Google Calendar - When Was That Event Created?



>> Thursday, October 21, 2010

Usually I don't care, but occasionally I need to know when I created an event on my Google Calendar. It is not the easiest piece of information to find, but it is out there and here is how you find it.


  1. Go to Settings (Calendar Settings) > Calendars tab
  2. Select (click on) the calendar with the event you want
  3. Under the Private Address, click on the ICAL icon
  4. The address will pop up, just save and open that file
  5. In your editor, just search for the name of the event.
  6. Look for the CREATED attribute. There is also a LAST-MODIFIED attribute if you are interested in that.

29 comments:

Anonymous,  April 7, 2013 at 11:38 AM  

Hi - I don't really understand steps 4 and 5 - would you mind adding a little bit more detail - many thanks

Anonymous,  July 10, 2013 at 3:02 PM  

What's an ICAL icon?

Matt July 10, 2013 at 3:06 PM  

The ICAL icon shows up in the settings. It is a green box that has the text ICAL in it. That is the link you will need.

Anonymous,  August 12, 2013 at 11:04 AM  

Perfect, thank you!

Anonymous,  September 6, 2013 at 2:44 AM  

Can you tell me how to find the created or last modified attribute in step 6? I loaded the file into the Calendar program on a mac. Thanks!

Matt September 6, 2013 at 8:09 AM  

You will have to load the file into a text editor. Something like TextEdit or TextMate on Mac. Calendar on mac will (I think) ignore that information so you won't be able to see it.

Marcie January 30, 2014 at 8:23 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous,  May 26, 2014 at 11:16 AM  

Very very cool tip, thank you sir.

Unknown July 21, 2014 at 12:04 PM  

this only shows events created today. what am i doing wrong?

Kim,  July 21, 2014 at 12:54 PM  

This did not work for me. Any ideas? The calendar I am looking at is shared by several managers. When I go into settings and pick the calendar, the only option I have is "calendar address". I do not see "private address". Then once I click on the iCal button and try to save it or open it, an error comes up "failed - no file"

Matt July 21, 2014 at 1:52 PM  

Kim, I think you have to be the owner for this to work. I get an error when clicking on the iCal address under "Calendar Address" instead of "Private Address" too.

Anonymous,  September 17, 2014 at 11:27 AM  

Thank you for the help! So that others know - the iCal link didn't help me. But there was an XML link that I could click on. It took me to a page that had all the events on the calendar, who had put them on, and when they had been added.

Tommy February 9, 2016 at 12:05 PM  

If the ICAL button doesn't work, you can also click the "Export this calendar" link. It should directly download the .ics file, then you can open it in a text editor and search for the name of the event.

C.C. Rider May 3, 2017 at 12:44 PM  

Great write-up, thanks! I wish Google would just show the data, but this is a great way to find it. For those having problems, open the ICS in a text editor.

Unknown July 2, 2017 at 1:07 PM  

Much appreciated. Got me out of trouble.

Unknown July 6, 2017 at 9:54 AM  

Awesome! Thanks.
CREATED:
LAST-MODIFIED:

Anonymous,  February 12, 2018 at 3:23 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous,  February 12, 2018 at 3:23 AM  

For the calendars, which doesn't have private ICAL address, you can open them in browser, check XHR requests in Developer Tools, and get creation date from there.

Alan March 22, 2018 at 1:44 PM  

When I enter the private address into a browser, it opens the file into outlook immediately. I am not sure how to extract this data inside the outlook program. Any insight?

Caitlin,  October 17, 2018 at 9:30 AM  

What do you mean by "In your editor, just search for the name of the event."? The file opens automatically in outlook. If I choose "Open With", I only can choose Outlook or Calendar. I'm not sure what you mean by "editor".

Matt October 17, 2018 at 2:27 PM  

On windows you'll have to use some kind of text editor like Visual Studio Code, Notepad++, or something similar. From there you can open the file directly.

Unknown April 22, 2019 at 11:21 AM  

This tip still works even years after posting the solution. You may have to use your noggin to see that Google will slightly change the heading of something, but all the basic info is still there, plus if you are here trying to find out this information, you can figure out UI differences as you are not the average user.

Anonymous,  May 29, 2019 at 9:36 AM  

Struggling to translate some of it. Ex. LAST-MODIFIED:20190523T194610Z
I can tell this means May 23, 2019, but can't figure out the time from "T194610Z"
Any help?

Anonymous,  May 31, 2019 at 9:31 AM  

Great post, just used it today.
For the translation:
Time is in 24 hour time, so T194610Z, i believe, is 7:46pm 10seconds. I dont know the Z translation, but for me it appears to be my time zone setting, of EST time.

If someone knows the Z explanation, that would be appreciated.

Unknown July 15, 2019 at 10:42 AM  

The "Z" indicates "Zulu Time" or Greenwich Mean Time. All other time zones are derived from Zulu which is considered a constant.

San Leandro July 17, 2019 at 1:03 PM  

There's like 15 settings in this product. And in none of them do I find this information.

Anonymous,  February 18, 2020 at 6:59 AM  

Does this work on Mac? I can't find the "private" address, nor the iCal icon.

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