Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Posted Thu, Sep 22 2011 12:35 by bill

With Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) being released in the next couple of weeks, you may have to work around a google limitation to get multiple google calendars on your device. Both Windows Phone 7.5 and google calendar allow you to have multiple calendars on your phone, but for whatever reason Google doesn’t let you see how to set that unless you trick it to think you’re using an iPad or iPhone. (shame on you google Winking smile )

To trick google, you just need to change your browser user agent string. The steps are:

  1. setup your google account on your phone as normal and sync with calendar and email. This will give you only the one google calendar for that account.
  2. Next open up IE 9 on your desktop or laptop computer, press F12 to bring up the IE developer tools. Click on the developer tools Tools menu and select Change user agent string –> Custom 

    Add this user agent string:
    Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

  3. Next browse to http://m.google.com/sync and log in to your google account. You should now see your windows phone device listed. Click on that and choose which of your google calendars to sync Smile

 

Kudos to Anthony Chu who posted how to do this with Safari.

Filed under: ,

Comments

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 3:57 PM by In House

How abstruse! Multiple calendars have become a must-have phone feature for me of late. Can't wait for this to roll down to my Focus.

Thanks for the tip though!

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 1:47 PM by Compton

Thanks Bill!

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Monday, October 24, 2011 6:04 PM by Michael

Thanks for this hint! Works!

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Sunday, November 06, 2011 9:53 PM by Freddy_ace

Awesome! I just got a WP7.5 phone and I was researching how to set this up. So easy for the iPhone. Shame Google.

Thanks to you I'm all set.

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 11:26 PM by Aaron

Thanks so much for this tip, I was feeling very frustated because I loved everything about my new phone except I couldn't see my calendar that my work sets appointments for me on. What is up with Google not making this work on Windows Phones ... lame!

Thanks again, I really appeciate it!

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Monday, December 19, 2011 12:56 PM by AZ Hiker

I added the string, found the device in good sync but it still says I can only choose 1 calendar for it AND does not allow me to unselect my personal (primary) calendar. Thus the only calendar that syncs is my primary.

# re: Windows Phone Mango and multiple google calendars

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:29 PM by AZ Hiker

I spoke too soon. I had to wait overnight for the calendars to propogate, but now I see all my google calnedars! I can then de-select the ones I do not want to see in my Mango phone!

When I make a change in google it may take about 30 minutes before it shows up in my phone, but still, it is a great thing to finally have my google calendar!!!