November 20, 2012

Include "Add to my calendar" Link in Emails

If you want to notify a group of people about an event but don’t want to clutter their calendars with unwanted invitations, you can insert a special link into an email. If recipients are interested in the event, they can then click the link to add the event to their own calendars. You should use this method only if tracking attendance isn’t important.
To include an Add to my calendar link in emails:

  1. In your Google Calendar account, create the calendar event as you normally would and save it.
  2. Open the event details page, and below the Privacy options, click Publish event.



  1. You have two options for inserting the link into your informational email: Option 1 allows you to insert a customizable text link, and Option 2 allows you to insert a Google Calendar button.

Option 1. Copy the URL to make a text link

Copy the unique URL that appears between the two quotation marks following the href attribute. (Make sure not to copy the quotation marks themselves.) In the following example, you would want to copy the highlighted text.



Option 2. Copy the Google Calendar icon to make an image link

Alternatively, highlight the Google Calendar button by left-clicking your mouse and dragging your mouse across it. Then, type Ctrl+C to copy it.  



  1. In your Gmail account, begin composing your informational email.

Option 1. Copy the URL to make a text link

If you’ve chosen Option 1, type the text you want to use for your link (such as Add this event to my calendar). Highlight the text, and click the Link symbol, as seen in the image. Then, paste the calendar URL into the box below To what URL should this link go? and click OK.



Option 2. Copy the Google Calendar icon to make an image link

If you’ve chosen Option 2, simply type Ctrl+V to paste the icon into your email.



  1. After you’ve created your text or image link, finish composing your email as usual.

Important: If you update your event after sending out the informational email, people who have added the event to their own calendars won’t receive your update.