Ultimate Guide to Google Calendar Settings Google Calendar is where I spend an awful lot of my time, and there's a good chance that you spend an awful lot of time here, organizing your day, setting up your meetings, and seeing all the things, and places, where you need to be.
Well, in today's video I want to show you everything you need to know about settings within Google Calendar. We're talking about notifications, we're talking about defaults.
I want to show you how to get that daily agenda as well, which can certainly help you with your productivity. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and after today's video, I don't want you to have any questions about settings in Google Calendar.
Well, maybe I'm just kidding. If you've got questions, please include them down in the comments below.
I always love hearing your feedback, and I'm curious what other questions you have for me after watching today's video. So, let's get things started by clicking the Settings icon, but just before we select the settings option, I want to go over the other options that we have here, just in case you're not sure where to find these options.
So, the first one is Trash. Anything that you delete here within Google Calendar, as long as it has been deleted within the last 30 days, will show up here, so if you need to review something
which has been removed from your calendar, and if you'd like to restore it, you can do so here. This is especially helpful if you happen to use some of your events as tasks, and perhaps instead of crossing them off or using some other method, you just delete them, you can always go back here and review them as well.
So, that's where you'll find them, in the Trash. Now, you also have the option to change some of the density and color.
So, this is the default set here, modern with white text. You can always change that to classic with black text.
Now, you can also get into a lot more detail if you want at an individual calendar level, but these are just your defaults for your main calendar, and lastly, your second option here is if you want a responsive design, so as you minimize or adjust the size of this window, everything will be responsive, or you can go back to the compact design, which sort of squishes things together a little bit more so, but I prefer the responsive design here.
Addons Last but not least in this particular list, I want to get to the Get add-ons section. A lot of people don't realize that almost every Google app has the ability to add some additional features to it, so if you happen to use Cisco Webex or GoToMeeting, for example, for your video conference calls, you can actually add them directly here, and now you know where to find them.
General Settings All right, well, let's jump into settings, and let's start with the general settings. Basically I'm gonna be going over two different areas here within the Settings window.
General settings, which apply to all of your calendars, and then I want to show you the settings that are particular to individual calendars down below, but let's start with General. Language and region, pretty straightforward.
Language, country, time format, if you prefer military time or 24-hour time, you can make that change here. Time zone, also pretty straightforward.
You want to have this first one set to your local time zone, and this is probably coming from your Google account, when you first set up your Google account, but a lot of people don't realize that you can set up a secondary time zone, so I'm gonna check this box for an example here, and I had previously selected New York, Eastern Time here, so you can see that displayed down below. So, perhaps you work with colleagues, or perhaps you travel back and forth
between two different time zones. This can be helpful to show a different time zone
in addition to the one that you're currently in, and you can also add some labels here as well. So, perhaps I want to call this one Home.
These are custom labels, and this one I'm just gonna put NY for New York. Now, everything is saved automatically, which is nice, I don't have to go finding a Save button like in Gmail.
So, let's go back to our calendar to see what that looks like. So, here you can see on the left hand side of the screen I've got my Home time, the default time, but now I've got New York time beside it.
Now, this is really the only place where you're going to see that. When I open up an event here, I'm not going to see additional times.
If I go to edit it or change the time it's not gonna show me that Eastern Time, but it can be helpful to see that here on the left hand side of the screen.
So, let's jump back into settings here. I'm gonna leave that one on for now, but I do like that you can change these labels.
They even give you a nice button here if you want to swap those time zones. All right, the last little checkbox, Ask to update my primary time zone to current location.
This can be important when you're traveling, right? So, instead of using this as the primary all the time, it is going to make changes when
you're traveling across time zones, and you can read the details by clicking this link here. So, in the next section down below we've got some more world clock options,
and this is one that I was not terribly familiar with, but again, depending on who you are working with, other countries or other time zones that you need to deal with regularly, this world clock may be very helpful. By checking this box, you can add a number of additional time zones, I'm not sure about the limit.
You could probably add as many as you like, but if I go back to my calendar, you will see here, below the mini calendar here, I have the three time zones that I selected, so I've got some UK time, I've got Anchorage here, and I've got New York as well. So, this is the current time, so as I'm working, as I'm going about my day, I can glance over here and know exactly what time it is in these other time zones.
Now, again, by default this is turned off, so if you want to uncheck it, you can do so here.
I'm gonna turn it back on just for today's example. We'll see that on the left hand side of the screen.
Events Now, the next one is a pretty important one. This has to do with events, and the defaults for your events.
Now, all of these things, almost all of these things can be changed when you're creating an event, but in order for you to work at your productive best, I think it's important that you are setting default settings that make the most sense to you, so you don't have to waste time clicking other boxes or selecting other dropdowns.
So, the first one is default duration, and it's important to take a few minutes to decide what is best for you. Is a 60-minute meeting, is that typically the type, or the length of event that you're creating, or are you typically creating 30-minute meetings?
