Does Google Calendar no longer parse dates and times?
January 23, 2020 7:56 AM   Subscribe

If a friend emails me to say, "Let's meet for lunch at Leonardo's on Wednesday, March 5 at 12:30 pm," what's the fastest way I can turn that into an event? Google used to be really good at slurping up dates and times from gmail and making it very easy to add them to gcal, but this functionality seems to have gone away. (Note that I am not talking about automatic gcal events generated from emails with gcal invites, plane or hotel reservations, etc. Those seem to work fine for me.)

It also used to be that you could paste a date and time in almost any format into the title of a new event, and gcal would automagically parse them out and use them for the date and time of the event, but no longer?

My org has Google Apps for Education so we have most of the G Suite functionality, and I usually use Chrome but am not especially attached to it. I've looked in the gcal and gmail settings, the Google documentation, the Google S Marketplace, the Chrome Webstore, and googled (obvs) for a solution but, I admit, have not started wading through the million spammy listicles with titles like "17 Extensions to Powerhack Your Google Calendar."

Does anyone have a solution for this?
posted by BrashTech to Computers & Internet (14 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yeah this has not worked for me in years. I found this thread in the Google Calendar Help section which has more than 400 comments. There is a Google employee posting at the start to confirm this feature was removed. Deeper into the thread, there are some specific Chrome add-ons listed but others have said they don't work.
posted by soelo at 8:58 AM on January 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


If you're in the Apple ecosystem, Fantastical handles natural language parsing to create events.
posted by neilbert at 10:07 AM on January 23, 2020


Huh. I'm still able to do this in Gcal. Pasting in "7pm Dinner at Pancho's" works just fine for me.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:23 AM on January 23, 2020


This was one of the features I sorely missed switching from 30 Boxes. (The other was the ability to show 5 weeks at a time: the previous week as well as the next 4 weeks, if anyone is listening.) It hasn't worked for at least a couple years.
posted by wnissen at 10:39 AM on January 23, 2020


I do use a specific Chrome extension for this task: "Google Calendar." That lets me copy and paste an event with date & time and have it parsed automatically.

Not sure what Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell is referring to. Can you be more specific where you are copying and pasting?
posted by crazy with stars at 10:44 AM on January 23, 2020


Looks like it DEPENDS WHERE YOU CLICK. I just did some experimentation. I view my Google Calendar by week. If I click in the "All Day Event" section of the page and create an event called "lunch at 12pm" I get an event called "lunch" at 12:00 pm. If I click in the "Hourly" section of the page, at say 8:00 am and create an event called "lunch at 12pm" I get an event called "lunch at 12pm" at 8:00 am.

I knew the all-day thing was going to happen, because I often have to create "all-day" events for a shared work calendar that I intend to have a timeframe in the title of the event ("Library Hours 1pm - 5pm") and they always get converted to a non-all day event covering that timespan.

No matter where you click it doesn't parse "at Leonardo's" as a location.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:24 AM on January 23, 2020


It is possible that the checkbox in Google Calendar to "Automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar" is not set? Here are their directions
posted by exogenous at 11:52 AM on January 23, 2020


Response by poster: Huh, Rock Steady, just tried it and it doesn't work for me. Oh Google. Why.

exogenous, that option refers only to plane and hotel reservations and stuff.
posted by BrashTech at 4:49 PM on January 23, 2020


Sorry, just getting back to this now, crazy with stars. I was specifically responding to this:

It also used to be that you could paste a date and time in almost any format into the title of a new event, and gcal would automagically parse them out and use them for the date and time of the event, but no longer?

I'm sharing two screenshots. The first is me opening up my Google calendar in the month view. I clicked on the box for Jan. 28, which opened up an event entry box. I typed in "7pm Dinner at Pancho's" into that box. The second shows Gcal correctly parsing that and creating an event called "Dinner at Pancho's" with a time of 7pm.

OP, is that not the sort of event entry you're talking about?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:36 PM on January 24, 2020


Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell: "I clicked on the box for Jan. 28, "

In the old style for google calendar (and still accessible via the Chrome extension) you didn't need to click on the particular day you wanted to add the event. You typed the date into the box with the time and Google parsed the text. That is particularly useful for events long in the future. You can see what I mean here: https://imgur.com/R68o9eh
posted by crazy with stars at 11:46 AM on January 25, 2020


CWS, what "box" are you referring to?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:03 AM on January 26, 2020


Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell: "CWS, what "box" are you referring to?"

I'm talking about the 'quick add' feature that no longer exists. An example here.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:04 PM on January 26, 2020


Ah bummer. Sorry for the false hope!
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:13 PM on January 27, 2020


> BrashTech: Huh, Rock Steady, just tried it and it doesn't work for me. Oh Google. Why.

Troubleshooting Google stuff is so insane, sorry. I can't see any setting I might have enabled that would activate that functionality. I'll try to post some screenshots later so we can be sure we are comparing apples to apples.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2020


« Older How can I keep my integrity as my bitter father...   |   Good quality rechargeable AA/AAA batteries? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.