Google Calendar Quick Add, Supercharged

Quick Add is great for typing one short phrase like Lunch tomorrow at noon. But it cannot read your emails, schedules, or flight confirmations. Text to Calendar can.

What Google Calendar Quick Add can (and can't) do

Google Calendar's quick event creation lets you type a short phrase with a time in it - like Coffee with Sam Friday 3pm - and turns it into an event. It works well for simple, single events you compose yourself.

But Quick Add stops there. It cannot parse a pasted email thread, a multi-session class schedule, or a flight confirmation. It will not extract locations and descriptions from longer text, it does not handle several events at once, and there is no Quick Add at all when the event details live on a web page you are reading.

The better Quick Add: highlight, right-click, done

Text to Calendar is a free Chrome extension that works like Quick Add for any text anywhere on the web. Highlight the text that contains the event - however long or messy - right-click, and the event opens in Google Calendar with the title, date, time, time zone, location, and description filled in.

Quick Add vs Text to Calendar

  • Quick Add: one short typed phrase. Text to Calendar: any highlighted text, including full emails and schedules.
  • Quick Add: one event at a time. Text to Calendar: multiple events and recurring patterns in one pass.
  • Quick Add: title and time only. Text to Calendar: location, description, and time zone too.
  • Quick Add: Google Calendar only. Text to Calendar: Google Calendar and Outlook.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Install Text to Calendar

    Add the free extension to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store.

  2. 2

    Highlight any event text

    An email, a syllabus line, a flight confirmation - select the text where the event details appear.

  3. 3

    Right-click and create

    Choose Create Google Calendar Event. Review the pre-filled event and hit save.

Google Calendar Quick Add FAQ

What is Quick Add in Google Calendar?

Quick Add refers to Google Calendar's natural-language event creation: you type a phrase like Dinner with Alex Thursday 7pm and Google parses it into an event. It exists in the web create box and through the Calendar API's quickAdd method.

Can Google Calendar Quick Add parse an email?

No. Quick Add only parses short typed phrases. To turn an email into an event, use a tool like the Text to Calendar Chrome extension, which parses highlighted text with AI.

Can Quick Add create multiple or recurring events?

Quick Add creates one event per phrase. Text to Calendar can create multiple events and recurring events from a single highlighted block of text.

Is Text to Calendar free?

The first 5 events are free - no credit card required. Affordable plans cover everything after that.

Get the supercharged Quick Add

Install Text to Calendar and create Google Calendar events from any text in one click.