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How do I make my Google Calendar shareable?

Now that I've moved from iCal to Google Calendar (see Import iCal to Google Calendar) I now need to figure out the second step: how do I mark this calendar shareable so that the rest of the people in my office can view it and add events, as needed?


Dave's Answer:

Glad that first article helped you out! It pushed me into using Google Calendar too and now I'm quite pleased to be able to access my calendar from anywhere, rather than worrying about having current printouts and such, a big win! My partner wants to gain access too, however, so let me show you how I set it up to give her access and you'll see how to do the same for your colleagues too.

To accomplish this, log in to your Google Calendar page and click on the small "manage calendars" link on the bottom left of your screen. You'll get to the following:

Google Calendar Settings

Click on "Share this Calendar" and you'll see that there are a couple of different ways you can configure sharing on your calendar:

Google Calendar Settings: Share Calendar

Since it's my personal schedule, I am not going to be sharing it with everyone, but you can see that you can choose to share all of your information on this calendar (remember, you can have multiple calendars on the same account, and each can be shared differently, so you could easily have a "public" calendar with just your public events). You can also choose "free/busy information" which is very cool: they'll see what times you've blocked out, but won't be able to see the actual details of each event, giving you a nice level of privacy.

But I'm going to be sharing with specific people, so I need to add a new person. I'll type in their email address and specify one of the four possible choices from the pop-up menu: make changes AND manage sharing, make changes to events, see all event details and see free/busy information (no details).

Since I want my partner to be able to add events to my calendar, I'm going to give her "make changes to events" which, confusingly, is how you let them add new events.

Once I choose "Save" I am then asked whether I want to invite that person to Google Calendar, a step that I don't believe is necessary for them to access my own calendar:

Google Calendar: Invite?

I chose "Don't Invite' and am dropped back onto my own Calendar without further indication that it worked, except my calendar is a bit wonky, missing some items and with others incorrectly marked. A quick refresh solves the problem and I'm done.

Connecting to a Shared Google Calendar

When my partner connects to the Google Calendar area, she sees a Google Account login but will actually need to click on "Create a new Google Account", at which point she'll enter her email address and pick a password:

Google Account Signup

Fill in these fields, add some additional information to get a Google Calendar account (maybe I should have just invited her to join with that window prior after all!). A quick email verification and she's in!

Now she needs to find and connect my calendar to her own. This is done as follows...

She needs to log in to her own Calendar account, where she'll see:

Google Calendar

Click on the "+" adjacent to "Other Calendars" and now she'll see:

Google Add Other Calendar

The tab "Friend's Calendars" is what we want. Click on that and now she can see:

Google Add Friends' Calendars

At this point she enters my email address and clicks on "Add". Without further ado the small window on the left side of the screen now suddenly has a second entry in it:

Google Calendar: Shared Calenders Enabled

There I am, and if she now clicks on my name, she can see all of my events on her calendar view. If she'd like to add an event to my calendar she can't use "Create Event" or "Quick Add" but rather the small drop-down triangle adjacent to my name, which reveals:

Google Calendar: Create Shared Event

That's all there is to it. Now we both just have to bookmark our calendar pages and we're good to go. For bonus points, your colleagues will have to share their calendars with you too, as my partner will have to share her calendar with me, but you can now see how to do that.

Welcome to the 21st Century! :-)



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Comments

How do I share my calendar with someone so that they receive a particular view...say the weekly view? I have my personal view set to weekly but when it is sent, I can only get it to display the monthly view. Thanks! Janelle

Posted by: Janelle Porter at August 11, 2008 10:05 PM

Any idea what I might be doing wrong to share multiple calendars? People can share multiples with me, and I see them fine, but when I've deleted their calendar and try to re-add them, I can only get to the main one tied to their email address. Similarly, they can only access the one attached to my main email address, not any of the other calendars to which I've given them access. I've tried deleting the views and added them back without success.

Posted by: mike at September 29, 2008 9:03 PM

When you have more than one calendar, I think you have to "push" out the invitation for people to connect, rather than having them search for you and click on the default calendar.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at September 30, 2008 10:27 PM

I am a novice at this and i would like to put a calendar on my website that everyone can edit from the website. That is is this is a reasonably easy thing to do otherwise i will just scrap that idea.

Posted by: Russell at June 26, 2009 10:05 AM

Hi. We would desperately like to use a shared Google Calendar for our green government office. However a key member of our staff keeps getting rejected when she completes Google Account registration. Oddly, the error she receives states she is "too young" for an account. Of course, she isn't and I've watched her enter her birthday correctly in that step of Google's process. It's such a shame. Any advice on what we can do to substantiate her age and activate her account?

Posted by: Randal at February 11, 2010 2:33 PM

Too young for an account? That's an odd message. Can you have her sign up for another Google account and give her a birthday year of 1960 or similar, then see if the same thing happens?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at February 12, 2010 8:11 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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