How to "Reset" Your Google Calendar

Recently, a few colleagues ran into a snag with their google calendar. Their "primary" calendar was being used as to post homework assignments to students. What ended up happening was that this primary calendar, the first calendar they made, was also being accessed by other faculty in the domain to schedule appointments and events. Which became an issue since many confidential meetings are scheduled through the use of calendar. If a teacher responded to an invite, then this meeting would show on the student homework calendar! Which raises a HUGE red flag. So the issue was something along the lines of...How do I change my primary calendar instead of changing the viewing options for each event? 

 The simple answer is...you can't change your primary calendar. (well not easily)

So then, where is the reset button on my google calendar? and How do I reset it, but save all my data at the same time?

If you fall into the category of needing to "reset" your calendar for any reason, here are a few steps to restore everything back to default, and at the same time have the option to restore your data.

• The short and simple explanation is to export your old and import it into a new. Should be as simple as clicking like 14 times...(key word is  "should be")

Here is is a more detailed explanation:

1) log into your calendar

2) on the left where it lists all your calendars...click the little down arrow

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 3) Select "settings"

4) You will be sent to another page that looks something like this...

 5) Scroll down, and at the bottom of the "My Calendars" section you'll see an Import and Export option

​​6) Check the boxes next to all the calendars you care about and want to backup. This is important. If you don't save them, when you reset your calendar they will all disappear. When you are sure you have all that you want/need click the export calendars option. 

7) You will get a .zip  of you calendar data.

8) Then delete everything off your personal calendar. There are two options. 1) manually delete each event or delete your entire calendar and start from scratch. Ideally you exported all your data and have a nice archive of data as a backup, so it should be safe to reset back to the default calendar. In other words, start over as it was the first day you logged into google calendar.

9) To delete your calendar the easy way, under settings again...

click the primary calendar (should be the first on the list), scroll down and hit Delete. You will be prompted with a few warnings, and safety checks to make sure that is really what you want to do. You made a backup of everything so it should be save. This will reset you back to the google default calendar. You'll lose all labs, secondary calendars...etc. For example, my primary calendar is called "Michael Norkun" If I delete that one, it will delete all other calendars in the "my calendar" list, as well as all the calendar labs  I have enabled.

10) Now that you have a clean slate, keep your primary calendar for personal use only. Then make a calendar for every other thing you want. From there you can import the  backup you made. If your backup consisted of multiple calendars, within the .zip file you will see a series of different calendars. Select the import option in Google Calendar, and find the backup you want to restore and simply select what new calendar you want the data to go too.


This is just a quick and easy way to reset your entire calendar and start from scratch. Before you delete any calendars, make sure you have them backed up. That is my only word of caution.