No more excuses!
Adding shared and public calendars in the .ics format to your iPhone’s calendar app is an absolute breeze. There is one easy step:
1. Email yourself the URL of the calendar and click it.
2. That’s it! No, really. That’s it.
To get you started, here are the URLs for Google’s NZ and UK public holidays calendars:
NZ: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/new_zealand__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
UK: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/uk__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
For more, just login to Google Calendar if you have an account (create one if you don’t) and click on ‘more’ in the ‘other calendars’ box on the left of the screen, then choose ‘public calendar’. You will be presented with a list of calendars that are available, just click ‘add’ to add it to your account. Then, go into ‘settings’ and click on the ‘calendars’ tab. Click the calendar you just added and you will see some options including ‘calendar addresses’. Click the ‘ICAL’ button and a dialogue box will pop up with the URL to add to your calendar app. Of course, there are other sources for .ics calendars if you do a bit of searching.
Unfortunately the Calendar app gives you no control over the colour it picks for your new calendar, so if you find it clashes with an existing one or you just don’t like it, simply add the calendar again by clicking on the link again, and you will find that it will add it as a duplicate with a new colour assigned. If this new colour suits you, simply delete the first calendar and you’re done.
I hope this tip is as welcome a revelation to you as it was to me when I discovered it – happy holiday planning!
I tried this but there are problems where some public holidays are missing (I think it was Easter) and in 2010 Wellington had a public holiday every month!
(drxargle has made 1 comment)
Yes you are right… hopefully those repeating Wellington ones get fixed up nearer the time. I guess we should keep our collective eyes peeled for a better NZ public holidays .ics file… anyone??
Hi, can anyone help me out please. I’ve added the Calendar as noted and have the public dates in my Google calendar, however they don’t sync with my iPhone so i don’t see them available. Is there some thing I’ve not done correctly ?
(Curly has made 10 comments)
@Curly – You need to email yourself the link above and then click it from your iPhone, not from your desktop.
(nzbullet has made 3 comments)
Hi nzbullet, thanks for the help now added and you were right i was clicking on the link from desktop, woops
(Curly has made 10 comments)
Hi, can anyone help me out please? I get the message “Could not subscribe to the calender “basic.ics” from “www.google.com” any suggestions? Any help appreciated
Thanks
(Deco has made 1 comment)
@Deco – Are you double, triple sure that the URL is 100% correct?
Now would be great if the iPhone calendar would allow you to select multiple calendars without selecting all. I have 10 calendars and I would like a unified view that included 4 or 5 of them only. At the moment you have to select a single calendar or ALL
(MattD has made 61 comments)
I did as above and clicked on the link but it says error and will not load…any suggestions?
thanks
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
Here’s what I did. I right clicked on the link and sent it to my email. Opened on the phone, clicked on link and got taken to website but came up saying safari cannot open. This happened to both links. Am I still doing it wrong?
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
Just had another look and it says ” couldn’t parse path:/uk_en%40holiday.calender.google.com/pub”
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
As per above it says “1. Email yourself the URL of the calendar and click it.”
You have to email it to yourself or it won’t work.
(Dan has made 610 comments)
Thanks, worked as you said.
cheers
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
Right click and then copy, then paste it into an email and send it to yourself. I have just tried it with both and it works fine.
(Dan has made 610 comments)