You might want to be able to view week numbers in Google Calendar, but Google hasn't released such a feature yet. Maybe you've used the ISO8601 calendar, or even made your own week numbers, but in my opinion using a day event to display the week number is kinda ugly.
Google has released a new feature since Google Calendar was created; Web Content Events. It gives Google Calendar the possibility to display events in the title bar of each day as small icons. I found out that you can only add these kind of entries by either uploading an iCal file or using the Google Calendar API, which only technically inclined people know how to do.
To get to the action; I've created a Google Calendar which display the week numbers in the title bar of the first week day, which is far better than any alternative I've tried. The best thing is that you can use my week numbers by simply subscribing to my calendar. You can see a live preview on the right.You can add the week numbers to your calendar simply by using this box:
I also recommend that you go to Google's help center where you can vote for features that Google should implement, and week numbers are in that list. There are some other interesting features to vote for as well, so check it out!
If the box above didn't work, you can try these links:
- Subscribe to the calendar with week numbers on Mondays
- Subscribe to the calendar with week numbers on Sundays
Feel free to send feedback, or just email to tell me how much you needed this.
Ensuring correctness
Due to the fact that countries number weeks a little differently, I encourage you to verify that my week numbers are correct in your country. Pick up a local calendar and make sure the week numbers match.
Adding the week numbers manually
If you are unable to add the calendar using the box or the links above, you can add the calendar from within Google Calendar. Use the "Add a friend's calendar" feature and this address:
- For Mondays: g0k1sv1gsdief8q28kvek83ps4@group.calendar.google.com
- For Sundays: d8u7iiljjpfibev3cd8emgau78@group.calendar.google.com
Google Apps users
If the box above didn't work, then you will have to manually add the week numbers from within Google Calendar. Simply follow the instructions above. Another option is to use a link to add the calendar, like this:
- For Mondays: http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/example.com/render?cid=g0k1sv1gsdief8q28kvek83ps4@group.calendar.google.com
- For Sundays: http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/example.com/render?cid=d8u7iiljjpfibev3cd8emgau78@group.calendar.google.com
Just remember to replace example.com with your domain!
Week numbers from GoogleWhen you visit the sign in page for Google Calendar, you will see a preview calendar with week numbers. You might ask where these week numbers come from, and why Google doesn't let us add them easily. Well, after looking in the source code, I found the email to add in Google Calendar to be able to use their week numbers. You can do this as well, just go to this page: http://www.google.com/calendar/suggest, and look in the source code. For example, since I live in Sweden, I get the address "e_2_sv#weeknum@group.v.calendar.google.com". I don't know if the calendars differ from language to language though.
I don't know when Google first created these calendars but I wonder why they doesn't let us add them more easily. Luckily it seems like Google recently (most likely early June 2009) updated the icons to a little more prettier version (from 
to 
). Lets hope they launch them for real soon.
You should be aware that Google probably haven't planned that people might be using these calendars directly, so they might break it at any moment. You shouldn't whine at them if they do.
2009-06-15: Added some info about Week numbers from Google. I also hope that Google gives me a nod when they launches their own week numbers. Another good piece of news is that I haven't seen the page view limit issue surface again. Hopefully Google gave this site super cow powers.
2009-05-28: You might have noticed that sometimes the week numbers disappear and that this site is offline with the message "We are sorry, but this site has exceeded its page view limit at this time." Even though Google lifted my limit, it looks like I'm still hitting a limit. Google also says that they cannot raise the limit any higher. I will wait and see if Google improves the situation. I have some ideas if things get worse though.
2009-05-17: I have now managed to re-add the handy add box that I had on the old site. I managed to do it by making a Google Gadget, which can run JavaScript code.
2009-05-12: As some of you noticed, this site went offline yesterday since it was using so much bandwidth. Google most likely have a system in place that automatically suspends sites which uses to much bandwidth to counteract abuse. Google promptly fixed it after I posted in the help forum, so the problems should now be over. I always suspected that Google had lifted the limits on my site when it was over at Google Pages. In any case, I hope there will be no more problems.
2009-05-10: I have now finished moving the week numbers for 2008-2013. I will update 2006 and 2007 later.
2009-05-08: I am in the process of moving icon references to Google Sites. This might make the week numbers disappear for a while.
How I made itI thought about this for a while, without really doing anything. When I finally got to it, I checked the Google Calendar documentation for information on how I could add Web Content Events. The iCal solution looked pretty simple, so I decided to try that first.
I created a test iCal file with one entry, which worked. After a few tries I finally got a format I liked, and made a quick php-script to generate events for an entire year. Each week has a 16×16 image associated with it which is displayed in the title bar.
I then uploaded all the week number images to Google Pages (now Google Sites), generated iCal files to supply weeks from January 2006 to December 2009
(now 2013), and uploaded them to a new shared calendar, which you guys
can use with a click of a button. A lot of work by me, a very easy solution
for you. ;)
You can get the generated iCal files here, and the php-script I made to generate them here.
If you are going to do something similar you should read up on weeks, it's not as simple as you might think, e.g., do you know when a year has 53 weeks instead of 52? Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation.
About me
My name is Stefan Sundin. I have my website over at stefansundin.com where you might find some interesting stuff.