How to receive text reminders from your Google calendar

I struggle to stay organized, and I've never been able to keep a paper planner. Something I've had some luck with is Google's calendar. This article is about one nifty feature of Google calender: text notification. You can set your calendar to send you an SMS message to remind you of important appointments. It's really helped me out; give it a try.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Google account.
• A cell phone & cell phone plan that allows SMS messages (texting)

1. 
   Create a Google account from the Google search page.

   Make sure to create a Google account. You can sign up from the main Google search page.

2. 
   Create your Google calendar and add entries to it.

   Create a calendar and add entries to it. (This article really assumes you've already mastered using the basic features of Google's calendar.)

3. 
   Go to your Google Calendar Settings

   Click on the settings button at the top of the screen.

4. 
   Verify your cell phone number with Google Calendar on the Settings page.

   Click on the button to set up your mobile phone settings. Basically you put in your number and Google texts you an access code that you have to enter in the box and then save your settings.

5. 
   Click on your Google Calendar entry to reach the editing page.

   Click on an entry to go to the edit screen.

6. 
   Add a reminder to your Google Calendar entry.

   In the editing page click to add a reminder.

7. 
   Select SMS as your Google Calendar reminder type

   Select the type of reminder. This is about receiving text message reminders, so click on the SMS option in the pull-down menu.

8. 
   Set the warning time for your Google Calendar SMS reminder.

   Set the time for when you wanted to be reminded. I usually set my reminders to text me one hour before the event.

9. 
   Click save to save your Google Calendar Text message reminder.

   Make sure to click save before you exit the editing page.

10. Now you're set up to receive SMS reminders from your Google Calendar. Congratulations on getting organized!

Tips & Warnings

• Google does not charge to send you a text reminder, but your cell phone provider may, depending on the terms of your plan.

[mroth]

on 12/19/2008 Very cool product from Google! I searched around on other Web sites and they suggested creating an export of your Outlook, importing that file into Google Calendar, and every time you made an entry into Outlook to just make the same entry into Google Calendar. LAME! That's a complete waste of time and totally defeats the purpose of automatically syncing your files.

This let me quickly sync all my Outlook events into Google and now I'm setting up reminders to send me text messages when important events are coming up. All of this could be simplified with a smartphone of course. =)