Calendar basics

What can you do with Calendar?

With Google Calendar, you can quickly schedule meetings and events, and get reminders about upcoming activities, so you always know what’s next. Calendar is designed for teams, so it’s easy to share your schedule with others and create multiple calendars that you and your team can use together.

What you need:

G Suite account & 10 minutes

Note: If your G Suite administrator hasn’t already migrated your old calendar for you, you may want to import your old calendar before starting this tutorial.

1

Schedule events

In Calendar, it’s easy to schedule one-time activities like conferences and recurring events like staff meetings. When you receive an invitation to someone else’s event, you can let everyone know if you’re attending with a single click.

In this section, you learn how to:

  • 1.1 Create an event
  • 1.2 Invite people and reserve rooms and resources
  • 1.3 Choose your event time
  • 1.4 Save and update events
  • 1.5 See who’s attending your event
  • 1.6 Respond to invitations
  • 1.7 View and restore deleted events

1.1

Create an event

Create an event in Calendar:

  1. Go to calendar.google.com.
  2. Click CREATE.

Add an event description:

In the Description field, add details for your event

1.2

Invite people and reserve rooms and resources

Invite people to your event:

  1. In the Event details page, find the Add section and click Guests.
  2. Type the first few letters of a person’s name or email address in the box. Matching addresses in your organization’s directory appear as you type.
  3. Click one of the suggestions to add that person to the event. If no suggestions appear, type your guest’s full email address and clickAdd.

You can even add a Google Groups mailing list address to invite a large group of people at once, such as your whole team (For example: marketing@solarmora.com), or the entire organization (For example: everyone@solarmora.com).

Reserve rooms and resources* for your event:

  1. In the Event details page, find the Add section and click Rooms, etc.
  2. (Optional) To see only available resources, check Show only available.
  3. Start typing the room or resource’s name and click one of the suggestions. Or, browse the list of resources and click Add next to an available resource you want.

*Your admin must first set up Calendar resources for your organization.

1.3

Choose your event time

  1. Click the date and time boxes, and select when your event starts and ends.
  2. (Optional) If you have a lot of guests, click Suggested times under your guest list to see a list of times when everyone can attend. Or, click the Find a time tab to stack your guests’ calendars, then pick a time when nobody has a scheduling conflict.
  3. (Optional) To set up a recurring meeting, check the Repeat box and enter the details for how you want to schedule your recurring events.
  4. Click SAVE.

1.4

Save and update events

When you’re finished filling in the details, save your event:

  1. Click SAVE.
  2. In the pop-up, click Send to notify guests by email, or Don’t send if you don’t want to notify guests at this time.

Update existing events:

  1. Click the event in your Calendar.
  2. Click Edit event to make changes, such as updating the time or inviting more guests. You can also see which of your guests have accepted your invitation.
  3. Click SAVE.

1.5

See who’s attending your event

If you need to track attendance for your event, you can instantly see who’s accepted or declined your invitation.

Check guest attendance:

  1. In Calendar, open your event.
  2. Under Participants, you can see the responses from your guests:
    • If someone accepted your invitation, you’ll see Yes check next to their name.
    • If someone responded Maybe to your invitation, you’ll see Maybe ? next to their name.
    • If someone declined your invite, their name will have a line through it.

Note: For anyone who hasn’t responded, you’ll see only their name. Awaiting responses are tallied under Participants.

1.6

Respond to invitations

When you get an invitation to an event, it appears on your calendar.

Reply to an invitation in Calendar:

  1. In the calendar grid, click the event.
  2. In the dialog box, select your response. Or, if you’d like to include a short note with your response, click More details, select your response, type your note, and click Save.
  3. You can change your response at any time by clicking More details > Add a note or change your response.

You’ll also get an invitation in your email. If you're using Gmail, you can respond to the invitation by clicking RSVP in your list of email, or by clicking a response option in the email.

1.7

View and restore deleted events

Restore an event you deleted by mistake, or permanently remove deleted events.

View and restore deleted events*:

  1. In Calendar, open the My calendars list.
  2. Hover over your calendar and next to the name, click the Down arrowarrow_drop_down > View Trash.
  3. Check the box next to the event you want to change and do one of the following options:
    • To restore the deleted event, click Restore selected events.
    • To permanently delete the event, click Delete forever.
  4. (Optional) To delete all events in your trash, at the top, click Empty trash now.

*To view and manage deleted events for other calendars, you must have "Make changes to events" or "Make changes AND manage sharing" permission for them.

Note: Deleted events remain in a calendar's trash for 30 days.

