Claude Has a Surprisingly Clever Way to Add Multiple Appointments to Your Calendar at Once.
I rely heavily on my digital calendar—for me, if it’s not there, it doesn’t exist. So, it irritates me when someone hands me a piece of paper or even an email with multiple meeting dates. I have to either manually add everything to the calendar—which is time-consuming—or try to track all the events separately from the calendar.
However, I’ve found a better way. Starting this week, even the free version of Claude can create files for you, including iCal files. These files are handy for quickly adding multiple meetings to Apple, Google, and Microsoft calendars.
How Claude Can Create Custom iCal Files for You
For example, let’s say you want to add all the men’s Olympic hockey games to your calendar (I’m Canadian—what else could I use as an example?). All you need to do is take a screenshot of the schedule, upload it to Claude, and ask it to create an iCal file for download using this information. I tried it, and it worked perfectly.
However, the Olympic Games example is just an illustration. Let’s say you’re at a conference, and the staff gives you a paper schedule—you could take a photo of it, ask Claude to provide the iCal file, and immediately add it to your calendar.
Please note that you may need to inform Claude about time zones. In my example, the screenshot indicated the time zone in which the events were taking place, and Claude recognized it. In other tests, I found that I needed to mention any potential time zone issues before requesting the file.
How to import Claude’s iCal files into your calendar
Using these files on a Mac is very simple: just open them, and the Calendar app will ask which calendar you want to add the meetings to. But it’s also easy to do in Google Calendar or Outlook.
In Google Calendar, click the gear icon in the upper right corner, then click “Settings” and find the “Import” option in the left sidebar. Click “Choose a file from your computer” and navigate to the file you downloaded from Claude’s website.
The steps are similar for Microsoft Outlook . In Outlook, click “File,” then “Open & Export,” then “Import/Export,” then select “Import” and then iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar (.vcs) . Select the calendar you want to add meetings to, and that’s it—all your meetings will be displayed.