Calendar Basics:

Your Calendar View, Scheduling, invitations, attachments, & printing

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Your calendar view

Open Google Calendar, by clicking the Calendar link at the top of your Gmail window, or by going to You'll see your calendar weekly view. For example:


To change your calendar view, click the tabs in the upper-right corner of the view:


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Schedule a meeting

You can schedule a meeting by clicking the Create Event link or by just clicking right on your calendar view.

1. Open Google Calendar.
2. Do either of the following:

Option 1: In the upper-left of your calendar, click Create Event to open the event details page.


Option 2: Or, click a spot on your calendar to create a 1-hour event, or click and drag to create an event of more than 1 hour. Then type the event title in the box. For example:


Click Create Event to immediately publish the event, or click edit event details to continue setting up the event.

3. Enter details, such as recurrence, attendees, an agenda, and a reminder.
4. Click Save.

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Invite attendees and enter meeting details

If you've already scheduled and published your meeting, you can edit its details by clicking the title of the meeting on your calendar:


Note: Once you've finished entering meeting details, click Save at the bottom of the meeting details page.


To invite attendees:

1. Open your meeting.
2. Click the Find a time tab:


3. On the Find a time tab, click Guests, and then enter the first few letters of an attendee's full name to look up the address in your corporate directory. Select the attendee to add the attendee to your Guests list:


Important:

• You can add a group (mailing list) address to the attendees list, if your administrator set up groups for your domain. Or, you can create your own contact group in your personal contact. Click Contacts at the top of your Calendar window.
• If you copy and paste an attendee list from another source (for example, a document), make sure you separate each address with a comma (semicolons are not supported).

4. Check availability of attendees. The Find a time tab shows the free/busy information for any employee[, even those still using Outlook]. The blue box represents the scheduled time for your meeting:


If necessary, use the date and time options at the top of the tab to change the time for your meeting. Or, simply drag the blue box to a time available to all attendees.

Tip: To show or hide an attendee’s meetings, click the attendee’s name in the Guests list to deselect it:


5. Optionally, allow or prevent attendees from inviting more people to your event or viewing who else was invited, by selecting options below the Guests list:


6. To delete an attendee, click the blue cross to the left of the attendee’s name:


7. Click Save.

Google Calendar asks you whether you want to send invitations to the attendees. Your attendees can respond to the meeting invitation and leave comments.

To set a reminder for your meeting:

1. Open your meeting.
2. Under Reminders, choose the type of reminder you want (pop-up or email message) and when you want to receive it:


To add more reminders, click Add a reminder.


To set up a recurring meeting:

1. Open your meeting.
2. Select the Repeat check box:


3. Choose options on the Repeat dialog box:


4. Click Done.

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Add a file attachment to a meeting invitation

To add a file attachment to your meeting invitation, you can add a link to the file on your intranet or to a document you created in or uploaded to Google Docs. (Note that Google Calendar currently doesn't let you attach a file directly to a meeting invitation.)

To attach a Microsoft Office or PDF document, just upload it first to Google Docs (and optionally convert it to Google Docs format), and then add the URL that Google Docs generates for the document to your event.

1. Make sure the Event attachments Calendar Lab is enabled: Click Settings > Labs.
2. Open your meeting.
3. In the meeting details, click Add attachment to open your list of documents in Google Docs.
4. Select one or more documents, and then click Select.

Your attachment is added to the invitation. For example, here’s an invitation with both an attached Google presentation and a Microsoft Word document that was uploaded to Google Docs:


Note: Alternatively, you can add attachment using either of these methods:

• Send the attachment in a separate email message to attendees.
• Schedule the event through Gmail: Compose a new message and attach the file. Then click Invitation and enter information about the event. However, to book a room, you’ll need to create a separate invitation on your calendar first, and then add the room information to your email message before sending the invitation.

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Print your calendar

1. Make sure the calendars you want to print are selected in your list under My Calendars. If not, simply select the calendars to highlight them.
2. At the top of the calendar view, select the view you want to print; for example, Day or Week, and then click Print.


In the Calendar Print Preview window, you can select a font size, page orientation, and other options.

3. Select the options you want, and then click Print.

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