google Calendar Agenda

One a day

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Make plans fast with Google

Calendar’s Jump to Date

Labs feature

We’ve all been there: someone asks if you’re free for lunch on the 17th of next month, and you have to scroll through a few screens and views to answer the question. With the Jump to Date feature from GCal Labs, you get a right-column control that lets you instantly skip ahead to any past or future date.

OCTOBER

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Take the pain out of

scheduling group meetings

with Google Calendar’s Find

a Time feature

Have you ever sent out a meeting invite for tomorrow at 2pm, only to be inundated with declines and conflicting requests to reschedule. Thus begins a protracted email string where everyone proposes and counter-proposes times that best suit the, and you’re left to referee it all. Well, you can skip all that with Google Calendar’s Find a Time feature, which will check the calendars of every invitee (so long as they’re public and/or shared with you) to locate the next time everyone is mutually available.

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Stop doing schedule

conversions by showing

multiple time zones in

Google Calendar If you work with colleagues across the country (or across an ocean), remembering exactly when a meeting would fall within their workday can involve some tedious but crucial math. You can spare yourself the effort by showing two time zones at once in Google Calendar, so you’ll forever know that your 9am meeting in New York falls at noon in Mountain View, and vice versa.

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Make yourself truly

unavailable by setting up an

Auto-Decline event block in

Google CalendarThere are meetings you’d like to have, meetings you must have, and there are times you need to be completely, utterly uninterruptible. For that last category, you need the auto-decline events Labs feature for Google calendar. Once enable, this Labs item gives you the option of listing your status during a calendar event as “Busy, (decline invitations).” Any subsequent invitation you receive that overlaps events with this status will be automatically declined. No one can even attempt to double-book you.

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It’s all fine and good to hold a regular status meeting on the last Friday of every month, but every so often that’s going to be the day after US Thanksgiving—and that may heavily impact attendance. And while it’s not an official holiday when Stanford plays Oregon, or the when the Red Sox open their series against the Yankees, you won’t endear yourself to many employees if you schedule critical company events on these dates. (Fun fact: Backupify actually shuts down for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.) You can avoid these time management faux pas by importing major sports schedules and holidays into your Google Calendar.

Don’t schedule events at

awkward times by adding

weather, holidays and sports

schedules to your Google

Calendar

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Avoid neglecting remote

colleagues by automatically

adding Google Hangouts to

your Calendar events

It’s always awkward when, five minutes into a meeting, a remote colleague sends you an email or instant messages asking “where’s the Hangout link?” Once again, you forgot to click the Add Video Call to the invitation, even though key members of the meeting work offsite. You can avoid such embarrassments by setting Google Calendar to always add Google Hangouts to your events, automatically.

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Conclusion

These ten simple tweaks and tips will help you get more out of Google Calendar and ensure that you spend more of your time being productive, rather than dealing with time management tools.

Hidden HackEver accidentally delete a calendar item you wish you could get back?

Check out Google Calendar Rescue, a great free tool to restore lost calendar events instantly. It brings a whole new meaning

to ‘Save the Date’.

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