Google’s genius way of syncing Calendar with Outlook could be considered email spam

While many of us are on the better side of the productivity app suites, plenty of companies still require their employees to use Microsoft’s suite, including Teams and Outlook. This often means that you need to share Google Calendar invites with people using non-Google services. While the common calendar standard makes sharing the initial invite easier, any subsequent modifications to existing events remain a challenge. Google has thankfully found a workaround to this limitation, but it involves sending even more emails.

A few months ago, Google revealed a simple way to solve this industry problem. Instead of coming up with a new common standard, which would’ve required a lot of work and extensive cooperation from all the service providers, Google found an ingenious solution — sending more emails. And since most mainstream calendar services are already integrated with their corresponding email platforms (Proton Mail and Calendar, for example), email became the obvious choice.

While it may sound like an elegant solution that uses existing tools, excessive emails can quickly turn into annoying spam, especially when a lot of recipients are involved in large organizations. To mitigate this, Google is using a dedicated email delivery address, allowing users to filter these messages and keep their inbox clutter-free, while still benefitting from the feature. Each of these emails comes with instructions to quickly set up this filter.

It is not a perfect solution, as your recipients will still need to periodically clean up the email folder, but it still offers a practical way to keep everyone up to date with the changes made to shared Calendar events. Whether you’re working with external teams or juggling a mix of Google and Microsoft tools for personal and professional use, this update helps keep your calendar synced across devices, be it a phone or one of our favorite Chromebooks.

From beta to general availability

Google began beta testing this feature in June 2024 with a similar set of functionalities. After more than six months of testing, it’s finally rolling out to everyone. However, the rollout may take up to a month to reach all users, so if you’re eager to sync your Google Calendar entries with third-party services, you may need to wait a little longer.