New Trick!!!!

[Primcegj84]

I tried to play a joke on my boyfriend  and avoid taking out the trash by telling Alexa: "take out the trash". I was expecting her to say "I can't do that" or something like that, but she added it to my to do list without me having to say so!
I found out that any time I give her a command (clean the floor, make food, etc) she adds it automatically to my to do list. It's a very handy trick I didn't know before. I hope this helps other people too!

[Daithi]

So, I decided to be funny...
ok, childish...
I commanded "Alexa, kiss my butt."
She responded with, "I added kiss your butt to your todo list."

Deserves me right.

[spiffy]

If you are a bit of a techy and jump in with both feet, you'd be amazed at the short cuts you can take (and long cuts which are useful with the calendar). For instance,

Alexa, "Add calendar for 9am tomorrow pick up prescription" and she will add "Pick up prescription" at 9am to whatever calendar you desire under Settings -> Calendar. Yes, you can point to other calendars and Alexa will manage those. She can only manage one at a time. I find it is necessary to have a default one such that when you are done setting events in other calendars, open Settings-> Calendar and put it back to your default before you stop your current session.

I have gotten her to add calendar events without using the word calendar, but it is inconsistent. It is far more inconsistent than it works.

[Kyle76]

Can Alexa use my iPhone calendar? Nothing appears in the dropdown list in settings. It would be great to link directly to my Apple calendar and to-do list.

[AlanH]

There is a way to convert your iOS calendar to Google calendar, but it's a bit laborious.
https://weekcalendar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204825001-Convert-iCloud-to-Google-Calendar
It seems that Apple doesn't allow synchronisation of calendars to non-iOS devices.

[mikeindc]

You can also have Google calendar "subscribe" to your Apple calendar.  Just  right click the calendar you want to share and click the "share" icon.  This will create an email with the complete URL.  The URL does not seem to work for some reason.  Then open your Google calendar and expand the entry for "Other Calendars" . Go the entry for "add by URL" and paste the URL you copied from the email generate by sharing your Apple calendar.  This will provide read only access to your Apple calendar.  Unfortunately it will not include Birthdays.  Since these tend to be static, you can export those in an iCal format format and then import into Google.  This will not enable you to tell Alexa to add anything to your calendar, but will at least enable you to find what is on your calendar for specific days.

[coyote]

I dunno.... I have google calendar as one of the many reference calendars in my ipad calendar. And since google calendar is directly linked to Alexa, events that I speak into Alexa pop up in my ipad calendar almost instantaneously.

Getting them into my Alexa-linked list app (Todoist) is a different matter. But not insurmountable.

I'm not always a fan of IFTTT. For example, if you need to add something to a grocery list and you're on your way to go shopping now, it's the wrong tool because it can take up to an hour. But for calendars, well.... presumably, when you add a calendar entry it is implicitly at some future date/time. In that instance, a one-hour 'transit' from calendar to list is not problematic. So I have an ifttt recipe that does specifically this. When a new event occurs in my google calendar, it automatically populates The Todoist to-do list with that item, with a due date/time on the day of the event.

Bottom line is that my calendars on all devices now populate from whatever I say into Alexa.
My to-do and shopping lists do the same, and the calendar populates the to-do list with all upcoming events.

This is the way it was always supposed to be!