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Subscribe to a calendar

Schools, sports teams, clubs and many apps publish their calendars as a link, an .ics or webcal address. Subscribe to one and its events appear in Attaché next to your own, kept up to date. Subscribed calendars are read-only.

On this page

Subscribe in three steps

  1. Step 1: Copy the calendar’s link

    Find the link where the calendar is published (where to look) and copy it. It starts with https:// or webcal:// and often ends in .ics. Copy the link itself; don’t download the file.

  2. Step 2: Choose Subscribe to a calendar

    In Attaché, open Settings → Connections and choose Subscribe to a calendar. (It is also among the calendar services under Connect another account, and on the Connect your calendars screen when you’ve just signed up.)

  3. Step 3: Paste the link and subscribe

    Paste it into Calendar link. Give the calendar a Name and a Colour of your own if you like, or leave them empty to keep the calendar’s, and choose Subscribe.

    On screen

    Checking the link…, then Subscribed to the calendar’s name, with how many events it holds; choose Continue. The calendar joins your list under Subscribed, marked Read-only, and its events appear in your calendar shortly after.

Google Calendar

On a computer, open Google Calendar, choose Settings (the gear, then Settings), then the calendar under Settings for my calendars. In Integrate calendar, copy the Secret address in iCal format, or the Public address in iCal format if the calendar is public. A work or school account’s administrator may have turned the secret address off.

For a Google calendar of your own, connecting your Google account is better: you can change events too.

Outlook.com

In Outlook.com on the web, open Settings → Calendar → Shared calendars. Under Publish a calendar, choose the calendar and how much detail to show, choose Publish, and copy the ICS link (not the HTML one).

Apple iCloud

On iCloud.com, open Calendar and choose the calendar information button by the calendar’s name. Turn on Public Calendar, then choose Copy: the link starts with webcal://. For your own iCloud calendars, connecting iCloud is better: you can change events and see your private calendars without publishing them.

Schools, teams and family apps

School and sports-league sites, and apps such as TeamSnap and Cozi, often offer a calendar feed. Look for Subscribe, Sync calendar, iCal, ICS or webcal near the schedule or in the app’s settings, and copy the link.

Good to know

  • Read-only. Nobody can change a subscribed calendar’s events in Attaché, you included: change them where the calendar is published.
  • Kept up to date. Attaché checks each link about every 30 minutes, or less often when the calendar asks for that (at most once a day), so a change can take a while to show.
  • Up to 20 subscriptions per account. They don’t count toward the Free plan’s 5 calendar connections.
  • Delegates see a subscribed calendar the way you choose for each calendar, like any other, and nobody can edit it.
  • Size and address. A calendar can be up to 10 MB, which is years of events. Attaché fetches links over https, webcal links included, and only from servers on the public internet.

A private link works like a password

Anyone who has a link with a secret in it, such as Google’s secret address, can see that calendar. Attaché stores every link encrypted and never shows it again after you add it. If you shared one by mistake, reset it where it is published (in Google Calendar, Reset by the secret address), then give Attaché the new link (how).

If it doesn’t work

  • Check that you copied the link, starting with https:// or webcal://, and not a downloaded .ics file.
  • Open the link in a browser: it should download a calendar file or show text that begins with BEGIN:VCALENDAR. A web page with a schedule on it isn’t a calendar link, and a link that asks you to sign in first can’t be used.

“We couldn’t reach that link” or “That server isn’t reachable from Attaché”

Attaché fetches links only from servers on the public internet, over https. A link that works only on a private network, or only over plain http, is refused; a server that is down or slow can be tried again in a minute.

“That calendar is bigger than 10 MB”

Attaché reads calendars up to 10 MB, which holds years of events. If a publisher offers a feed for the current season or year, subscribe to that one instead.

“You’ve reached 20 subscribed calendars” or “You’re already subscribed to that calendar”

An account holds up to 20 subscriptions, and each link once. Remove one you no longer need (how), or find the one you already have in Settings → Connections.

Events are missing or out of date

Attaché checks each link about every 30 minutes, and some publishers update theirs only a few times a day. If a calendar stops updating altogether, its publisher may have reset or unpublished the link: get the new link and give it to Attaché (how).

Change or remove a subscription

In Settings → Connections, choose Edit by the calendar to rename it, change its colour or paste a New link; Attaché never shows the link it has. Choose Unsubscribe to remove the calendar: Attaché deletes the link and the events it copied, normally within minutes.

Still stuck?

E-mail support@tryattache.com and tell us what you see. Never send anyone a password, us included. The other guides and the FAQ may help too.