How to Share Your Google Calendar

Anna Middleton Read more April 7, 2022

Let’s face it: time management is tough. A lot of discipline is required to perform well every day, so most people often lack motivation. This made people come up with various solutions, both online and offline, for such problems.

Big companies have also responded to this never-ending issue, the Calendar is Google’s answer. This online app has gone through a lot of changes, so how can users share their calendars in 2021? That’s what we’re about to teach you.

Sharing Your Calendar with Google Users

Google Calendar lets you share your calendar with specific people. The only catch is that they have to be Google users and that you can only do this from a computer. Here’s how to give them access to your calendar:

Open Google Calendar or if you’re currently using any other Google app, by entering the Google Apps menu in the top-right corner and finding it there.
Inside your Google Calendar, there’s a list of calendars called “My calendars” to the left. Hover with your mouse over the calendar you want to share. Three dots should appear next to it. Click on those.
In the popup menu that follows, choose Settings and sharing.
You’ll be taken to the Calendar settings menu. What you’re looking for is the Share with specific people option. You can either scroll down until you find it or use the sidebar to the left for easier access.
After finding this option, click on the Add people button.
A Share with specific people popup window will appear. It requests that you enter an email or a name straight away, while also suggesting some contacts you’ve had an exchange with. Google only identifies the names of users who have included Calendar in their Google account.
After choosing one or more contacts to share your calendar with, choose what your contacts can do inside of your calendar by adjusting the Permissions setting.
- See only free/busy (hide details) only lets your contacts see when you’re free or busy, without showing any further details.
- See all event details lets them see all the events and all their details, but they have no permission to edit anything.
- Make changes to events allows them to edit all events, but not share them.
- Make changes and manage sharing allows them to share events as well, giving them nearly as much access to your calendar as you have.
- Note: You can change this setting for each person individually and at any time.
Click the blue Send button in the bottom right corner of this window. It will close, returning you to your calendar settings. It will also add the people you invited to view or access your calendar.

If you happen to use Google Groups, you can also share your Google Calendar with your entire group. All you need to do is type the group’s email address in the “Share with specific people” window.

To stop sharing a calendar with a person or group, click the “X” button next to them.

How to Share Your Calendar with People Who Don’t Use Google Calendar

To share your calendar with people who don’t use Google Calendar, you need to make your calendar public and share a link with them. To do this, enter your calendar settings the same way you would for the previous method and do the following:

Within the Calendar Settings menu, click on Access permissions. You can either scroll down until you find it or use the sidebar to the left for easier access.
You need to make your calendar publicly available first. To do so, click the checkbox next to the Make available to public option.
Google will warn you that everybody will be able to see your calendar events, as well as find your calendar by searching Google. If this is fine by you, click OK.
Your calendar is now shared to the public, but that doesn’t mean a lot on its own, as you need to send a link to people who don’t use Google Calendar to share it with them. To get a link, click the Get shareable link button beneath the option you’ve just used.
A new window will pop up, click on the Copy link button or highlight it and hit Ctrl + V or Cmd + V to copy it.
It’s worth noting, if you need to stop publicly sharing your calendar, uncheck the Make available to public checkbox.

Accepting Invitations

Another useful thing to do with a shared calendar is to manage invitations. When sharing a calendar with people who have permission to see event details, you can choose which event invitations they will accept automatically.

If you leave the default option, Automatically add all invitations to this calendar, all invitations to new events will be visible, even if they take place at the same time. On the flip side, if you change it to Auto-accept invitations that do not conflict, event invitations will only be accepted if they don’t interfere with the already existing events.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you remove sharing access for your Google calendar?

Depending on your Access permission settings, you’ll need to uncheck a checkbox or remove an individual’s access.

1. As mentioned above, you can remove public access for a Google calendar by going to the Calendar settings > Access permissions and unchecking Make available to public.

2. To remove a specific person, go to the same Access permissions page, select Make changes and manage sharing, and remove them.

Schedule On

You might find sharing a Google Calendar with persons or groups useful if they ask you if you’re available on a certain day, as well as for work reasons. Hopefully, you now know how to do it.

What’s your opinion on sharing your calendar with others? If you’re already sharing it, how much does it help you keep track of your time? Let us know in the comments below.