Digital Sharing for Apple Users: A Take Control Crash Course (2014)

Broadcast Calendar Events

I’m having a party on Friday night and I want all my friends to come. There’s also a business meeting every Tuesday morning that everyone in my department should attend, and a series of fundraising events the other members of my community group need to remember. If you, too, are responsible for planning events that other people need to know about, you’ll want a way to broadcast those events so that the relevant people can see them on their own calendars.

One way to broadcast events is to publish an entire calendar, to which interested parties can then subscribe. When you do this, changes to your published calendar will appear (sometimes after a significant delay) on subscribers’ devices, but they’re free to ignore any or all of the calendar events. Publishing is appropriate for events that are entirely optional for attendees.

Another approach is to invite specific people to an event (such as a meeting or appointment). In the process of adding the event to their own calendars, invitees are asked—though not required—to respond with “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” so that you, the event organizer, know who will be there. If you make changes to the event, you can notify all the other participants.

Publish an iCloud Calendar

1. Sign in to your account at iCloud.com.

2. Go to the Calendar app.

3. Click the Share icon that appears beside a calendar’s name when you hover over it.

4. In the pop-up window, select Public Calendar.

5. To inform other people of the calendar’s URL, you can either copy it and paste it into a message, or click Email Link to email it.

6. Click OK.

The recipient can add the calendar to Calendar by clicking the link you send.

Note: The steps in Calendar for OS X are virtually identical. In Calendar for iOS, tap Calendars, tap the Info icon next to a calendar name, and turn on Public Calendar.

Send iCloud Event Invitations

1. Create a new event.

2. In the Calendar Web app at iCloud.com or in Calendar for OS X, click the Add Invitee(s) field. In the iOS Calendar app, tap Invitees.

3. Type the name(s) or address(es) of those you want to invite.

4. Click or tap Send.

For invitees who use iCloud, the invitation appears in Calendar’s notification box on the iCloud Web site, as well as in Calendar on a Mac or iOS device.

For other invitees, invitation email messages include buttons (or links) for Accept, Decline, and Maybe.

In addition, the event on your own calendar is updated with icons reflecting each invitee’s status.

Publish a Google Calendar

1. In a Web browser, log in to your Google Calendar account.

2. Click the tiny button that appears next to the calendar name when you hover over it and then choose Share this Calendar.

3. Select Make This Calendar Public.

4. Click Save, and then click Yes to confirm.

5. Click Calendar Details at the top.

6. Right-click (or Control-click) the ICAL button next to Calendar Address and choose Copy Link (or Copy Link Address) from the contextual menu to get the calendar’s URL, which you can then send to other people.

The recipient can add the calendar to Calendar by clicking the link you sent.

Send Google Event Invitations

1. In a Web browser, log in to your Google Calendar account.

2. Create a new event.

3. Under Add Guests, enter an invitee’s email address and click Add. Repeat to add more invitees.

4. Click Save.

Invitees receive an email invitation, which includes links for Yes, No, and Maybe along with a link to the event and an attachment they can use to add the event to their own calendar.

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“If sending out event invitations repeatedly is a pain, try getting people to subscribe to a group calendar instead.”

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