Suggestion for KNOW HOW: How to Coordinate Gmail calendars between yourself and others

[G+_uAllen May]

Suggestion for KNOW HOW: How to Coordinate Gmail calendars between yourself and others.

 

My wife uses a paper calendar, I use my company's provided Blackberry (Exchange) calendar. We miss connect all the time. If we can synch our two calendars life would be better.

 

She uses an LG Spectrum smart phone and checks e-mail frequently. I'm trying to get her to use an electronic calendar instead of paper.

 

I've created a Google Gmail account for her and myself but now, trying to get multiple calendars to synchronize is painful. I have more than one Gmail account/calendar so getting three calendars to synch is even worse.

 

We will soon have kids' calendars on Gmail... you see how this is becoming un-manageable?  

 

Maybe Iyaz and Leo can do an episode of KNOW HOW talking about different ways to synchronize calendars between 2 or more people.

[G+_Cole Brodine]

My wife and I have a similar setup with Google Calendars. We both have separate calendars and just share them with each other so we both can edit the other person's calendar.  I've done the same thing with both my kids and keep things updated on their calendars for their own events.  You can toggle the other person's calendar off and on in both the web calendar and the android phone's calendar.

 

Hope that helps you!

[G+_Scot McSweeney-Roberts]

The biggest downside I've found with doing what Cole Brodine does is that I find my girlfriend's work stuff cluttering up my calendar view, so I often turn it off and I miss out on stuff I should know about.

 

Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I just don't care that she has a team meeting at 3pm. However I do care that she's off to her book club in the evening and it's all on the same calendar.

[G+_Cole Brodine]

Scot McSweeney-Roberts - I share the exact same problem with our calendars.  If anybody has a good solution to that one, I'm definitely interested.

[G+_Bradley Bishop]

Scot McSweeney-Roberts Your girlfriend should create multiple calendars and have the 'boyfriend' calendar shared with you. That way if it's important enough for you then it's in that calendar (and she'll have to filter it on her side as she goes). If she's going to get her nails done then she can put it in her personal calendar or she could just keep one calendar and just invite you to each of the events that is pertinent to you.

 

I have something similar setup with my daughters, albeit on iCloud, and I share a travel calendar so that they know my whereabouts or plans. I don't tell them, "Hey I'm heading out of town," it just pops up on their iPhone or Mac. If I'm booking something that includes them then I'll invite them to that event even if it's a hotel room or dinner reservations. It works really well. Both daughters are grown. It's not like I have a 4yo floating about the place and she's finding out that I'll be at Disneyland for a week and she wasn't included. :)

 

My daughter shares her school and work calendar with me and I try to look at it to schedule things but I do find it annoying that I get alerts that aren't for me and I really haven't found a good way to turn them off. I can happily show/hide that calendar but the alerts are just annoying. There is a setting saying, "Shared Calendar Alerts On/Off," which seems to work but I haven't found anything similar for BusyCal.

 

One thing I REALLY wish worked. If I send a calendar invite to outside the platform (like iCloud -> Google or Google to iCloud) it doesn't treat the invite like a normal invite. It'll just say, "Ok, click her to accept" in the email but it never looks at it and integrates it with the 'outside-the-platform' calendar application and all of this stuff is supposed to be standardized. It's very frustrating. If I send you an invite from iCloud it should be no different if you're receiving it on Google or if you're receiving it in the MS world. It should just work but I haven't see it work and I keep a Google Calendar around to try to capture Google calendar invites. It's kind of dumb.

[G+_Jason Webb]

My wife and I each have a GCal and we share with each other with full permissions. Then we have a third that is for both of us. Using different colors for each calendar, we can quickly identify our own events or ones that apply to both of us.