How to Share Your Google Calendar with Anyone

Google Calendar is one of the most popular calendar apps available today It makes organizing your schedule and managing appointments easy and efficient,

One of the handiest Google Calendar features is the ability to share your calendar. This allows you to collaborate with others by letting them view or edit your calendar.

Whether you want to coordinate plans with friends, align on meetings with co-workers, or share your availability with clients, Google Calendar sharing has you covered.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ll explain the ins and outs of how to share your Google Calendar with anyone you’d like Let’s get started!

Why Share Your Google Calendar?

Here are some of the main reasons you may want to share your calendar with others

• Coordinate schedules – Share calendars with friends or family to easily find times when everyone is available to get together.

• Plan meetings – Share your work calendar with colleagues so they can schedule meetings at times you are free.

• Share availability – Give clients access to your calendar so they can book appointments based on your open slots.

• Manage projects – Share a calendar with team members to align on project schedules and deadlines.

• Share events – Send your calendar to friends and family so they can stay up-to-date on your events and activities.

• Simplify planning – Eliminate constant back-and-forth communication about availability when connections can just check your shared calendar.

The bottom line is that sharing your calendar saves time, minimizes miscommunication about schedules, and enables smoother coordination.

How to Share Your Entire Google Calendar

Sharing your full calendar allows others to see your complete schedule. Here’s how to share your whole calendar:

1. Open Google Calendar on your computer.

2. On the left sidebar, locate the calendar you want to share. Click the downward arrow next to the calendar name.

3. Select “Settings and sharing” from the drop-down menu.

4. On the Settings tab, scroll down to the “Share with specific people” section.

5. By default, your calendar is set to “Private” so that no one else can access it. Click “Change” to switch this to “Public”.

6. Choose the sharing settings you want:

• “Make available to public” shares your calendar with anyone

• “Share with specific people” allows sharing with only selected contacts

1. If sharing with specific people, enter the email addresses you want to share with. Choose whether they can see event details and/or edit events.

2. Click “Send” to share your calendar.

3. Your selected recipients will receive an email inviting them to view your calendar.

And that’s all it takes to open up access to your full Google Calendar!

How to Share Individual Events

If you don’t want to share your whole calendar, another option is sharing individual events. Here’s how:

1. In Google Calendar, open the event you want to share.

2. At the top of the event details, click “Share with specific people”

3. Enter the email addresses separated by commas of who you want to share the event with.

4. Choose whether to give invitees the ability to modify the event in addition to viewing it.

5. Click “Send” to share the event.

Those you share the event with will receive an invite to add your event to their Google Calendar.

This is great for sharing specific events, like birthday parties or project deadlines, without opening up your entire calendar.

Share Your Calendar Using a Publicly Shared Link

Another way to share your calendar is by generating a publicly available link. Here are the steps:

1. Navigate to your Google Calendar in a web browser.

2. On the sidebar, click the dropdown menu next to the calendar you want to share. Select “Share with specific people”.

3. Scroll down to the “Get shareable link” section.

4. Choose whether to generate a read-only link that allows viewing or a changeable link with editing access.

5. Click “Generate link”. This will create a long URL that gives access to your calendar.

6. Copy this public link and share it however you’d like – via email, messaging apps, social media, etc.

Anyone who you send the link to will be able to view or edit your calendar, depending on the type of link generated.

This is a quick, simple option for sharing your calendar at scale.

Set Calendar Permissions for Shared Access

When sharing your Google Calendar, you can customize the permissions to control exactly what recipients can do. Here are the levels of calendar access you can grant:

• See all event details – Recipients can view complete event details including title, date/time, location, guests, and description.

• See only free/busy – Limits visibility to just your availability without seeing specifics of events.

• Make changes to events – Allows recipients to edit event details like renaming, rescheduling or deleting events.

• Invite others – Gives ability for recipients to invite additional guests to events you’ve shared.

Adjusting calendar permissions allows you to find the right balance of visibility and editing abilities when sharing with different connections.

Share Only Your Availability

If you don’t want to share your full events but just provide visibility into your schedule, Google Calendar enables this with free/busy sharing. Here’s how to set it up:

1. From your Google Calendar, click the calendar dropdown and select “Settings and sharing”.

2. Scroll down to the “Share with specific people” section.

3. Enter the email addresses of who you want to share availability with.

4. For the permission level, choose “See only free/busy (hide details)”.

5. Set the time span for how far back and ahead on your calendar you want to display availability for.

6. Click “Send”.

Recipients will now see colored bars for times you are busy or out of office, but without any event details. This is great for giving basic schedule visibility when you don’t want to share specifics.

Know Who You Are Sharing Your Calendar With

When you open up your Google Calendar with sharing, it’s helpful to monitor who has access. Here’s how you can see who your calendar is shared with:

1. In your Google Calendar settings, navigate to the “Share with specific people” tab.

2. Under “People with access” it will display all of the recipients your calendar is currently shared with.

3. You can hover over their email address to view or modify the access permissions each individual has.

4. To remove someone’s calendar access, click the trash can icon next to their name and email.

Regularly checking your shared connections allows you to ensure the right people have the access they need, while removing any old contacts you no longer want sharing your calendar.

Limit Viewing of Certain Events

You may want certain events to remain private even on a shared calendar. Google enables you to do this:

1. In the event details, toggle the switch for “Show me as busy” to the on position.

2. This will mark the event as busy on your shared calendar, but hide the specific event details.

When you turn on “Show me as busy”, the event name, time, location, etc will not be visible to shared calendar viewers – just that you are busy during that time period.

Use this to keep certain events confidential from those you share your calendar with.

Customize Your Calendar Before Sharing

To control what details recipients see when you share your calendar, customize your settings ahead of time:

• Edit event titles to remove confidential info not everyone needs to see

• Set default visibility so new events are automatically visible or hidden as you prefer

• Create separate calendars to only share certain ones containing events appropriate for specific audiences

• Modify time zones so your calendar displays in the correct zone for recipients in other regions

Taking these steps allows you to tailor your calendar content for sharing appropriately.

Share Only Part of Your Calendar

Rather than sharing your main personal calendar with everyone, best practice is to create separate calendars for different groups you want to share with:

• Make one for friends & family to coordinate social events

• Make another for your work schedule to share with colleagues

• Make an additional one for client appointments to share with paying customers

This segmentation allows you to share only relevant calendars with certain connections for more privacy control.

Sync Your Calendar Across Devices

To access and manage your Google Calendar sharing from anywhere, be sure to sync it across all your devices:

• Add accounts on each device – Sign into your Google account on all mobile devices and computers to sync access to shared calendars.

• Enable calendar app access – Allow apps like Google Calendar for Android and iOS and Calendar for Mac to sync shared calendars.

• Check settings match – Confirm your calendar sharing settings carry over everywhere by checking on each device.

With your calendar synced everywhere, you can conveniently manage sharing on the go.

Share Calendar Availability for Online Scheduling

Another great use case