Google Calendar: Sharing and Responding to Events

Objectives and Overview

Lesson Objectives

  • Identify how to share Google Calendar events with others
  • Identify how to respond to Google Calendar invitations shared with you

Sharing Events

Event scheduling is one of the most important pieces of Google Calendar. There’s a lot more you’re able to use it for! You can immediately be more productive by using Google Calendar to manage your personal events. But you can level up your productivity even further by sharing events you create! This is where the collaboration piece comes in. Let’s take a look at how to do this.

This lesson is using the term sharing since you’re essentially sharing an event with others. This is the same as inviting someone to an event. You’ll encounter both terms, so it’s good to know they mean the same thing in this setting.

Let’s look at a gif showing all of the steps for sharing an event with someone. In this example, I’m inviting myself to an event (just so I don’t show other email addresses), but the process for inviting a coworker or friend is the same:

Showing the steps for sharing an event.

The first step is to create an event. Do this, and then look at the event information modal. There is an Add guests input where you can type the email addresses of folks you want to share/invite to the event:

Google Calendar window for the event options with a box drawn around the "Add guests" input.

As you type in the guest (person you want to invite) name, Google makes suggestions based on folks in your email contacts. You can select someone from this list, or keep typing:

Google Calendar window for the event options with an email address being entered into the "Add guests" input.

When you’re ready, hit the enter key to add someone to the event. You’ll now see their name appear below the Add guests input. Click the Save button when you’re ready. Repeat this process if you need to add more people.

Note that your name will now say Organizer under it since you created the event:

Clicking the save button prompts you to send invitation emails to everyone you added. Click the Send button to finish this process:

An arrow pointing to the "Send" button on the invitations email options on a Google Calendar event.

Anyone you added to the event will receive an email and your event will show up on their calendar. They’ll need to accept your invitation.

Responding to Events

When you send someone an invitation, they’ll be notified and need to either say yes (accept) or no (decline) the event. Being timely and courteous with event invitations is an important skill, so let’s look at this process.

Invitations you receive show up as a white event with a colored border (as opposed to full-colored events). This is a visual cue to see what events you need to respond to. Once you respond yes, the event becomes full color.

This gif shows the steps for responding to an event invitation:

Responding "yes" to a Google Calendar event by clicking on the event and clicking the "Yes" button.

You’ll see your invitations in your calendar by looking for events that are white with border color. Let’s look at an example of event invitation:

Clicking on an event invitation brings up the event information. Invitations have an additional area where you can select if you’re going:

Google Calendar event details with a box drawn around the RSVP options.

If you select Yes, the event changes to a full color on your calendar and looks like other events you’ve created. If you need to edit your response, click on the event. You’ll see that your response is set to yes:

Google Calendar event details with a box drawn around the RSVP options with "Yes" having been previously selected.

If you’re unable to attend an invitation, you should get in the habit of updating your response. To do this, click your new status (No or Maybe). If you select No, the event is removed from your calendar.

If you think that you might be able to attend, you can select Maybe. This is much better than ignoring an event invitation!