2

Add reminders

You can create 2 types of reminders in Calendar:

  • Event notifications — To remember an upcoming event, add an event notification.
  • Personal reminders — To remember something on your to-do list, add a personal reminder.

In this section, you learn how to:

  • 2.1 Set up default event notification settings
  • 2.2 Add, change, or remove event notifications
  • 2.3 Add personal reminders
  • 2.4 Change personal reminders
  • 2.5 Complete or remove personal reminders

2.1

Set up default event notification settings

  1. Click Settings settings and select Settings.
  2. At the top, click Calendars.
  3. Next to your calendar's name, click Edit notifications.
  4. Choose how and when you want to be notified about different events and updates.
  5. Click SAVE.

2.2

Add, change, or remove event notifications

Need a little extra time to prepare for an important meeting? Or, maybe you don’t need a reminder about an activity after all. You don’t have to change your default notification settings — just add or update reminders for that particular event:

  1. On your calendar, click the event and then click Edit event (for events without guests) or More details (for events with multiple guests).
  2. In the Notifications section, choose how you want to be reminded about the event.
  3. (Optional) To add multiple notifications, click Add a notification.
  1. (Optional) To remove a notification, click Remove next to the notification you want to remove.
  2. Click SAVE.

2.3

Add personal reminders

Note: Reminders you create in Inbox or Google Keep also show up in Calendar.

Add a personal reminder:

  1. If you don’t see Reminders under My calendars, click the Down arrow next to Tasks and select Switch to Reminders.
  2. Click an empty time slot in your calendar.
  3. At the top, click Reminder.
  4. Add your reminder.
  5. Choose a date, time, and frequency for your reminder.
  6. Click Create.

2.4

Change personal reminders

Change a personal reminder:

  1. Do one of the following options:
    • If you have a single reminder in a time slot, click the reminder and then click Edit.
    • If you have multiple reminders in the same time slot, hover over the reminder block, click the reminder, and click Edit edit.
  2. Update the event details.
  3. Click Save changes.

2.5

Complete or remove personal reminders

To remove a reminder from your calendar, you can:

  • Mark it done. The reminder stays on your calendar, but it's crossed out.
  • Delete it, which removes the reminder completely.
  • Hide all reminders temporarily.

Mark a reminder done:

Do one of the following options:

  • If you have a single reminder in a time slot, click the reminder, and then click Mark as done.
  • If you have multiple reminders in the same time slot, hover over the reminder block, click the reminder, and click Mark as done check.

Delete a reminder:

  1. Click the reminder you want to update.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • If you have a single reminder in a time slot, click Delete.
    • If you have multiple reminders in the same time slot, click Edit edit and then click Delete.

Hide all reminders: Under My calendars, click Reminders.

3

Share and view

Share your calendar with coworkers, family, and friends so they can easily see when you’re available. You can look at other people’s calendars to do the same.

In this section, you learn how to:

  • 3.1 Share your calendar
  • 3.2 View other people's calendars

3.1

Share your calendar

Choose who to share your calendar with and how much they can see:

  1. Click the Down arrow next to your calendar name.
  2. Click Share this Calendar.
  3. Enter email addresses and set permissions for people you want to share with.
  4. Click Save.

Share your calendar with people who don’t use Google Calendar:

  1. Click the Down arrow next to your calendar name.
  2. Click Calendar settings.
  3. Scroll to Calendar Address, click one of the options to get a link you can share. For example, to let someone see your calendar in any web browser, click and share the URL in the pop-up.
  4. Click OK > Save.

3.2

View other people's calendars

Wondering if someone’s available to meet?

View other people’s calendars:

  1. Under Other calendars, start typing the person’s name or address in the Add a coworker’s calendar box.
  2. Select the person from the list:
    • If the person has shared their calendar, it appears in yourOther calendars list. That person's events also appear on your calendar.
    • If the person hasn’t shared their calendar or doesn’t use Google Calendar, a dialog box appears. Fill out your request and click Send invite.
  3. Click the box to the left of a person’s name in your Other calendarslist to hide or show their events on your calendar. Schedule events quickly by checking your coworkers’ availability or layering their calendars over yours in a single view.

When you’re done looking at other people’s calendars, go back to viewing only your calendar by clicking the Down arrow next to your calendar and selecting Display only this calendar.

4

Create a team calendar

In addition to your own calendar, you can create other calendars to track schedules and manage projects. For example, you can create a team calendar to track information, such as team members’ vacations schedules and business trip dates. With everyone’s availability in one calendar, it’s easy to:

  • Know who’s in the office if you have questions or need to talk to someone.
  • Plan team-wide events and meetings.
  • Assign tasks and projects based on people’s availability.

