Google Calendar Guru Needed

September 27, 2011 1:59 PM

Is there an 'advanced' way to add or edit Google calendar appointments beyond the normal interface?

The school I teach at has a two-week timetable - Week A & Week B which alternate and I have a completely different timetable of lessons and meetings in week A and week B.

I spent hours setting up my weekly timetable for each week and for each lesson or meeting to repeat fortnightly. But I have just realised that the school holidays don't follow the week A / week B pattern, so we get week A followed by a week's holiday followed by week B.

What I need to be able to do is shift everything forward one week after the holiday.

Is there a way of doing this easily without having to do it all manually?

posted by mairuzu to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Probably the easiest way is to delete the event and all following (it will ask) and then recreate.
posted by michaelh at 2:02 PM on September 27, 2011

Can't help you, but I'll be watching eagerly. My problem is much simpler, I just want a way to schedule things on "first and third Fridays", but it doesn't seem able to do that, either.
The main advantage I have is that mine is only one recurring event, while it sounds like you're dealing with an entire 2 weeks' worth of recurring appointments. I know you can drag and drop, but I don't think there's a way to select several things at once for the drag and drop.
posted by aimedwander at 2:06 PM on September 27, 2011

I just want a way to schedule things on "first and third Fridays", but it doesn't seem able to do that, either.

I just did this. You have to make two events, one on the first Friday and one on the third. Then for each of them, select 'Repeat monthly' and 'on this day'.

I've got little idea for the skipping weeks problem, though, other than the deleting the subsequent ones after each holiday and starting over. (This is pretty awful, but not awful awful if you do one at a time.) You might be able to modify the perl script suggestion from this old AskMe.
posted by hoyland at 2:17 PM on September 27, 2011

Probably the easiest way is to delete the event and all following (it will ask) and then recreate.

Unfortunately that is exactly what I am wanting to avoid and the reason for this request - I have in excess of 75 appointments over the two weeks, with different colours, reminders etc.
posted by mairuzu at 3:09 PM on September 27, 2011

Probably the easiest way is to delete the event and all following (it will ask) and then recreate.

No, don't delete and recreate, but drag and drop to the next week - and it says "apply to following?" and shifts everything down. Better, but still annoying to do 75 times.
At least it did that shift a couple of days ago when I was at home and running Firefox. I just tried to verify this, and on this computer's IE it doesn't do the following events thing, which screws up the whole plan. Now I feel uncertain about recommending this but I'm fairly certain it works. Worked. Yesterday. Someplace else. huh.
posted by aimedwander at 3:19 PM on September 27, 2011

I don't know if you are a Mac user, but iCal has this function, look here for instructions:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/1031686#1031686

Then you can sync up your ical with google calendar:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358#ical

If you aren't a Mac user I have to imagine that there is a PC equivalent that does calDAV-connecting that might offer the ability to do some sort of smart recurrent event based on a location within the month.
posted by aloiv2 at 4:20 PM on September 27, 2011

oh, realizing I slightly mis-read your question....that may still help, but I'm not so sure now.
posted by aloiv2 at 4:21 PM on September 27, 2011

Is there the equivalent of save/import as CSV? If so, it might work to save, edit in a text editor/spreadsheet, and import.
posted by zippy at 8:21 AM on September 28, 2011