Print My Cal

Perhaps you are already familiar with Google Calendar and all its amazingness! If not, I’d encourage you to check it out. When you do, you will find a free online solution for all of your scheduling needs. It is fully compatible with your favorite mobile device so you can take the calendar offline “in your pocket,” and it automatically syncs with your online calendar when reconnected to the Internet.

As if that capability isn’t enough, Google Calendar can be so much more than a personal calendar. It can easily be shared so others can view and even edit your calendar (if you grant them the privilege). Calendars can also be embedded on web sites. All of these attributes combine to make Google Calendar the perfect solution for managing congregation and school calendars, allowing multiple staff members to have edit privileges and displaying the calendar on your church site.

For help getting started with all of these possibilities on Google Calendar, check out the WELSTech Wiki.

So what’s the catch? Well, unfortunately Google Calendar does have a shortcoming when it comes to printing. The print interface doesn’t allow for many options, and event titles are only allowed one line on the calendar. In such a limited space, many event descriptions are cut off. The result is a printed calendar that is of little use. This becomes a real problem for congregations and schools who want to share their monthly calendar in print newsletters. Many church secretaries have resigned themselves to retyping every event from the calendar into their print calendar solution. Not an effective use of time!!

That’s exactly the dilemma we faced at St. John’s and what motivated my husband/pastor/favorite hobbyist computer programmer to develop a solution. Print My Cal was born!

This freeware utility downloads one or more Google Calendars into the universal Rich Text Format (RTF) for word processing.  Users can easily perform edits and print lovely, multi-colored (if desired), clean calendars. Check out our overview video for a demonstration of the process:

After initially adding any desired calendars, users can easily pick and choose which they want to include in their RTF file each time they run the program. There are also options for desired month and year as well as whether you want to open or save the file.

Select the desired options and click “Go!” to download the RFT. Once opened, make any desired edits (I often modify the default title) and “Print Your Cal”!

This post is a part of the Summer 2011 WELS Hacker series on the WELSTech Podcast.