Are you looking ways to include "Add to Calendar" links in your email? This guide will tell you how to add Google Calendar event, iCal event, Outlook calendar event, office365 and Yahoo calendar event to your email by using free tools.

Adding Google Calendar Event to your email

This is very simple to achieve when you find the right tools. Fortunately there is a free tool available on this site. Google Calendar Link Generator

All you have to go to this site and fill out the details of your event.

Once you're finished, you will get Google calendar link with the details you have entered at the bottom. All you have to do is to copy this link and paste it in your emails.

Note :

The link will be a very long one, especially if you have a long description and other details. So it is always a good idea to Hyperlink instead of using a raw link.

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&dates=20221231T120000Z%2F20221231T143000Z&details=We%20are%20going%20to%20celebrate%20this%20evening%20with%20fun%20and%20party&location=Zoom&text=New%20Year%20Celebration

Look how messy it is, to announce a fun new year's party?!

So do this instead "Add to your Google Calendar"

Email service providers don't really like raw links. They think its spammy. Well, it does kinda look spammy. So try to add the link behind a text like "Add this to your calendar"

Adding iCal Event link to your email

Most of you may have come here looking for this particular point- how to add a clickable iCal event to your email. Yes, it is not as easy as Google calendar and I've figured out a workaround without needing to use paid tools like plusthis or without needing to add javascript and such.

So if we go back to our previous Google Calendar example and scroll down a bit, you'd see a button saying "Download ICS"

When you click that you will get a .ics file containing information about the event you have entered in the fields given.

Now the easiest way to share the calendar events with iCal users is to include this file in your email and ask them to download it.

When they download it, it automatically creates a calendar event which the user can in turn save to their calendar.

But its not a very user friendly experience.

Workaround to add iCal link to your emails

Now you have an .ics file containing your event information. All you have to do now is to make it into a one click downloadable link.

Here is how we do it. We are going to use dropbox for this purpose. I tried google drive as well, but it wasn't always a smooth user experience. So I'll stick with Dropbox here.

Step 1 : Upload the .ics file to your dropbox

Step 2 : Get the sharable dropbox link of this file

Step 3 : Edit the sharable file link to downloadable link

Now comes the important part.

The link you copied would be something like https://www.dropbox.com/s/o59fhfhf99haav/download.ics?dl=0. This is simply a sharable link. You'll need to login to access this.

We will convert them to downloadable link by replacing the www.dropbox.com with dl.dropboxusercontent.com and we don't need the last part starting with "?"

So final link will look like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/o59fhfhf99haav/download.ics

Step 4 : Insert this link in your email

Once you have this link, just paste it in your email.

HOW TO GET DIRECT DOWNLOADABLE LINKS FROM GOOGLE DRIVE AND DROPBOX

Check out the post to learn how.

If you don't have dropbox, you can do the same with google drive too. You just need to create a downloadable link for the file.

Bonus : Adding iCal Link with Reminder to your email

Can you add a reminder as well to your ical event? Yes, you can and that too with another free tool.

Step 1 : First you need to go to this website

Step 2 : Create your event, set your timezone etc

Once you are done, click "Generate .ics file

Step 3: It will then take you to another window where you can add extra options such as reminder.

Once done, download the .ics file and create a downloadable link as per the instructions above. Now you have an iCal event with reminder! Hope that was helpful

Adding Microsoft Outlook Calendar Event to your email

Step 1 : Visit the site and use the free calendar tool to enter your event details

Step 2 : Copy the generated calendar link

Step 3 : Hyperlink the pasted link into your email

Adding Office 365 Calendar Event to your email

Step 1 : Visit the site and use the free calendar tool to enter your event details

Step 2 : Copy the generated calendar link

Step 3 : Hyperlink the pasted link into your email

Adding Yahoo! Calendar Event to your email

Step 1 : Visit the site and use the free calendar tool to enter your event details

Step 2 : Copy the generated calendar link

Step 3 : Hyperlink the pasted link into your email