You booked a flight three weeks ago. The confirmation email had a .ics attachment with your departure time, gate info, and a reminder to check in. But you never added it to your calendar because you were in a rush, and the email got buried under a hundred others. Now you are scrambling at the airport, searching through email to figure out your terminal.
This scenario plays out constantly with flights, hotel check-ins, dinner reservations, doctor appointments, and meeting invites from scheduling tools. The calendar event exists — it is right there in the email — but it never makes it to the one place you actually check: your calendar.
Why Calendar Events Get Lost
The problem is not that people are disorganized. It is that the path from "email with event" to "event on calendar" has too much friction. Here is what typically goes wrong:
Your Email Provider Doesn't Auto-Detect the Event
Gmail can sometimes detect calendar events in emails, but this feature is inconsistent. It works best when someone sends you a Google Calendar invite directly. When a booking system sends a confirmation email with a .ics attachment, Gmail often treats it as just another attachment rather than a calendar event.
Outlook has similar limitations. It handles .ics files from other Outlook users well, but events from third-party systems — airlines, hotels, restaurants — are frequently missed.
The Sender Uses a Non-Standard Format
The .ics standard (iCalendar / RFC 5545) is well-defined, but there is a lot of room for variation in how it is implemented. Some systems embed timezone information differently. Others use unusual character encodings or include non-standard fields. Your email client may simply not know how to interpret a particular .ics file, even though the data is technically valid. We cover all the technical causes in why .ics files don't always add to Google Calendar.
You Receive the Email at a Bad Time
Even when your email client displays a calendar event correctly, you might receive it while commuting, in a meeting, or late at night. You see the email, think "I will add that later," and then forget. This is human nature, not a technology problem — but technology can solve it.
The Event Is Far in the Future
Booking a hotel for a trip three months from now? The confirmation email arrives today, but the event is in September. By the time September rolls around, that email is hundreds of messages deep in your inbox. Unless you added the event to your calendar immediately, you are relying on memory — and memory is unreliable.
The Cost of Missing Calendar Events
Missing a calendar event is not just an inconvenience. Depending on what it is, it can be genuinely costly:
- Missed flights: Showing up late to the airport because you forgot your departure time. Rebooking fees can be hundreds of dollars.
- Missed meetings: Not showing up to a client call or job interview because the invite from Calendly sat in your email unprocessed.
- Missed reservations: Losing a dinner reservation because you forgot the time and the restaurant gave your table away.
- Missed appointments: Skipping a doctor's appointment you waited weeks to get, resulting in a no-show fee and another long wait.
- Double-booking: Scheduling something else during a time slot you did not realize was already taken because the first event never made it to your calendar.
These are not edge cases. A 2024 survey by Clockwise found that 23% of professionals reported missing at least one important event per month due to poor calendar management. The information existed in their email — it just never reached their calendar.
Solutions That Actually Work
There are several approaches to solving this, ranging from behavioral changes to full automation. The right one depends on how many calendar emails you receive and how much friction you are willing to tolerate.
Create a "Calendar" Label and Process It Weekly
The simplest behavioral change is to create a label (or folder) in your email client called "Calendar" and move every booking confirmation into it as soon as it arrives. Then, once a week, sit down and process the label — download each .ics file and import it into Google Calendar.
This works if you are disciplined. The advantage is that no events get lost — they are all in one place. The disadvantage is that it still requires a weekly manual process, and you might miss an event that happens before your next processing session.
Set Up Email Filters by Sender
Most booking systems send emails from consistent addresses. Airlines use addresses like no-reply@airline.com, scheduling tools use notifications@calendly.com, and hotels use reservations@hotel.com.
You can create email filters that automatically label or flag emails from these senders. In Gmail:
- Click the filter icon in the search bar.
- Enter the sender address in the "From" field.
- Click "Create filter."
- Choose "Apply the label" and select your "Calendar" label.
This does not add events to your calendar, but it makes sure they are easy to find. Combine this with a weekly processing habit for a low-tech solution.
Use Gmail's Events from Gmail Feature
If you use Gmail, go to Google Calendar Settings and enable "Events from Gmail." This automatically scans incoming emails for event-like content and creates calendar entries. It works decently for direct Google Calendar invites and some booking confirmations, but it misses many .ics attachments from non-standard systems.
This is a good baseline — turn it on if you have not already — but do not rely on it as your only solution. It catches maybe 60-70% of calendar events, leaving a meaningful gap. For a comprehensive setup guide covering all the remaining steps, see our email to Google Calendar guide for small businesses.
Auto-Forward to InboxProcess
The most reliable automated approach is to forward emails with .ics attachments to InboxProcess. InboxProcess parses the .ics file and adds the event to your connected Google Calendar within seconds.
You can do this manually (just forward the email when you see it), but the real power is in combining it with email filters. Create a Gmail filter for each sender that regularly sends you booking confirmations:
- Create a new filter with the sender address in the "From" field.
- Check "Forward it to" and enter your InboxProcess address.
- Save the filter.
From now on, every confirmation email from that sender is automatically forwarded to InboxProcess, and the event appears on your calendar without any action from you.
The key advantage is that this works regardless of when the email arrives or how busy you are. A flight confirmation that arrives at 11 PM on a Tuesday is processed immediately and appears on your calendar before you wake up Wednesday morning. No need to remember, no need to process a label, no events falling through the cracks. For the detailed setup walkthrough, see how to automatically add .ics invites to Google Calendar.
Building a Bulletproof System
The best approach combines multiple layers:
- Enable Gmail's "Events from Gmail" as a baseline. It catches the easy ones.
- Set up auto-forwarding filters to InboxProcess for senders that Gmail misses — airlines, hotels, scheduling tools, event platforms.
- Forward manually when you get an unexpected calendar email from a new sender. Then add that sender to your auto-forward filters for next time.
Over time, you build up a set of filters that covers all your regular sources of calendar events. New events appear on your calendar automatically, and you only need to forward manually when dealing with a sender you have not seen before.
Stop Relying on Memory
Your inbox is not a calendar. Emails get buried, forgotten, and overlooked. Calendar events that live only in email are events you will eventually miss.
The fix is straightforward: create a reliable path from email to calendar. Whether you do it with labels and weekly processing or with auto-forwarding and InboxProcess, the goal is the same — every event that matters ends up on the one tool you actually check throughout the day.
Get started with InboxProcess and make sure every booking confirmation lands on your calendar automatically.