Resurrect Quick Add for Google Calendar by using the Chrome Extension

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I resurrected the Quick Add feature that Google Calendar killed off in their last interface release.  This allows you to schedule appointments using normal English syntax (rather than having to parse everything into database fields).  I'll also show you how I use this practically in my life.  

I'm not sure exactly when Google Calendar did away with the Quick Add function, but I miss it.  Normally, when you put in an appointment, you have to parse your fields for subject, date, time, location, etc. like you are putting in a database entry.  The Quick Add feature used to let you type in a calendar entry using normal English grammar, Like  "Lunch with Sally on 2/28 12-2pm at Panera" and it would do the work of parsing that information into the database fields with reasonable accuracy.  Getting rid of this feature, frankly feels like technology going the wrong direction since artificial intelligence is supposed to be making tech products more human-like to deal with, but I can only hope that they are working on making it better before putting it back into Google Calendar.

Quick Add from Chrome Extension

The good news is -- there is a way around it!  At least there is if you are working on a computer and using the Chrome browser.  You can use the Google Calendar extension.  To add the extension in Google Chrome, go up to the top right hand corner of your browser and hit the three dots, More Tools, then Extensions.  Now scroll down and click on "Get more extensions."  In the search bar, search for Google Calendar.  Once you find it, hit Add to Chrome.  So, now the extension will appear up here next to your search bar in Chrome.  Clicking on it will bring up your upcoming appointments.  AND, as you can see, you can add new appointments from this by hitting the red plus sign button.  In fact, the only way you can add an appointment is by using Quick Add -- you can see there is only one field.  Okay, so let's put our fictitious lunch date in this field and see what happens.  Once we click Add, we can click on the event that we just created right here to check the details.  Well -- that is darn near perfect.  It leaves Panera in the subject, but it also puts it in the location field, so clicking on it opens Google Maps with some Panera options.  That is perfect for me.  I will say that it helps that I happen to know the syntax that works for Quick Add -- like i I know not to put in the word "at" before event times -- but you'll figure all that out as well using some trial and error.  

Quick Add using Google Calendar App

The Quick Add feature is sort of built into the iOS Google Calendar app as well (and probably the Android app as well), but it's not very robust.  Here's how it works using our same fictitious lunch event.  It's much pickier about syntax and the order that you type things.  Plus, it has a greater than average fail rate, so I don't use it very much.  I keep trying just in case they've improved the functionality -- I'm sure it'll get there eventually.

Practical Application

So, it seems fairly obvious how you would use this in real life.  Once you get the syntax down, its just easier and faster than having to click between fields and scroll through numbers.  But here is where it is a total life saver.  I have teenagers and at the beginning of their activity seasons (sports, choir, etc.), I usually get a giant list of practices, performances, games, and scrimmages.  I hate that laborious task of entering in each appointment the typical way.  I will go to ridiculous lengths to take the info I've been given and get it into Google Calendar Quick Add format.  It's possible that in the end it takes exactly the same amount of time, but I doubt it.  Plus, I find it much more satisfying to put all of these in through Quick Add.  

I'll walk you through an example.  Here's a schedule that I received for my son's tennis team.  It's in Google Docs format, which I find maddening, since this is so obviously spreadsheet style data.  But no matter, I can work with it.  My tool of choice for manipulating this kind of data is still Microsoft Word because of the robust tools that it has for changing text to tables and vice versa.  Google Docs is still lagging far behind in this area.  I'm not going to walk you through each step, since it's sort of nuts, but it involves getting rid of multiple tabs using Find and Replace, converting the text into a table using tabs as the column differentiator, moving the columns around until it reflects proper Quick Add syntax, and adding in columns with parsing words like "on" or "at" or a space, and then finally, converting the table back to text.  Here is the whole process sped up.  Voila!  Now I have a whole list of events that I can cut and paste into the Google Calendar Chrome extension to quick add.  Adding each event now takes a couple of seconds per event.  Much better.  And honestly, I don't know why every parent has to do this same series of work when whoever created this could just create a calendar in Google and share it with all of the parents on the team, but that is a different video.

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!