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Google Calendar

How do I access Google Tasks on my mobile phone?

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Image of bullet journal with tasks

This is a question that I see a fair bit over on the Google Calendar support forum.

Many people love Google Tasks – a simple, easy to-do list that is linked to Gmail and Google Calendar – but many people are also confused that they can’t see those tasks in the Google Calendar app on their phone.

So they end up searching for answers to questions like this one: “I can’t seem to figure out how to show my google task in my google calendar app installed in my android phone?“

Until very recently, the only way for these people to access Google Tasks was via the mobile browser on their phone but now Google has released a shiny new app optimised for Google Tasks – yay! (iOS users click here to download the app)

Getting Started with the Google Tasks app

It’s very easy to get started with the app – once installed, just follow the prompts to add your first task.

As you can see, my first task is quite unpleasant – thanks Xena and Shiloh!

Clicking on the + sign as you add a task gives you the option of adding more details to the task as well as a due date. Not surprisingly the task of cleaning up cat vomit is urgent and due today.

New tasks are automatically added to a list titled ‘My Tasks’ and synced back to Google Calendar and Gmail.

What about your old tasks?

If you’ve previously created tasks via Gmail or Google Calendar, then they will be automatically synced to the app. To see them click on the menu bar in the bottom left corner and select the appropriate list

You can also create new lists from the menu bar and send feedback on the app if necessary.

Working on tasks

Once you’ve created a task click on it to

  • add / edit details
  • add / edit due date
  • add sub tasks
  • move the task to another list

To mark a task complete, click on the circle next to the task / sub task name.

You can also delete a task from the edit screen but be careful – once deleted there’s no way to recover a task! It is much safer to simply mark it as complete unless you’re 100% certain that you don’t want the task any more.

What else does the app do?

There’s not a great deal more to the app. Click on the 3 vertical dots in the bottom right corner to

  • sort tasks by the order you entered them or by due date
  • rename the task list
  • delete the list
  • delete all completed tasks.

And that’s really it for the new Google Tasks app – a nice light-weight app that finally allows you to access Google Tasks via your phone without Internet access.

Got questions about the new Google Tasks app or how to use Google products to increase your small business’ productivity? Get in touch and let’s see how I can help you.

Photo by Estée Janssens

The 10 most commonly asked Google Calendar questions (and their answers!)

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I spend a lot of time on the Google Calendar support forum and have noticed some questions just keep getting asked over and over. So, I thought why not put those questions (and their answers!) together in a blog post just in case some of you have the same questions?

So in no particular order here are the 10 most commonly asked Google Calendar questions that I’ve seen during my time on the forum.

1. I want my invited guests to receive the same notification for an event as I have set for myself

This question relates to events where the event organiser has set up a reminder for an event on their own calendar and want all the invited guests to automatically have that same reminder set for them – for example 1 hour before the event, they will get a notification.

In Google Calendar, each user can set their own notifications to suit their own schedules and preferences – I for example like to get two reminders for really important events, whilst someone else might prefer only one reminder or even a series of reminders spaced out over a period of hours / days. So, regardless of whether you are the event organiser or not, you can’t force a particular notification onto your guests.

2.  Why is the Android app not syncing the Calendar entries beyond 12 months?

I have no idea why this is so, but for some reason Google does not sync events older than 12 months or more than 12 months into the future to the Google Calendar Android app. The events are still available on the desktop but not via the app.

If you want to see these events on your mobile device then you need to use the mobile browser to visit the Google Calendar internet site.

3. When I add an event on my desktop, it shows on my mobile, but when I add an event on my mobile, it doesn’t show on the desktop

This usually happens if you’re not using the official Google Calendar app. When you use the phone’s in-built calendar app it will default to storing your events in its internal calendar. This doesn’t sync with Google Calendar so you end up with events that are only accessible via your phone.

The best way to stop this from happening is to use the official Google Calendar app but if you really want to use the in-built calendar app make sure you select the correct Google calendar – it is usually called Events or your email address.

4. I’ve renamed my default calendar on the Google Calendar website but it is still called Events on the mobile app.

Again, another decision that I can’t fathom but for some reason Google has decided that regardless of what you call your default calendar on the website, it will always be called ‘Events’ on the mobile app. You can rename your secondary calendars and those new names will be reflected on the mobile app, but not the default calendar.

