Google Calendar and ics appointments or events

If you use Google Calendar because you are working across multiple platforms - as I do - then you may find the following tip helpful about creating appointments based in Google Calendar when you are sent a Outlook ics file.

The reason I begin all my appointments in Google Calendar is because I work across four devices, and I want all of them to remind me of the same things at the same time (I invite my work self and my home self to all appointments that my Google self sets up - and sometime soon I will find a solution where I don't have to manually add all three of me, but that is a problem for another day!).

To return to the "we have been sent an ics file" in Outlook. We don't add it to Outlook. Instead, we download and save the ics file on our device. Then:

• We log in to our Google calendar
• Over on the top right of the page, we click on the Settings icon (as per the image accompanying this post)
• We select Settings from the drop down list
• Then, in the Settings page, from the left-hand menu bar, click Import & Export (about half-way down the list)
• Click the blue "Select file from your computer" button and navigate to the downloaded ics file
• In the next blue button, we select the calendar we would like to add this event to (the default is our primary calendar).
• Click "Import"

Then we are done!

Sam

References:

Google Calendar Help. (2025). Import events to Google Calendar. https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop