Google Calendar is a great app. I can access it from any computer, sync it with my smartphone, sync it with my desktop email client, and much more. It’s simple to use and has a lot of features. One of the cool features that I’ve only recently started using is Google calendar sharing.
When you share a Google calendar, you can quickly give controlled access to your events to coworkers, family members, or friends. In this article, I’ll show you different methods for sharing calendars and give you some tips along the way.
Public and Private Calendar
The first thing you must understand is the difference between a public calendar and a private calendar. The private calendar is only visible to you, and that means all your events will only be visible to you.
This means that if you create an event with a private calendar and then try to publish the event and send someone the link, they won’t be able to see the event. This is because the calendar is private. When you make it public, you can share it with each person or with the whole world.
When the calendar is public, you’ll be able to share events and choose different levels of privacy, which I’ll explain below. The best way to separate your personal and public calendars is to create a new calendar that you can share with individuals or people.
Share calendar
Once you’ve created a new calendar or selected an existing one to share, sign in to Google Calendar and hover over the calendar.
You should see three small vertical dots appear, which will give you options for that particular calendar. You’ll want to click Install and share. Also, the plus sign next to Add a friend’s calendar box is where you can add new calendars.
On the following screen, the sharing options are in the center of the page. Have Access rights, which allows you to make the entire calendar public. Most public calendars are for organizations like schools, universities, etc.
When you check Offer to everyone , you’ll get a warning that the whole world will be able to see your calendar. You will also be given a choice between View only free/busy (hide details) and View all event details.
If you only need to share your calendar with a few people, adding them in Share with specific people section. Click MORE PEOPLE and enter the email address of the person you want to share the calendar with.
You can also choose what permissions the user must have: View only free/busy (hide details), View all event details, make changes to events and make changes and manage shares.
There is one thing to note here. If you share with specific people, they must also use Google Calendar. If you want to share your calendar with someone who doesn’t use Google Calendar, the only option you have is to make it public.
The invitation will be sent and the user simply clicks the link and your calendar will now show up in their list of calendars. Once you’ve made your calendar public, you can start adding events to it. You’ll also notice that each event has its own display option: Public or Private.
Depending on how your calendar is shared (Private, Specific People Only, or Public), people will see the event as busy or they will be able to see all event details. Google has a full page to guide you all different combinationsthe options here, can be a bit confusing. For example, if your calendar is public, but you choose private for an individual event, it will only show that block of time as busy, but no one will be able to see the name of the event or any details.
There is also a display option sometimes called Only me. This event won’t be visible to anyone other than you and won’t even show up as busy.
At this point, you can start inviting people to your event. Once you’ve created an event, you can click it in Google Calendar, then click the three vertical dots.
An option should Publishing events. You will have to optionally copy some HTML code, which you can then paste into the web page or simply copy the URL, which you can then email or share on social media sites etc.
You can also click the Pencil icon on the left side to edit events and add guests on the right hand side.
You can choose whether guests can modify the event, invite others to the event, or view the guest list.
So those are all ways you can share your Google calendar and events with others or the world. It can be a bit confusing, but once you’ve tried with the settings, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out. Interesting!
