Facebook is a word that is recognized all over the world. It is a platform available in more than 70 languages and is a household name. With over 552 million daily active users, it is a mainframe for society and a resource that many are using to schedule events.
Keeping track of your schedule is a constant struggle for most people and adding Facebook events into the mix is just another calendar for you to keep track of. Here is a step-by-step guide to make your life a little easier.
Step 1: Login into your Facebook account, go to Home and click on “Events” on the right side.
Step 2: Click on the bracket box in the header to drop down the options and click on “Export”
Step 3: A dialog box will open with options for you to choose from. You can add your friends birthdays or upcoming events. We will teach you how to add upcoming events but the steps will be the same for adding friends birthdays just select that options instead when you get to this point. Click on the upcoming events link.
Step 4: If you are on a Mac the Launch Application window will open, select iCal and it will open to give you the URL that you will need to copy.
(updated 10/24/12 with comment question from reader: if you are on a PC you will skip this step and instead right click on the “upcoming events” in Step 3. This will open a drop down where you will choose “copy link location”. Proceed to Step 5 and continue following directions where you will paste the link that you copied from Step 3.)
Step 5: Copy the URL from iCal and open your Google Calendar in the browser window. On the left side of your Google Calendar under other calendars is a drop down arrow, click it to drop down the options and select Add by URL.
Step 6: Insert the URL into the pop up field and click Add Calendar. Your Facebook events should show up automatically on your calendar and you have the ability to turn on and off the calendar by clicking on it in the left side under Other Calendars.
Facebook is great place for making connections and keeping in touch with people but it can feel like a whole new world to many. We hope that this has helped make managing your schedule just a little bit easier. What other tutorials would you like to see for Facebook or another social media sites?
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But what if I’m NOT on a Mac?
If you are on a PC right click on the “upcoming events” link in Step 3 and select “copy link location”. Then move down to Step 5 where you can paste in the copied link location that will give you the same URL as Step 4 does for Macs.
I hope this helps you and we will be adding the revision to the blog for others to see as well!
I’ve followed all the steps which worked fine. Thanks for this.
However, I created a new event as a test and it doesn’t appear in my calendar. Are the 2 systems not in sync? Do we have to export Facebook events to Google Calendar each time a new event is generated?
In my efforts I’ve found that it takes a little while for a new event to show up. It has been between a couple hours to a few days. Also, make sure if you created the event, you have also added yourself as going to the event.There hasn’t been anything I’ve found to speed up the process. If I find something Ill respond with an update to this post. I hope that it shows up soon!
I’ve been using this method of syncing for some time now and I’ve concluded it just simply doesn’t work. For example, I have an event created on March 17, I accepted, and still no event was created in Gmail as of April 2. If there is any other way or a fix for this please advise. Thank you.
We had a comment to try this method – http://thesocialmediaincubator.com/how-to-sync-facebook-events-to-google-calendar/#comment-1227
It is very weird why some users are able to have Facebook run well on their calendars and others are not. We have yet to receive a response from Facebook directly on the issue but will continue working on it!
This has worked for me a very long time. But since a week or two, this doesn’t work anymore. Friend’s Birthdays is syncing, but none of my other events are in my google calandar. Please help!
When I try to do this, Google Calendar gives the error “We could not parse the calendar at the url requested”.
We have not received that error. I can do some research and see if anyone else has seen that error or try a forum.
I have the same error message.
Yes, the same error ““We could not parse the calendar at the url requested” .
Tried it 10 times on several days. Nothing.
Thanks a lot for this man! Helped a lot! Much appreciated!
Thanks for posting this update as Facebook had changed the way to import and this new way is a little more hidden.
It works… great instructions. The friend’s birthdays and upcoming events are two distinct links to import into Google Calendar.
What if you don’t have ical?
Then I would open it with another application like Outlook or other calendar app. Hope this helps:)
Does anyone know how to use google calendar on FB?
I used to use an app called fbCal to synch events from just a FaceBook group I run (not my personal events etc.) to a Google calendar for that group. Doesn’t seem to work anymore – the app page has an issue with https so can’t view that either. Any other solutions? Tried http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/shared-calendar-apps/ but they look costly or require an iPhone etc.
The instructions were easy to follow and I’m certain I did it correctly but nothing shows up in my Google calendar when I show the Facebook Events Calendar. Any thoughts on settings I may have to enable to make it work?
Thank you everyone for your comments. While it worked for us, we are unable to figure out why it seems to have quit working for others. We are in the process of researching further as to what may be done to assist you. I will be back on and in touch, hopefully shortly, with assistance!
You don’t need to do anything with iCal on a Mac. Just right-click (ctrl-click) for the URL just like you would on a Windows machine, and select “Copy Link” (or whatever your browser calls it – “Copy Link Address”, “Copy Link Location”).
It’s important to note that events you have not agreed to go to will show up. What I do is periodically review them, click on each I am definitely attending, and using the “Copy to your calendar” option to put them in my personal Google Calendar, with whatever reminders I want, if any, for that particular event, and then prevent my Android, etc., from importing the raw Facebook list from Google Calendar.
Here is my workaround in Windows 7 if anyone can’t get it working because I couldn’t:
Go to Facebook and click the Sprocket tool icon next to the Today tab of the events page as described above. If it doesn’t show you a url, right click the “upcoming events” link in the same popup window, not the one at the header of the webpage. Then paste that url into Google calendar as described above.
I found that because this wasn’t specified, I clicked on the “Upcoming Events” link on the webpage iteself, not the pop-up window and that did not work for me.
I believe we may have found a solution for those of you who have had problems with syncing of Facebook events with your Google calendar. If you start with using your iOS device like an iPhone to initiate the sync, Facebook believes that it may go smoother than using your computer to initiate. See talk through that Facebook provided: http://www.facebook.com/help/526513104031152
So, everytime when new upcoming events is arrive, I need to re-sync again?
I get error “We could not parse the calendar at the url requested” . What’s wrong?