5. An event appeared on my Calendar that I did not create.

Google Calendar offers a neat little function that allows it to automatically add events to your Calendar that are emailed to you, if you allow it to. Unfortunately what that means is that sometimes spam emails end up in your Calendar and it can look like someone has hacked into your account. This is luckily not the case though it can be very annoying.

There’s only one way to stop it from happening and that is to turn off the “Automatically add invitations to my calendar” functionality. If you want to keep using it though and you are getting these spam events then:

  1. Open the event invitation on your computer.
  2. Click on the ‘more actions’ drop down and then click Report as spam
  3. Once you report it, all events from that particular organiser will be removed from your calendar.

6. How do I copy and paste one event to one day to another?

Although Google Calendar has a pretty robust way to repeat events sometimes you may just want to repeat an event once or on a difficult, irregular schedule. In those cases you can use the ‘More Actions’ functionality.

Simply open the event to the edit screen, click on the ‘More Actions’ drop down arrow in the top right and select ‘Duplicate Event’. All aspects of that event will duplicated (colour, description, notifications, date and time) and you can tweak as necessary – changing the date and time are the most common uses for this functionality.

7. Why does the Calendar mobile app always show 31 and not today’s date?

There’s a very technical reason for this which I never remember. Essentially, it just does and hopefully at some stage Google will change the technical specifications to allow this to happen but in the meantime, the Google Calendar mobile app will always think it is 31 (even in February).

8. I’m getting the following error when importing a calendar file: “We’re sorry. Google Calendar is temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes. If the problem persists, see our Apps Status Dashboard or visit our Help Center.”

This has got to be one of the most non user-friendly errors ever in my books. What this error message usually means is that in fact the file you are trying to import is too large (over 1MB). If you do get that message then you need to work out a way of making the file smaller before you can successfully import it.

9. I’ve set certain colours for certain events on a shared calendar but I’m the only one that sees them.

This is similar to question 1 – all users have the final say over how a calendar event looks in their system. So even if you’ve shared a calendar with someone else, they can set different colours for both the calendar and the individual events, regardless of what you’ve set in your system.

The only time the other person will see the same colours as you, is if you’ve given them ownership access to the calendar – which basically gives them all the rights to the calendar that you have.

10.  I can’t see reminders in my Google Calendar on the web.

I know I say this a lot, but for some unknown reason when Google added Reminders to the Google Calendar on the web, they decided to make it a toggle option between Reminders and Tasks.

So you have the option of either displaying Reminders OR displaying Tasks, but not both at the same time.

If you are not able to see Reminders on the web, then click on the 3 vertical dots to the right of the Tasks calendar and select ‘Switch to Reminders’. To see Tasks, follow the same step but select ‘Switch to Tasks’.

So there you have it – the top 10 questions about Google Calendar from the Google Calendar Forum. I hope they’ve helped answer your questions but if not, feel free to send me an email with your particular question and I’ll see how I can help.

How to associate multiple email addresses with one Google calendar

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Woman banging her head against a brick wall in frustration

If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner then you’ve probably got multiple email addresses set up for different parts of the business as well as your own personal email address. I know I do!

And if you’ve linked one of those email addresses to a Google account then any invitations sent to that email address can be quickly and easily added to the associated Google Calendar

But what about meeting requests that are sent to you via a different email address? Sadly that’s not so easy.

Those invitations aren’t added to the original calendar – you’ve got to manually add them and hope that you capture them all correctly, and of course if an event changes then you’ve got to manually change it on your calendar. What a pain.

Did you know though that you can consolidate requests from all your different email addresses into one Google Calendar?

Read on to see how…

1.  Add the email addresses to your Google account

This is the most time consuming part of the whole process if you’ve got more than 1 email address to associate but once you get into the groove it is very easy.

  1. On your computer sign in to My Account.
  2. Under “Personal info & privacy,” select Your personal info. 
  3. Click on Email. 
  4. Click on Advanced.
  5. Click on Add Alternate Email. 
  6. Type in a new email address.
  7. Click on Add. If you have more email addresses to add, click on Add Other Email otherwise just close the My Account tab.
  8. Go to your email client and verify the email(s) that you’ve just added.

