Another in a series of “Questions I Get Asked”.
This one is from my wife – she is an avid user of Google Calendar and Gmail, and loves Gmails use of labels and the ability to color labels any way you like. She was quite surprised to learn that you can NOT color calendar appointments in Google Calendar in the same way. That is, you can not pick a different color for each appointment in the same calendar. I thought this was odd, then found out that not only was she correct, but also that this is probably one of the most frequently reported bugs/feature requests for Google Calendar.
So what to do? Turns out there is a way around this, and although I think I’d prefer the ability to directly choose a color, this works pretty well.
In short, you need to create multiple calendars in Google Calendar , assign colors to them, then tag appointments to the color you want. Sound complicated? It’s not, and it works well. Here’s what you do.
First, create a second calendar:
- At the bottom of the ‘My calendars’ section on the left, click the Create link.
- Enter the required information – name the calendar the color you want to star with, say Blue, for example.
- Click Create Calendar.
- Next, assign a color to your new calendar by clicking on the down arrow next to the calendar name and pick the color you want.
Now you have two calendars, your primary and another called “Blue”
Now add an appointment (click anywhere on the day you are working on, or click Create Event). On the details pop-up, simply choose the Blue calendar from the Calendar Drop down list, enter the event details and click Create Event.
That’s it – you’ve just created and event and given it the color you want!
You can add as many calendars/colors as you want. Once an event is created, you can change the calendar (and its color) by clicking on the event, then choosing Edit Event Details, then changing the Calendar to any of your existing calendar/color combinations.
Easy enough, right? I like that you can add lots of colors or event groupings and move things around easily. For more poeple, I think there are just a few categories events will fall into, so creating a seperate calendar for each is a very easy way to manage your buckets.
