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Google Calendar Invitations - "Unknown Sender"
Google Calendar Invitations - "Unknown Sender"

Learn how Google Calendar's new anti-spam policy affects Doodle participants. Ensure meetings are automatically added to your calendar.

Updated over a week ago

Google Calendar has introduced an anti-spam policy to protect Google users from unwanted content in their calendars. This new policy may affect the participants of all scheduling tools, including Doodle.

Who is not affected by Google's anti-spam policy?

The following users will not be affected by Google's anti-spam policy.

  1. Users who do not use Google Calendar.

  2. Google Calendar users who have previously exchanged meeting invitations with the organizer of the meeting. In this case, the sender is already known and therefore the meeting will be automatically added to your calendar.

Who is affected by Google's anti-spam policy?

If you have not previously exchanged meeting invitations with the organizer of the meeting and the sender is an unknown source within your Google Calendar, the meeting will not be automatically added to your Google Calendar.

Happily, there are three quick actions you can take to make sure that meetings are automatically added to your calendar:

First option: Answer 'Yes' to the meeting invitation in your Gmail inbox

  1. Check your Gmail for the meeting invitation email.

  2. Click 'Yes'

By clicking 'Yes', the sender becomes a known source and future meetings with this organizer will appear automatically in your Google Calendar.

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Note: With this option, you have to repeat these steps with each unknown sender in your Google Calendar. To avoid having to white-list every unknown sender, follow the steps in the third option.

Second option: Click 'I know this sender'

  1. Check your Gmail for the meeting invitation email.

  2. At the top of the email, look for a banner with the option to click 'I know this sender'.

  3. Click 'I know this sender'.

This sender is now a known source and future meetings with this organizer will appear automatically in your Google Calendar. Even though the event is now in your Google Calendar, make sure you still RSVP 'Yes' in the Google Calendar event to ensure you are showing as attending the meeting.

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Note: With this option, you have to repeat these steps with every unknown sender in your Google Calendar. To avoid having to white-list every unknown sender, follow the steps in the third option.

Third option: Disable the anti-spam filtering feature in your Google Calendar Settings

  1. Click on the 'Settings' icon ⚙️ from your Google Calendar.

  2. Under 'General', click on 'Event settings'.

  3. Click on the drop-down menu for 'Add invitations to my calendar'.

  4. Select 'From everyone'.

All future meetings from both known and unknown senders will now appear automatically in your Google Calendar.

Note: With this option, you will not have to repeat these steps with every unknown sender in your Google Calendar. This option allows for a permanent acceptance of all senders to populate events in your Google Calendar.

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