Occasionally, something I post on Facebook stands the test of time and gets re-blogged here. Printing and calendaring – two technologies that are still too difficult.
By Erik J. Heels
First published 1/27/2018; Facebook.com; publisher: Erik J. Heels.
STEP 1! Call the shared calendar the “Happy Fun Shared Calendar” calendar! Bonus points if you can use “calendar” (any case) more than three times in one sentence!
STEP 2! Make sure that you have shared the “Happy Fun Shared Calendar” calendar from your Google Calendars settings page! Use a desktop/laptop computer to access your Google Calendar settings page (https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/settings?tab=cc)!
STEP 3! Make sure that you enter the correct Gmail address for the person/people you wish to share with! You are the sharer, they are the sharee!
STEP 4! Don’t assume that because the Gmail address does not use “gmail.com” that it is not a Gmail address! How can you know? You cannot! Ask your sharee! Maybe they are using a paid Google Apps Gmail to use their own domain name in their Gmail account!
STEP 5! Just for fun, ask them how much your sharee pays for Google Apps Gmail per user per year!
STEP 6! Make sure that you give the appropriate permissions for the “Happy Fun Shared Calendar” calendar to your sharee. Don’t know which permissions to give? That’s OK! Just guess!
STEP 7! From your iPhone, from the “Safari” app, go to the hidden, mysterious, and secret “Google Calendar Sync” URL (“URL” ha! Who says that!?) (https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect)! On that page, make sure that all of the calendars – even the ones you think you are not interested in – are checked for syncing! Don’t worry, selecting a calendar for syncing is not the same thing as actually syncing a calendar – fun!
STEP 8! Now from the “Calendar” app on your phone (which should really be called the “Calendars” app but I digress), go to the “Calendars” link (confusing, I know!) at the bottom of the page! On this page, make sure that you check the boxes (and/or radio buttons – more fun!) for the synced calendars that you wish to actually share with and view on this iPhone! Make sure that the “Happy Fun Shared Calendar” calendar is selected! Even more fun!
STEP 9! Did you change your Gmail password recently? Like since you purchased/upgraded your iPhone? Why did you do that? Never ever change your password! Unless of course you need to for security reasons!
STEP 10! The easiest step! If you changed your password, your “shared” calendar will cheerfully update and never ever sync with your other devices or users – fun! You will think you are sharing with the world when in fact you are sharing with nobody, like clicking “send” on an email message that never ever gets delivered! To update your password on your iPhone, go the the “Settings” app, then select the “Accounts & Password” option, then select the “Google Calendar” option (assuming of course that you set this part up correctly earlier – of course you did!), and hopefully it says “CALDEV” on there somewhere (don’t worry about what “CALDEV” means – silly details!), then select the “Account” option, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and select the “Advanced Settings” option, then select the “Account URL” screen (“URL” ha! Who says that!?) and make sure that the “URL” (“URL” ha! Who says that!?) follows the “http://www.google.com/calendar/dav/yourname@gmail.com/user/” format where “yourname@gmail.com” is your Gmail address, and then go back to the previous screen and enter your new/changed/updated password in the “Password” field! Sharing calendars is fun!
STEP 11! Then logout of your Gmail account on all devices, restart those devices, login again, enter an event in your “Happy Fun Shared Calendar” calendar and make sure that it syncs to all accounts and all devices! It did? Yay! Easy!
STEP 12! DONE!
Erik J. Heels claims to publish the #1 blog about technology, law, baseball, and rock ‘n’ roll. Do not taunt happy fun ball.