Remember, every new event-- If I set this to 30 minutes, what's gonna happen is I go over here and I'm gonna click on Friday, you can see immediately by default it's saying 9:00 to 9:30. Of course, I can change that, I can make it to a full hour, but I think it's important within Settings that you pick the duration of time which is most common to you.
I'm gonna leave it at 60 for now, and down below we have this Speedy meetings checkbox, what on earth does that mean? Well, there's actually a brief description here.
If you turn Speedy meetings on, 30-minute meetings will be five minutes less, and longer meetings, 10 minutes earlier. So, you remember I had selected 60 minutes, but now it's set for 50 minutes, so if I open up this dropdown,
everything is just somewhat reduced. 15, 25, instead of 30, 40 instead of 45.
You sort of get the idea here. The idea, really, is to encourage you, and maybe more importantly, other people who you've invited to that meeting, that hey, let's wrap this up before the top of the hour.
Let's give everybody a little bit of time to get to our next meeting, or to get to something else.
I'm not exactly sure how effective this is, but even psychologically, if you were to receive a meeting like this, it might help you to be more, a little more efficient, make sure that you're making the best use of your time.
So, really up to you, your personal preference if you'd like to choose Speedy meetings. Now, the next three dropdowns, the first one is Default guest permissions, so when you are creating an event, what do you want to allow others who you've invited to do?
Can they modify the event, can they invite others, and can they see the guest list?
Remember, you edit all of this within the individual event, but what is most typical? What in the average situation when you create a new event, what do you want to allow guests to do or not to do?
So, you can make those changes here. The next one has to do with automatically adding invitations.
Three options here: Yes; Yes, but don't send event notifications unless I have responded "Yes" or "Maybe"; No, only show invitations to which I have responded. Essentially what this is doing, and you can hover over this question mark to give you a further definition, or description, is that when you receive an invitation, do you want to see it on your calendar?
Not that you've accepted it, but do you want to see it there? I, personally, like this option because I want to see if someone… Maybe I haven't gone to my email first, and so, the first time I'm seeing it is on my calendar,
and I can choose right there within my calendar if I want to accept it or not, and it will be shaded in a different color. You'll be able to tell if you have not accepted that invitation or not, and the last one here has to do with notifications, what types of notifications would you like to receive?
Do you want Alerts, do you want Desktop notifications, or do you want them turned Off altogether? I choose to have alerts for my default here, because in most cases I do want to be reminded of those options.
I think if I choose Desktop notifications, that's where this Play notification sound will turn on. I can talk about On or Off, but I'm just gonna leave this one at Alerts, Video Calls and the last option in this area is Automatically add video calls to events I create.
Let me show you how this works, so if I select this box, I'm gonna check it, and I'm gonna go over here, and let's say I'm gonna create a a new event.
I'm gonna say MORE OPTIONS, you will see that automatically they have added Hangouts, Google Hangouts, to this invitation. Now, I can say No conferencing if I want, but remember, we're just talking about defaults here.
Now, for those of you asking about this button up above, I already have Zoom Meeting, the Zoom Meeting Chrome extension installed, so that's why you're seeing this here. It has nothing to do with the option that I just selected.
It really has to do with this one down below, so if you want a Hangouts meeting to be added automatically be default, you can have that checked. In my particular case, I have that unchecked, not only because I use Zoom, but I usually make the distinction if I'm going
to be inviting someone to a video meeting or not. View Options We're almost near the end of this list.
Here we are into View options. A lot of this is pretty straightforward.
Do you want to Show weekends, do you want to Show declined events, things that you have turned down, week numbers, you can Reduce the brightness of past events. This can sometimes be helpful just to see what you've done and be able to clearly see the day that you're on, especially if you're looking at the Week View or Month View.
View calendar side by side in Day View, and a couple of other default view options. Which day of the week do you want to start it on, how many days out do you want for your custom view?
I don't really use the custom view, but if you do, this is where you go to change it, and if you want to show some alternate calendars. Last but not least, we have an area here to automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar, so that's going back to receiving that invitation via Gmail, and if you want to enable keyboard shortcuts you can turn this on or off, and let me just show you by hitting the question mark, here is your full list.
Just by hitting the question mark key you can get a full list of all of the shortcuts here within Google calendar.
I'm not gonna go over these, but if you want to see them and review them for yourself, just make sure that this option at the bottom is checked, and then you can select the question mark. Individual Calendar All right, we're gonna jump down now to an individual calendar, and in this case mine is called Scott Test Calendar, and there's some really important stuff here.
There's some really great stuff to help you be more productive and efficient with all of your events, and whether else you're keeping track of here within your calendar, so of course you can change the name of your calendar, and you can add a description. I'd say the description is probably only helpful if you're going to make this calendar public, if you want to share some further
information about this calendar. Otherwise, I typically leave this blank.
You can change the primary time zone for that calendar, and just some basic Google information as to who is the owner. Here is where you can make that calendar public,
and you'll see when I check this box you actually get a warning because if you make it public, everything will be visible to the world, including via Google search, are you sure?
