Make your Google calendar even more useful

Do you use Google calendar/the calendar attached to Gmail?  The best thing about it is that it is available to you, and up to date, wherever you are, on any device – any computer, any smartphone or tablet – Android, iOS, or Windows, either via a built-in calendar app or browser. 

As well as the appointments and events that you add to your calendar, you can have Google add other information to make your calendar even more useful.

Google has a collection of other calendars that you can add to your calendar.  Here’s how to access them:

1. Hit the ‘S’ on your keyboard, which takes you straight to Settings 
2. Click on the Calendars tab
3. Then ‘Browse interesting calendars’
4. Take a look at the three different categories of calendars – Holidays – Sport – More

Holidays is where you’ll find the National holidays of 39 different countries - very handy if you do business regularly with another country, or have family overseas).

In the Sports category you select the sport you want, then choose the fixture you want on your calendar.

More is where you’ll find Phases of the Moon, Day of the Year, Star dates, the Hebrew calendar, and week numbers. 

If you have included your friends’ and family’s birthdays when you added them to your Gmail contacts you can choose to have their birthdays added to your calendar too.  You’ll find it under the More tab - just select Contacts’ Birthdays

You can preview and subscribe to various calendars.  There are quite a few to choose from and you can choose as many as you like, although don’t forget they will take up room on your calendar. 

Once you've subscribed to all the calendars you want, go back to your calendar and you can choose what colour you would like for each.  A different colour for your contact’s birthdays, another for holidays, and a different one for a particular sporting fixture.

When you subscribe to any of these calendars they are added to your Google Calendar and they will appear on all your synced calendars on all your devices.