2.  Add the email addresses to your Google Calendar

  1. On your computer, open Google Calendar.
  2. On the top right, click the cog icon Settings  and then Settings.
  3. Click on your main Calendar name from the left hand side menu
  4. Click on General notifications.
  5. Check the box next to “Allow responding to invitations forwarded through alternative email addresses.” If you haven’t verified your alternate email yet, you won’t see anything listed here.

3.  Accept the invitations sent to multiple email addresses

Once you associate your other email addresses with the one Google Calendar account, you can respond to any invitations sent to those alternate email addresses.

Be aware though that your RSVPs will display as coming from the email address that owns the Google Calendar, not the email address which was originally invited to the event. If that particular email address is not very professional (perhaps it is a personal email address) then you may wish to look at linking one of your business email addresses to a Google Account and associating your other addresses with that account instead.

If you’d like some help implementing what I’ve talked about today, I have a consulting practice that helps small business owners work through these techy online issues. Why not get in touch to discuss your needs?

(Image via Gratisography)

How to Create Repeating Calendar Events

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Do you ever find yourself needing to do certain tasks over and over in your small business? Maybe it is phoning a particular supplier on Mondays and Fridays, or maybe you’ve got a recurring requirement on Thursdays and Saturdays to take out the recycling.

Personally I have set up repeating events in the past to remind me to scan paper documents into my Drive filing system; to edit (and edit again!) my book; to follow up on outstanding invoices; and to stay in touch with family and friends.

Whatever your repeating event is, you can make remembering it a bit easier with the tools in Google Calendar.

Setting up a Recurring Calendar event on the desktop

  1. Create the event on the first day you want it to occur and click on Edit Event
  2. Click the drop-down arrow next to ‘Doesn’t repeat’.
  3. If the repeat option is available from the drop-down click on that. Otherwise click on Custom… to set up more finely tuned repeat options 

Setting up a Recurring Calendar event via the official Google Calendar app

iOS

  1. Create the event on the first day you want it to occur
  2. Tap on More options under the date details
  3. Tap on Does not repeat
  4. Choose from one of the options listed or tap on Custom to create a more finely tuned repeating event.
  5. Tap the back arrow
  6. Tap on Done
  7. Return to event and tap on Save.

Android

  1. Create the event on the first day you want it to occur
  2. Tap on More options under the day and time
  3. Tap on Does not repeat
  4. Choose from one of the options listed or tap on Custom to create a more finely tuned repeating event.
  5. Tap on Save.

If you’d like some help implementing what I’ve talked about today, I have a consulting practice that helps small business owners work through these techy online issues. Why not get in touch to discuss your needs?

Image courtesy of Unsplash

How Do I Get Google Tasks On My Phone?

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Updated April 2018 – Google has recently released an updated interface for Google Tasks including a mobile app which means no more mobile browsers! Click here for a full article on how to use the Google Tasks app on your phone.

This is a question that I see a fair bit over on the Google Calendar support forum.

Many people love Google Tasks – a simple, easy to-do list that is linked to Gmail and Google Calendar – but many people are also confused that they can’t see those tasks in the Google Calendar app on their phone.

So they end up searching for answers to questions like this one: “I can’t seem to figure out how to show my google task in my google calendar app installed in my android phone?“

Unfortunately for these searchers, Google currently does not support Tasks in the Google Calendar app, instead you have to view https://www.gmail.com/tasks through your mobile web browser.

The action screen is actually pretty user friendly and all actions are automatically synced back to the main cloud account so when you return to your desktop you’ll see the tasks in either Gmail or Google Calendar.

Quick Access to the Google Tasks mobile screen

Typing in that link can get pretty painful after a while though, especially if you just want to jot down a quick to-do.

Solution? Set up a bookmark on your home screen!

For Android:

  1. Launch Chrome and go to gmail.com/tasks
  2. tap the Menu button and then tap ‘Add to Home Screen’
  3. Edit the bookmark name if you wish, otherwise tap ‘Add’.
  4. The bookmark will be added to your home screen

For iPhone:

  1. Launch Safari and go to gmail.com/tasks
  2. Tap on the Menu icon and then tap ‘Add to Home Screen’. You may have to scroll to the right to see this option.
  3. Edit the bookmark name if you wish, otherwise tap ‘Add’ in the top right.
  4. The bookmark will be added to your home screen icon image

So what can you do on the mobile web browser?

