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Like many others I have also come to like Google Calender a lot.
Not only is it a nice way to keep track of my appointments and try to keep some structure in my busy life.
It also allows me to send invitations to other people, share my calendar with them and have a public free/busy calendar. Since I use Google quite intense, it also shows me the birthdays of my contacts(when I put it in their details) and I can have the calendars of other people nicely integrated with mine.
Besides that there are some easy public/functional calendars with weather forecasts, week numbers or national/religious holidays.
Like that isn’t enough already, I can also have all this information being synchronized with my Android smartphone and access or update this info at any given time.
But this week I accidentally pressed some keys and figured out that in the Google Calendar web interface there are many shortcuts. So I decided to contribute a blog post to these shortcuts and the quick add functionality which is also really great.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are easy ways to use Google Calender, I have divided them in the following categories, slightly different from the way Google categorized them, but I think a bit more easy to get to learn them. When there is a / between them, that means 2 seperate offer the same functionality and when “ctrl-” added it means you gotta press your CTRL in combination with the following key.

Views

1/d = Day View
2/w = Week View
3/m = Month View
4/x = Custom View(You can change this in your Calender settings)
5/a = Agenda View

Navigation

k/p = Previous(day/week/month/4days/page)
j/n = Next(day/week/month/4days/page)
r = Refresh
t = Goto Today(in current view)
arrow keys = Up/Down items(Only Worked in Agenda View for me)
/ = Search

Actions

c = Create Event
e = Edit Event(Agenda View Only)
Del/Backspace = Delete Item(Agenda View Only)
q = Quick Add(More Info Below)
ctrl-z = Undo last action(if possible)
s = settings
? = Overview of these shortcuts

Quick Add

I usually use the following formats when typing ‘q’ for a quickadd in Google Calendar

Appointment [Date|Day] [TimeStart [till TimeEnd]] [Daily|Weekly]

The items in square brackets are optional, I cant decide what the appointment is that you will have to make, when you just enter a name for the appointment you will get a create event dialog where you can enter the details.

[Date|Day]

When you want to set the proper day, which you can do easily like:
“1/20″ for January 20th, or “20 Jan” or “Jan 20″ for the exact date.
But you can also use texts as:
“Tomorrow”, “Wed” or “Next Sat” for the next day, the upcoming Wednesday or next Saturday to set a certain day for your appointment.
Example:

Birthday Client's Oldest Son Friday
Call for Test results Next Tue
Check tickets tomorrow

[TimeStart]

Now if you dont set a time, it will be an all day event, now this could be easy for some events like birthday’s, often you have a more specific time.
You can define both the “am/pm” system as the “24 hours” system,
if you use the “am/pm” system, you can write time like “8am” or “6:30pm” as a start, if you want to use the “24 hour” system you will really have to write “14:00″ or “11:30″.
Examples:

Lunch with Friend Thu 1pm
Presentation Wed 10:30

[till TimeEnd]

By default Google make appointments last 1 hour, of course not every appointments lasts 1 hour.
For those cases you can use “till 8pm” or “till 20:00″ to set the end time easily.
Examples:

Movies with Date Fri 8pm till 10:30pm
Running with Neighbor Fri 6:30 till 7:00

[Daily|Weekly]

Now in some cases you might want some recurrence. I have found that “Daily” and “Weekly” work well, “Monthly” and “Yearly” didn’t have the required effect for me. I am sure there might be a few good tricks to work with this as well, but I didn’t have a chance to figure them out.
Examples:

Drinks with Coworkers Fri 17:00 Weekly

I have tested all the examples given in this post, so I hope you see how easy it is to easily use Google calendar with just your keyboard for both navigation as updating with quick add.
If you find more useful hints, feel free to share them in the comments.
To give you an idea of how active I use Google calendar, I have added a view in mine:

If you like to include your Google calendar on a website as well, you can go to Calendar Embed helper