Google Calendar

Google Calendar helps you follow your team all season long!

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It’s March, and while basketball rules this month, I’m ready for baseball! I’ve been following my beloved Detroit Tigers throughout the spring. One way I keep track of when my Motor City Kitties are playing is through the Interesting Calendars feature in Google Calendar.

Here’s how it works:

From the left side menu, click the Plus sign next to Add a coworker’s calendar. Here’s where you can add other calendars.

Add other calendars

Next, choose Browse calendars of interest.

Browse calendars of interest

You’ll be taken to a list of calendars that are available for subscription. You can choose Holidays, Sports and Other.

List of calendars

Here, I selected Baseball, then Major League Baseball – MLB. From here, you can select your favorite team.

Tigers

Now, head back to your calendar by using the back arrow at the top. You’ll see that your calendar has now been added to the sidebar under Other calendars.

Calendar list

Events from this calendar will now appear on your calendar.

Tigers games on the calendar

If your favorite team is not listed, there is still possibly a way to get it. All you need is a subscription URL. Once you have that, click the plus sign again, and this time, choose From URL. Paste in the URL and you’ll be set.

From URL

By the way, if you want to turn off the calendars you’ve added, just click the checkbox next to the calendar’s name to hide it.

Quickly Add Events to Google Calendar Using the Chrome Address Bar

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Do you use both Google Chrome and Calendar?  Need to quickly add a meeting to your calendar? Don’t open a new tab and enter it manually… just add it right from Chrome’s address bar!


This trick will take a few simple steps of setup, but once you’re done, you can type an event in natural language right in the address bar—such as “Faculty Meeting on Thursday at 3 pm”—and a new event will be created. We will use Chrome’s ability to have special search engines to set this functionality up.

First, right-click on the address bar and select “Edit search engines”.


Once you get to the Search engines dialog box, under Other search engines, enter a name, such as “Add Event”, in the first box. In the middle box, enter a keyword, such as “cal”, to type into the address bar to activate this custom search engine. 


Next, copy the following URL and paste it into the last box (it should be all on one line).

http://www.google.com/calendar/event?ctext=+%s+&action=TEMPLATE&pprop=HowCreated%3AQUICKADD


Press Enter when you’re done.

Now, the custom search engine will appear under Other search engines. Click “Done” to close the Search engines dialog box.


Important: Before using this custom search engine to add events to your calendar, you need to make sure you’re signed into the Chrome profile that matches the Google account to which you want to add events. If you need help doing this, watch this video.
Once you’re signed in to Chrome, type cal (or the keyword you assigned to it) in the address bar and press Tab or the Spacebar. You’ll see that “Search” and the name of the new search engine you created shows on the left side of the address bar. Using natural language, type the event you want to add to your calendar, like the screenshot below, and press Enter.


The Google Calendar new event screen with the relevant data filled in, such as the event title and the date and time. Add or change any other information for the event, such as the location, and click “Save”.

Now your calendar displays with the new event added, and a notification also displays describing what was added. If you change your mind right after adding the event, you can click the “Undo” link on the notification to delete the event.




If you use Chrome for your web surfing and Google Calendar to keep track of your events and appointments, this is a quick way to add appointments and meetings.