You want to make sure that you're sharing this with the world. This can be very valuable if you are sharing a calendar that is intended for the public, like a community calendar, something that you want to make available to everyone else, but this is where you go to enable that.
If we want to share this calendar with specific people we simply select this option and invite them to have access and to share this calendar with them.
Event Notifications The next three sections, though, are where I want to spend a lot more focus, because this is where a lot of the great stuff is. So, Event notifications, how often in advance do you want to be notified of events on your calendar?
Now, the default here, I believe, is 30 minutes. I don't believe I've changed this since coming in here, but there is a bit of a distinction.
We've got Notification, and then we've got Email, so a notification would give you an alert here within the browser, or an alert on your mobile phone, and then of course, you can select how far out you would like that time, so maybe I'd like it to be a little bit closer to the event, so I'm gonna change that to 10 minutes. Of course, you can change this to hours, days, or weeks, but keep in mind you can add multiple notifications.
What if you want a notification and an email? This is not an either/or option.
If I also want an email notification, I just need to select ADD NOTIFICATION, and here I will now get an email notification, and maybe this one I want a little further out, like 30 minutes, so for the same event, remember, this is gonna be the default, for the same event I'm gonna get an email notification 30 minutes out, and then I'm get an alert either on the desktop or on my mobile phone 10 minutes out.
Once again, you can change this at the individual event level, like if there's a particular event you don't want notifications for, you can turn that off when you create that event, but this can be very helpful if you want to discern the difference between an alert or a notification versus an email, and again, you can go further out. You can say, "Well, I also want a
"notification two days before," and so on. Just clicking the X here will remove that notification.
All-day event notifications, by default they're turned off, right, if you have something listed as an all-day event. Some of you may know that here at Simpletivity, I recommend that you use that all-day event area for your most important tasks, and so therefore you may not want a notification of all the things that you have stored there, or maybe you want to be known the day before.
The nice thing about the all-day event notifications is that you get to choose the time, all right, in terms of when you'd like to receive those notifications, but again, you don't have to turn this on if you don't wish to. The next section here has to do with General notifications, and there's a lot of goodies here, but there's also a few things that
you may wish to toggle or turn off. New events, do you want to be alerted when someone sends you an invitation to event?
I recommend that you keep that on. Changed events, someone changes an event.
Again, probably worthwhile, right? You don't want to be showing up too early or miss the event, so you probably want an email notification for that.
Canceled events, probably goes for the same thing. All of these choices, almost all these choices are either None or Email.
Event responses is maybe a little bit different, when guests respond to events for which you can see the guest list. So, do you want to know when someone has accepted your event?
And this can be a little bit different depending if you have a long list of invitees. Do you want a notification for every time someone accepts, or do you want to check in on your own?
But the last one here, Daily agenda, can be so helpful, and sometimes people forget that this is an option, or forget where to find it. The daily agenda, if you have this turned on, Daily Agenda you will receive an email with your agenda everyday at 5:00AM in your current time zone.
Let me show you what that looks like, so here I am in my Gmail. Here's the subject line: Daily Agenda for Scott Test1 as of 5am.
It's important to know that you can't change this time. This will be attached to your calendar's primary time zone, so you can't make it any earlier or later, but I think for most of us, 5:00AM is a fairly safe time.
So, down below you can see my entire agenda for that day. I've got my travel itinerary, which I had listed as an all-day event, so that appears up top, and then I've got my meetings and other things spaced out below, and they even do a good job of sort of recreating that spacing, right?
There's a bit of a difference. There's a four-hour difference here between these two events compared to the two-hour difference between these two events here and the one up above, so you get a snapshot of your day first thing in the morning, and I'm not suggesting that you're necessarily dealing with email at 5:00AM, but whenever you do open up your email you can have your agenda waiting for you there, so by selecting the Email option here… Oops, I just toggled it off.
By selecting the Email option, you will receive the daily agenda for that calendar. Now, the last section on this page looks a little intimidating.
I'm not gonna go into too much detail here. This is where you will find the public URL to your calendar, so if you want to share this with someone else, particularly when you make this calendar public this is what you'd want to share.
If you want to embed this calendar on a website, on a webpage, this is the embed code here, and then we also have some iCal formats down below.
Perhaps you're working with someone using Outlook or another iCal format, and Google does a pretty good job of showing you and explaining the details of these different areas. Last but not least, if you want to get rid of your calendar altogether, here is the DELETE option.
This is gonna remove everything, including guests, from this calendar as well, so it's gonna absolutely obliterate every single event that you have listed within the calendar. Well, there you have it, an exhausting list of all of the settings, all of the notification settings, within Google Calendar.
So, I would love to hear from you next. What is on your wishlist of things that you wish Google Calendar could do, or did I miss anything out?
Was there something that I didn't cover, or you'd like me to go over in more detail? If so, be sure to leave your comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to Simpletivity.
Give this video a thumbs-up, and don't forget to leave me a note in the comments below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