Well you can create & edit tasks:

  1. Touch New Task.
  2. Type your item and press Enter.
  3. Add notes and set due dates by selecting a task and touching the arrow to edit its details Tasks details.
You can create & navigate lists:
  1. Select All lists.
  2. Touch New List and enter a name. Tap anywhere outside of the name field to save the list.
  3. Touch a list’s title to open that list.
You can mark tasks as complete by clicking in the checkbox next to the task name.
You can hide completed tasks by selecting ‘Clear completed tasks’ at the bottom of the screen.
You can delete tasks:
  1. Tap ‘Edit’ in the top right of the screen.
  2. Find the task you want to delete, then touch Delete Delete task next to the task name.

Is there anything you can’t do?

You can’t do the more sophisticated Google Tasks unfortunately:

  • Indent tasks
  • Move tasks up and down a list
  • Email a task list
  • Print a task list
  • View completed tasks
  • Sort by due date
  • Delete a list

For these actions you will need to go back to the desktop view of Google Tasks.

Having trouble accessing Google Tasks?

According to Google’s help documentation, Google Tasks for mobile browsers works best on Android, iPhone, and other devices with current web browsers.

Your browser must also support:

  • Cookies
  • Secure SSL traffic
  • XHTML

So if you’re having trouble accessing Google Tasks contact your mobile service provider to see if cookies or secure SSL traffic are allowed on their network. Alternatively, if your phone has been issued by work contact your IT department to see if they’ve disabled cookies and/or secure SSL traffic for some reason on your phone.

Want more help?

Drop me a line with your question or comment if you’d like to chat one-on-one. Or subscribe to my newsletter to get notified the next time I put out a blog post on using Google products in your small business.

 

How To Customise Your View of Google Calendar

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By default, Google Calendar comes with the following options to view all your events and appointments:

Day

Week

Month

4 Days

Agenda

The first three are pretty self explanatory but did you know you can customise the ‘4 days’ option?

You can even choose whether to see weekends or not – handy if you’re primarily using Google Calendar as a work calendar but not so useful if you’re trying to run your whole work/life balance via Google Calendar.

But I digress. Today’s post is about customising the ‘4 day’ view option.

But why customise in the first place?

But why customise? After all, if you want to see 4 weeks worth of events you can just choose the ‘Month’ view correct?

Well actually if you choose the ‘Month’ view, what you’ll see will be this month – both the past and the future – but if you choose to customise your view to ‘4 weeks’ all you will see are the next 4 weeks into the future.

And that goes for all the custom view options – they all start on or around Today’s date and only show events in the future.

Here’s a couple of images to make that hopefully a bit clearer!

Month view showing events in the past as well as the future:

Month view in Calendar

 

4 Weeks custom view starting around today’s date and only showing the next 4 weeks into the future:

 

See how the second, custom view starts today (or at least in the current week) and goes forward four weeks, whilst the Month view shows both older weeks as well as future weeks?

So how do you create a custom view?

    1. Open Google Calendar on calendar.google.com (you can’t customise a mobile app view only a desktop view)
    2. Click on the gear icon and then settings 
    3. Click on View options on the left-hand side menu
    4. Click on the drop-down arrow next to ‘Set custom view’ and choose 4 weeks (or whatever custom view you want)
    5. Click on the back arrow in the top left to return to the main calendar view
    6. The new view will now be available from the drop-down menu 

 

 

Want More Help?

Subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll let you know the next time I write about Google Calendar or any of Google’s other tools that I believe help small business owners go beyond the technology to become more productive business owners.

Or, just reach out to me with any question you might have about Google products.

Finding your Tasks List in Google Calendar

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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Hellen Keller

Recently, Google announced that they had brought their popular Reminders (to-dos to us normal people) feature to the Google desktop calendar.

This was great news for most people, (including me) but there was a slight hitch. Under the current implementation you can only view either Reminders or Tasks and as a result quite a few people have been reporting ‘lost tasks’.

Never fear though if that’s been your experience – here’s the easy 3 step way to view your Tasks lists again on the Google desktop calendar:

1. Select the drop down arrow next to the Reminders calendar.
2. In the pop up option menu you will be given the option to “Switch to Tasks”.

3. Click on the link and you will see all your Tasks again.

If you want to see your Reminders again in the desktop calendar, simply follow the same steps and this time “Switch to Reminders.”

See? Told you it was simple! If you’d like to know more about Reminders, Tasks or anything to do with Google and productivity why not let me know in the comments?