Google Calendar is one of Google's most important online services at a working level, since it allows you to manage appointments, events and commitments in an online agenda that can be customized in all its aspects. Microsoft Outlook is the main and most powerful program to manage email on your computer, which also has an effective and flexible interface for managing appointments and calendars. It therefore becomes natural to integrate the Google Calendar online service into Outlook so that you can view all the calendars in one place and keep the advantage of synchronizing appointments on every other application .
In this guide we will show you how to integrate Google Calendar into Outlook and synchronize calendars; if we cannot use Outlook, we will also show you how to synchronize the online calendar on Mozilla Thunderbird (free email clients and calendars) and how to view Google Calendar as a separate application on your PC.
Add Google Calendar to Outlook
In order to see Google Calendar in Outlook, we will first need to start a subscription to the calendar in the Google service. To do this we access the Google Calendar online page, click on the icon with the three lines in the top left, select the calendar to add in the column, press on the three dots next to it and finally click on Settings and sharing .
In the new window we scroll until we find the item Secret address in iCal format .
We copy the link contained within it and open the Microsoft Outlook program on our computer. From Outlook we press at the top on the File menu, select Account Settings and press on the Account Settings item.
In the new window that will open, press the Internet Calendars tab, select the New item, paste the copied address into Google Calendar (we can also press CTRL + V directly on the keyboard) and finally click Add . In the subscription options window we can choose the name of the calendar you want to view in Outlook, then press OK . Now the Google calendar will be displayed among the Outlook calendars, just press the calendar icon at the bottom left and select the name provided for the subscription (present under Other calendars ).
Note : the changes applied to Google Calendar in Outlook will not be synchronized on the online calendar; in this case it is better to always act from the website.
If we don't have Office and Microsoft Outlook on our computer, we can also install it for free using one of the methods described in our guide All ways to use and download Office for free .
See Google Calendar in Mozilla Thunderbird
If we don't have Office and Microsoft Outlook on our computer, we can still install Mozilla Thunderbird as an email and calendar manager for free. Once Thunderbird is installed on our computer. Compared to Outlook, with Thunderbird we can synchronize the changes in reading and writing, so as to always keep the calendar updated.Once Thunderbird is installed on PC, we open the browser and download the Provider for Google Calendar add-on by clicking on the Download button
At the end of the download, we open the Mozilla Thunderbird program, click on the button with the three horizontal lines at the top right and select the Add-ons item, so as to open the Manage Add-ons tab. From here we press the gear icon, select the item Install add-on from file ..., select the add-on previously downloaded then click Install now to integrate it into the program. At the end we restart to finish the installation.
Now we can add Google Calendar to Thunderbird, by clicking on the icon with the three horizontal lines at the top right, selecting New -> Calendar and indicating in the On the network or On the Network window; now select the iCalendar (ICS) item, paste the link to the subscription to the Google calendar (as seen at the beginning of the chapter on Outlook), press Next and allow Provider for Google Calendar to access the complete calendar management. At the end we will be able to manage our calendar directly from Thunderbird, with the possibility of adding new appointments and events (they will also be visible from the Google Calendar online site).
To use Thunderbird in an advanced way, we can read our guide on Thunderbird, the most used and free email program on PC (by Mozilla) .
How to add Google Calendar in Windows
If we only use Google Calendar and we want to avoid having to install a separate program to manage it, we can be satisfied with the Calendar app integrated in Windows 10, which automatically synchronizes the contacts and events that we have saved on the Google account.To add Google Calendar on Windows, open the Start menu at the bottom left, search for the Calendar app, open it, press the gear icon at the bottom left then select the Manage account item.
In the new window, click on the Add account item, click on the Google icon and enter our login credentials to the Google account whose calendars we want to view. At the end of the addition, a new calendar will appear on Windows, with all the appointments and events managed by Google Calendar perfectly synchronized within Windows.
Conclusions
If we often use Google Calendar for work, it is advisable to synchronize all important appointments and events also on our computer, so that we always have them at hand and receive a notification whenever we are near the marked event. As seen in the guide, we can add the Google calendar to Outlook (with some limitations), to Thunderbird (with full control) and to Windows (in the latter case without installing any third-party application).If we use online calendars and diaries for work, in another guide we have shown you all the best online diaries and calendars for deadlines and appointments .
If instead we want a classic calendar clearly visible on the computer desktop, we can add the one indicated in the article Calendar on the PC desktop screen .
We love to manage our calendars in Word or Excel "> Templates of Word, Excel or PDF calendars, so we can immediately create your own personalized calendar for appointments, events and reminders.
