"Attach" Files to iOS Calendar Events using Evernote


Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Evernote to "attach" files to my iPhone calendar events. 
I use Google Calendar to keep track of personal and family appointments.  And I access Google Calendar from a variety of places, but the majority of the time I'm looking at my calendar from my iPhone or iPad.  Up until this week, I've been using the built in iPhone Calendar app.  I decided to try out the Google Calendar app, which I like so far -- but this video really applies to either mobile app. 
Just a quick technical note before I dive in - Between web-based Google Calendar and the indigenous iPhone calendar app, most of the fields translate perfectly. Like date, time and place. But some fields don't have counterparts. For example, the URL field in the iPhone Calendar app doesn't have a corresponding field in Google Calendar, so if you populate it on your phone, it doesn't show up on Google Calendar in a browser.  For this reason, I try to avoid using it.  End of technical note. 
I want to be able to attach files to my events for 2 reasons: 1) I'm mostly paperless and don't want to have to remember where I put a flyer or agenda for a meeting and 2) I share my calendar with my family, so if it is attached to the event, every family member immediately has access to it.  You can see my earlier video that explains how I do that. 
Here's a real life example: my daughter's choir participated in the National Cherry Blossom Parade last year. She was actually getting a ride with a friend's family, but all of the details for the events were on this flyer including things she needed to know like what to wear, where to meet, schedule, etc. I wanted to attach this flyer to the event in the calendar so that she immediately had access to it from her phone as well. 
As far as I could tell -- there is not an easy way to do this that is also accessible from the built-in iPhone calendar app. If you are accessing Google Calendar from a computer browser, you can attach a document from Google Drive like this. When you open up that event on your mobile device, you can see it, but you can't actually open it.  Frustrating.  Plus there is no way to attach files directly from the iPhone calendar app. 
So here's how I get around that. 
  1. Scan or Photograph - First I scan the flyer using Adobe Scan. Or I just take a picture of it.
  2. Save to Evernote - Then I save it to Evernote using the Share button in either Adobe Scan or in Camera Roll in Photos.  I save it to my Lara's Brain notebook, which is my default note repository and, generally speaking, I give it the tag "Temporary". I'm assuming that this is a flyer or document that is important for this event only. I make a point to clean out my Temporary notes a couple of times a year.  If I want to keep it longer, I can use a different tag. 
  3. Copy Link in Evernote - Okay, I open the Evernote app, find my note -- it should be the very first in the All Notes list since it was the last one I added/edited.  Now I choose the Share button and hit Copy Link. I have to choose to make it a Public Link or a Private Link.  Public Links are accessible to anyone who knows the URL.  Private Links can only be viewed by those who have express access to that Evernote notebook. Since I don't share my notebooks with my kids, I almost always choose Public. If I frequently attached files containing sensitive information, I might want to create a new shared notebook in Evernote just for this purpose, but I haven't had to do that yet. 
  4. Add the Link to Event - Now I go back into my event in Calendar and scroll down to the notes section. Remember, I'm not going to use the URL field since it doesn't translate over to all of my interfaces.  I paste the link into the Notes field and save the event.
Now when I go into my event in iPad Calendar and click on that link, it takes me straight to that note on Evernote for Web in a browser.  In addition, if I look at this event on my computer browser, I can access this file from there as well. 
You can obviously also use this for Google Drive documents or anything else that is stored on the cloud and has an accessible link. 
Let me know how this works for you!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

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