Google Calendar is one of the best productivity tools available. As such, it’s free, highly intuitive, looks modern, and feature-rich.
However, while Calendar already has great event tracking features, users can still miss their schedules. It could be due to missed notifications, too many events, or a few other reasons. Regardless, if you’re looking for a guide on addressing this, please read on. Below, you’ll learn the nine Google Calendar tips for maintaining schedules and other related information like using the tool on Macs.
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How to Maintain Your Schedule with Google Calendar?
Since tasks and events are essential, missing them might impact your work or life. Luckily, Google Calendar has enough features that help in maintaining schedules.
1. Check Notifications Regularly
Google Calendar notifications are an essential part of the tool’s productivity functions. Using this feature, users can get alerts from event dues, reminders, or invites from other users. Moreover, these notifiers can be emails, desktop notifications, or pop-ups on mobile phones. To toggle or customize notifications, please follow these steps:
1. In Google Calendar, go to settings.
2. Under “General,” look for the “Notification settings” section.
3. Adjust the notification type from off, alerts, or desktop notifications.
4. Change the snoozed event notifications alert time and check/uncheck notification sounds.
2. Share Your Calendar with Friends/Family
One of the lesser obvious Google Calendar hacks is sharing calendars with family or friends. By doing so, it will be easier for all participants to create and view shared schedules. Besides, if you miss an event, a friend or family member might remind you, making it an unofficial notification method. The following steps would help in using this feature:
1. In Calendar, click the plus icon “Other calendars” and then the “Create new calendar” option.
2. Type the calendar name, set details, and hit the “Create calendar” to proceed.
3. Open the newly created calendar and look for the “Share with specific people” section.
4. Click the “Add people” button, type the emails of your family members, and hit “Send.”
Note: These steps also work if you want to share existing calendars.
5. In the Calendar, click the “Create” button, fill up event details, type the guest emails, and press the “Save” button.
3. Add/Remove Schedule from Your Smartphone
Aside from the web version, Google Calendar is also available as mobile apps for iOS, iPadOS, and Android. While the screen size is radically different, users can still do what the web app offers on their mobile devices. In a phone or tablet, the process of adding and removing an event/schedule looks like this:
1. Event/Schedule Creation. Open the Google Calendar, click the circled plus button, and then the “Event” option.
2. Fill up all event information and press the “Save” button to proceed.
3. Event/Schedule Deletion. Open an event and click the three-dotted menu.
4. Press the “Delete” option and then the “Delete” text in the pop-up to confirm,
4. Use your voice to set/change Calendar
In mobile phones, Google Assistant allows using voice to create and edit events on Google Calendar. In the process, these are the steps to do so:
1. Create an event. Activate Google Assistant and ask to create an event.
2. Tell all details, namely the date, time, and confirmation.
3. Edit an event. Activate Google Assistant and ask to edit an event.
4. Select an event from the list and answer all queries about the new date and time.
5. Create Events
In Google Calendar, creating an event is easy to learn and master. In the process, the steps look like these:
1. In Google Calendar, click the “Create” button and then the “More options” text to expand the window.
2. Type the event title.
3. Select a location for the event by typing a place and selecting from the results.
4. Set an alert either by email or notification and how early before the event time.
5. Fill in the event description or attach files. Hit the “Save” button to complete the process.
6. Import Existing Calendar and Events Data
In many cases, users need to import calendars from other providers or events from websites. Luckily, Google Calendar allows using importing calendar and events with these process:
1. In Calendar, click the gear icon to open settings.
2. Under “General,” press the “Import & export” text.
3. Click the “select file from your computer” option and then pick the calendar file from your computer.
4. Press the “Import” button to proceed.
Note: This process also works when importing an event .ics file.
7. Adjust Your Calendar View
One of the best features of Google Calendar is its multiple views. In detail, users can see events for the day, four days, week, month, year, or schedule view. To use this feature, please follow these steps:
1. Open Google Calendar and choose from the calendar view options.
2. Switch between different views to know your most comfortable way of seeing events.
8. Set Goals with Deadline
Goals are one of the latest additions to Google Calendars’ feature set. Users can set recurring events and reminders for various activities, namely exercise
ing, skill-building, bonding, alone time, and organizing life. Currently, Goal creation is only accessible in mobile apps but is also viewable in the web version. Moreover, these are the actions to create one in phones or tablets:
1. Open the Google Calendar app on a mobile phone, click the circled plus icon, and then the “Goal” option.
2. Choose from the categories of goals.
3. Select the type of activity and goal frequency. Review the final details and click the circled check icon to save the goal.
9. Use Reminders to Keep the Track
Aside from events, it’s also possible to create reminders on Google Calendar. Reminders are an excellent way to remember things without cluttering your schedule. Additionally, it’s great for creating different alerts inside an event’s timeframe. In the web version, the process looks like this:
1. Under “My calendars,” check to enable “Reminders.”
2. Click the “Create” button and then the “Reminder” option.
3. Type the event title and hit “Save.”
Applications That Syncs With Google Calendar
While Google Calendar is available as mobile and web apps, it’s also accessible through different applications like the following items:
Boxysuite
Boxysuite is the only native Google Calendar macOS app. It runs Calendar very well and doesn’t require users to learn new things; it just works out of the box. Unlike the competition, it doesn’t change the tool’s interface but instead provides more useful features.
In Boxysuite, it’s easy and quick to access and switch to multiple Google accounts. Also, it integrates with the system to highlight notifications better and use multiple windows. Above all, it constantly syncs so users won’t miss important events and reminders.
Office 365 (Outlook)
Office 365 is Microsoft’s productivity platform. Apart from its built-in calendar in Outlook, its email client, users can also subscribe to other calendars.
Like other platforms, Outlook fully supports Google Calendar events, reminders, and other features. However, unlike the previous item, it displays Google Calendar data using its unique interface, making it harder for some to adjust quickly. Nevertheless, Office 365’s Outlook is an excellent place to access and manage schedules.
iCal
iCal, or Apple Calendar, is Apple’s in-house event tracking tool for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch users. Like the ones before, it also supports external calendars like Yahoo, AOL, and Google Calendar.
While it’s an Apple product, it can function without using an iCloud account. Instead, users can directly sign in with Google Calendar and make it the primary and only schedule source. However, the interface is significantly different from Google Calendar, requiring a bit of learning.
Since many users create events every day, Facebook decided to improve its event creation and management features. Accordingly, it’s now possible to export a Facebook event into a .ics file, compatible with almost all calendars, including Google’s.
All necessary details in a Facebook event are viewable in Google Calendar, namely the event title, date, time, location, and the original link. Despite that, the social media platform still doesn’t have an automatic Google Calendar sync, requiring an entirely manual process every time.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t have an event creation or management feature. If you’re looking to use this with Google Calendar, you only have a few options.
You can use an integration tool like IFTTT or Zapier to schedule tweets using Google Calendar. As such, all images, text, and other information will go inside an event. On the other hand, you can only copy a tweet’s link and embed it into the event description in Google Calendar.
Never Miss Your Schedule with Boxysuite
Yes, learning more ways to use Google Calendar is an ideal way to master the platform. However, having an app that will let you experience the best it offers would be much better. If you agree, then please take a look at Boxysuite.
Instead of using multiple Chrome tabs that hogs your computer and hampers productivity, Boxysuite provides a clean and focused space for Google Calendar, Gmail, Contacts, and Keep.
Using Boxysuite, you can access Better Desktop Notifications, Dock Icon Alerts Counter, Excellent Multiple Accounts Management, and Multi-window Support. If you want a native app and the best Google Calendar experience for Mac, check out Boxysuite today!
