CSV to Google Calendar: what imports, what does not

The limitation

Google Calendar accepts .ics files and a narrow CSV format with fixed headers: Subject, Start Date, Start Time, End Date, End Time, All Day Event, Description, Location.

A spreadsheet with your own column names — Course, Date, Room, Instructor — will be rejected or import as empty rows. Renaming columns is often more work than converting to .ics.

When the CSV route works

If you exported data from another calendar product, its CSV may already carry the right headers. Check the first row before importing.

Dates must be in a format Google recognises, typically MM/DD/YYYY in US locales. Time must be 24-hour or plain AM/PM without extra text.

When to convert to .ics instead

Convert when your CSV has repeating rows, week numbers, or text dates such as “Week 3 Tuesday”. Those need interpretation, not column renaming.

Convert also when you want the events to be editable as a set before import, since a CSV import gives you no preview at all.

Importing the result

In Google Calendar on the web, open Settings, then Import & export, then Import. Choose the file and the destination calendar.

Import into a new calendar. If the column mapping was wrong you can delete the whole calendar instead of cleaning up hundreds of events by hand.

A note on time zones

CSV imports assume the time zone of your Google account, while .ics files can declare their own TZID. If you are scheduling across time zones, .ics is the safer format.