How do I add a secondary time zone to Google Calendar?

Google Calendar is becoming more popular amongst businesses. If you’re dealing with people in different time zones, trying to arrange meetings on your calendar can be difficult. How far behind is San Francisco again?

By default, everything will show in your own time zone, but wouldn’t it be convenient to show another one alongside it?

Adding a secondary time zone

• Head into Google Calendar and click the cog icon at the top right of the screen
• Select Settings
• Click on “Time zone” in the left-hand menu
• To the right are your time zone settings. You should see yours is set as the “primary time zone” and a secondary one, below it, is blank
• Click on the tick box named “Display secondary time zone” and select a time zone from the “Secondary time zone” drop-down. You can even label it with an appropriate name, if you wish

And that’s it, done.

It should be noted that a secondary time zone is only relevant if viewing your calendar in day or week format. Anything greater than this makes it irrelevant.

Also, the secondary time zone is not shown when you view an individual event in your calendar – it’s only used on the main overview page.

Here’s how I have mine set up, showing the time in the UK against UTC (right now, they’re the same, but when the UK moves to BST there will be an hour’s difference).

I find arranging meetings in UTC is best for avoiding confusion – i.e. telling people that a meeting starts at, say, 15:00 UTC.

Here’s how it displays on your calendar:

This should make double-checking of times much easier and less likely to make you miss a meeting because you couldn’t do the math!

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