In this section, you learn how to:

  • 4.1 Create a team calendar

4.1

Create a team calendar

Create a team calendar:

  1. Click the Down arrow next to My calendars and select Create new calendar.
  2. Name the calendar, enter your timezone, and add a description so your team knows the purpose of this calendar.
  3. Check the Share this calendar with others box, and share it with everyone in your organization.
  4. Enter individual email addresses of people who can modify or manage the calendar, and set their permission levels.
  5. Click Create calendar.

You can create as many calendars as you want using the same process.

5

Customize

Now that you know how to use all the key features in your Calendar, you can customize it further to match the way you work.

In this section, you learn how to:

  • 5.1 Choose your calendar view
  • 5.2 Change your event colors
  • 5.3 Enable offline access to Calendar

5.1

Choose your calendar view

You can choose how many days you see at a time in your calendar view, or change your calendar to an agenda view to see a list of your events. Select the option that’s best for you in the top corner of your calendar.

5.2

Change your event colors

Changing event colors can help you distinguish between calendars when you have several layered on the same screen.

Change the color of events on your or others’ calendars:

  1. Click the Down arrow next to the calendar name.
  2. Select the color you want from the palette.

Other features

Enable offline access to Calendar

Chrome browsers only

Experiencing an Internet outage or traveling on a plane with no Wi-Fi?

You can still see your calendar schedule and reply to events offline.


  1. In Google Calendar, click Settings settings and select Offline.
  2. Click Enable.
  3. After your calendar has synchronized, click Settings settings. If you see Offline , you can now access your calendar offline.

Instantly see if someone’s free or busy

With schedules changing all the time, it’s hard to know when people are free for a quick chat or a meeting.

The Free or busy lab shows you if people are available right on your Google Calendar's list.

  1. In Calendar, click Settings settings and select Labs.
  2. Scroll to Free or busy and click Enable.
  3. At the bottom of the page, click Save.
  4. At the right of the calendar, enter the email address of the person you want to see and press Enter.

The person’s status appears as Free or Busy under their name.

Note: Friends must have already shared their Google Calendars with you.

Jump to different calendar dates

See your agenda for any day by with the Jump to date lab.

Now it’s easy to plan events weeks from now, or to remember events from years ago.

Jump to a specific date in Calendar

  1. In Google Calendar, click Settings settings and select Labs.
  2. Scroll to Jump to date and click Enable.
  3. At the bottom of the page, click Save.
  4. At the right of the calendar, enter the date you want to go to and click Jump to date.

Your calendar agenda for that specific day appears.

Show your next Calendar meeting

Have several events every day? Instead of scrolling through all your Google Calendar entries to find the next event, use the Next meeting lab.

The right side of your calendar will show your next event and a countdown clock.

Show your next meeting in Calendar

  1. In Calendar, click Settings settings and select Labs.
  2. Scroll to Next meeting and click Enable.
  3. At the bottom of the page, click Save.

At the right of the calendar, you see the time until your next meeting, and the title of the meeting.

Suggest a new meeting time

Receive an invitation but can’t make the suggested time? Propose a new meeting time in Google Calendar.

Propose a new meeting time

  1. In Calendar, open the invitation.
  2. At the top, in the Going? section, select Maybe.
  3. Note: If you already responded to the invitation, click Add a note or change your response to see the Going?section.
  4. Do one of the following options:
    • To propose a new meeting time to the event host–In the Add a note field, suggest a new time and click Save. Only the host will receive an email notification. However, all attendees on the guest list can see your note in the calendar event.
    • To propose a new meeting time to all attendees–Next to the guest list, click the Email guests link, suggest a new time in an email message, and click Send.

Get your daily agenda in your inbox

Start your day with a daily agenda in your Gmail inbox, based on your Google Calendar schedule.

You can even give your daily agenda to your team or an assistant so they know the best times to reach you.

  1. In Calendar, hover over your calendar name and click the Down arrow .
  2. Select Edit notifications.
  3. Next to Daily agenda check the Email box.
  4. At the bottom of the page, click Save.

Quick Add Calendar events

Don’t have time to add event details? Google Calendar's Quick Add helps you schedule events fast.

For example, type “lunch with Carole at Java 11am Tuesday.” The event appears on your calendar.

Add an event using Quick Add

  1. In Calendar, click the arrow next to CREATE.
  2. Enter the event details. For example: "Meet with Susan at 10am on Monday" adds this event in your calendar for the upcoming Monday.
  3. Click Add.