Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

calendar

How do I use a google calenar on a mac?

How do I put something on my apple calendar that is not connected to google sync. I think I just add and use gmail account. Is that right?

If so, how do I change the color?
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Ok, pretty big question so here goes:

Apple's calendar program will absolutely sync with your google calendar so there's no need to have to go to google.com to check your calendar. To ensure your google calendar is flowing into Apple Calendar, go to system preferences/internet accounts the select the google account for which you want calendars, and check the box on the right next to calendars.



Next, go into the Apple Calendar (if it's not in the dock already you can find it in the Applications folder) and check the left side to see the new google calendars have started to appear. It may take around 2 minutes for all events to populate. Keep in mind, just as in Apple email, your calendar will have a default. Which means if you go to add an event, one calendar will be the normal one. To check which calendar you have set as your default calendar, go to preferences (located under "Calendar" in the menu bar right next to the apple in the top left corner of your screen.)



In my opinion, it's not a good idea to leave it as "selected calendar" as you sometimes end up with events in calendars you didn't mean to put there.

As for colors, the way calendars work across all platforms is that colors are assigned to a specific calendar, not to individual events. In other words, you color an event by what calendar it's assigned to, not to the event itself. This means all your holidays will be one color because they are the holiday calendar, all your carpool events will be the color of the carpool calendar, and so on.

Lastly, keep in mind that each google account can have calendars. iCloud can also have calendars. So there's a good chance you have some calendars showing in your Apple Calendar program that you don't care about.



In my example above, I have unchecked certain calendars as to not clutter my daily view. You can see that I have iCould calendars and google calendars. Apple will also use Siri to look into your mail to find potential events then automatically add them to your calendar. "Siri Suggestions". I normally turn these off.

If you have any difficulty working your calendar integration into Apple Calendar, feel free to schedule an online remote session and we can work it out. Hope that helps.

Calendar on iPhone dissapearing

1) Calender on iPhone goes blank even after selecting the calendars to view. It happened out of the blue.
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Things to try first:

1. Force quit the app.
2. Toggle off/on calendar syncing. This can be found in settings/calendar/accounts
3. Delete the mail account associated with the calendar then re add.
4. Shut down the phone and restart the phone
5. Reset all settings: Settings/General/ scroll to the bottom to Reset/ select "reset all settings". This is the second to last thing to try as you would have to reset a few things. No data would be lost but you'd have to readjust some things like bold text, icon size, wifi network rejoin possibly.

Where did my calendars go?

My calendar didn’t transfer to my new phone. Any ideas?
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Calendar:

The way to solve this is to compare which email accounts are hosting calendars that you use. This means we compare the settings of an old device to the new phone. Two candidates to do this are A: the old phone if it's still available. B: the computer. (If the calendars are on your iPad then that would also work)

A: if the old phone still exists, go to Settings/Passwords and Accounts. Now go through each email account and see if Mail, contacts, calendars, are turned on. Now match those settings to the new phone.

B: if you would like to compare your calendars to your computer, open Calendars then look on the left side of the calendar. Each email account that has calendars active will show here:

You can also go into System Preferences/Internet accounts and select each email account there just like you might have on your old phone. That will also list which email accounts you use to sync calendars. Note that it's ok for multiple email accounts to have calendars turned on.

Finally, go back to your new phone and check to make sure that all the same email accounts are added and that calendars are turned on for each of those same email accounts that are active (or that you actually use).

Unwanted calendar alerts

Husband and I r continuing to get calendar reminders on our phones even though we deleted the calendar that was populated with son's stuff. What should we do?
I am going to be uptown working all morning so away from my home computer but home this afternoon. Thank you for your help!
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Calendars. If this is a google calendar, by default events placed in a Google calendar have a 10 minute prior alert unless you turn those off. So I wonder if that’s what you’re talking about. If so, you would go to google.com, log into your account, go to calendar preferences, then find the 10 minute prior reminder and turn it off. If it’s more of an iCloud calendar issue then I may need to be in front of it in order to better understand what’s going on.

Can I block off time prior to my appointment on calendar?

Also is there a way to shade 30 min before an appointment to reflect driving time?
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One way to block out time prior to event is to use Apple’s Travel time feature within Calendar. Set the location of an event and Apple will estimate how long it takes to get there, then block out (using the same color as the event). Not perfect but sort of a solution. This would only work if you are actually traveling somewhere to an appointment. Otherwise, you would have to make up an imaginary location in order to block the time off.

Example:


More info here: Add location and travel time to events in Calendar on Mac - Apple Support

Calendar times wrong after system preferences date/time check.

Calendar times still wrong after changing date/time prefs in system prefs.
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Go to iCloud.com, log in.
Go to calendars within that webpage.
click the gear in the bottom left corner.
Select Advanced.
Uncheck "Time Zone Support" if checked.
Hit Save.


Next go back into Settings on the icloud.com webpage and view the timezone at the top right. Make sure it is set to Eastern.
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How do I adjust the time on my computer?

How do I change the date and time on my computer? My calendar times are incorrect.
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Go to system preferences (under the black apple in the top left corner of your screen)


Be sure to check the "set date and time automatically"



Your computer will now pull your time zone based on your IP address and the dates should adjust. If that does not resolve the calendar issue, there are other settings at icloud.com that can affect how times are shown on your calendar but most likely, this will fix it.

Why aren't my calendars syncing?

I hope this is an easy fix - seems that every since I did all of that upgrading, when I put something on my desktop calendar, it does not go onto my phone. (If I put something on my phone, it does go onto my desktop, however.)

I just went to system preferences - and turned on iCloud Drive, but that didn’t seem to work. Not sure if I should have turned that on….

Seems like something just needs to be turned on, but I am not sure what.
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Calendars can be very confusing. The main reason for this is that almost every email account service we use (gmail, iCloud, aol, exchange, yahoo, etc…) all offer their own calendar and contact syncing to go along with the email. Because of this, sometimes we end up adding events to one calendar but don't have that that calendar on a different device. So the first place to start looking when troubleshooting calendars is to figure out which calendar services you actually need. In a perfect world, one service is the best way to go. For most people this is either iCloud or Gmail's calendar system.

1. On your Mac, open system preferences/internet accounts. Select each account and see if calendars is checked. You will return to this area eventually and uncheck the services you don't want in the end.
2. Open Calendar on your mac and go to preferences, check which is your default calendar. This can be the issue as well. You may be adding an event automatically to the wrong calendar.
3. On your phone, go to the Calendar app, select Calendars at the bottom of the screen and see if you have the same accounts active on your phone as you saw on your computer.
4. Decide if you can eliminate some of these calendars but be aware that if you turn off, say your gmail calendar, then any events on that calendar will go away. So you may have to move those events from one calendar to a different one before you turn that calendar off.

These are good starting points to check. It's rare that calendar and contact issues are technical problems like software issues. It's much more common that we just don't have things set the way we'd like.
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