All-day events are the quiet guardrails of a well-structured schedule. They communicate “I’m out,” “This day is special,” or “No meetings please” without micromanaging the clock. Whether you’re taking a personal day, traveling, attending a conference, or blocking a full day for deep work, the right all-day event keeps your calendar honest and your time protected. Used well, all-day events help your plans stay realistic, your collaborators aligned, and your tasks placed where they belong.

Unlike time-bound events that occupy specific hours, all-day events span entire dates. They sit at the top of your calendar as a banner and, depending on your settings, can either block scheduling or simply inform it. When coupled with auto-scheduling, focus time, and multi-calendar sync, they become an essential coordination tool—especially across teams, devices, and time zones. In FluidCalendar, all-day events are designed to be flexible: they can block time, blend with task scheduling, or serve as soft context that helps the system choose smarter task slots.

This guide walks you through everything you need to know to master all-day events—from the basics and setup to advanced customizations, practical tips, troubleshooting, and how all-day events integrate with features like energy-based scheduling, auto-scheduling, calendar sharing, and notification preferences. By the end, you’ll know how to use all-day events to keep your schedule both accurate and adaptable.

What All-Day Events Do and Why They Matter

An all-day event spans a full calendar date (or dates) without assigning a specific start and end time. Instead of occupying 9:00–5:00, it simply says “this entire day is about X.” That subtle difference has outsized impact: all-day events are perfect for out-of-office days, company holidays, travel, multi-day conferences, and full-day workshops. They appear as banners at the top of the day in your calendar view, signaling that the normal rhythm of meetings and tasks should pause, adjust, or reroute.

All-day events also shape availability—both for you and for anyone viewing your shared calendar. For example, if you add “Travel Day: BOS → LAX” as an all-day event and mark it as busy, your calendar communicates that you’re not taking meetings and your auto-scheduler avoids placing intensive tasks. Conversely, you might create an all-day event labeled “Kid’s School Holiday” and set it to free but low priority, letting the system know it should reduce your capacity without fully blocking the day. As a result, your time-blocks and tasks are scheduled where they fit best, and your stakeholders see an accurate picture of your time.

All-day events are especially powerful for collaboration and planning. They serve as expectations setters: anyone with access to your shared calendar immediately understands your status and constraints. If you’re attending a three-day offsite, one all-day event—“Offsite: No Meetings”—makes it clear that the week’s priorities must shift. In FluidCalendar, you can decide whether those all-day events actively block auto-scheduling or simply inform planning. This distinction helps you protect your days without unnecessarily constraining your week.

Consider a typical scenario: you’ve scheduled “Product Offsite” from Wednesday to Friday as an all-day event. On Thursday afternoon, you need to squeeze in a critical 45-minute call. Keep the all-day event in place to maintain the week’s boundaries, but add a single timed event for that call within the afternoon window. The all-day banner preserves your general “heads down/offsite” signal while still allowing for exceptions. This combination—broad boundaries via all-day events and precise appointments via timed events—keeps your schedule both firm and flexible.

Getting Started with All-Day Events

Creating an all-day event is quick. From the calendar view, select a date and choose “New Event,” then toggle the All-day switch. Alternatively, drag across the date header for multi-day spans, or use natural language in the quick-add field—typing something like “All day Friday – Out of office” usually sets the right parameters automatically. On mobile, tap the plus button, choose Event, enter your title, and enable All-day. You can add details such as location, notes, color, and whether it shows you as busy or free.

By default, new all-day events appear as banners at the top of your day and can be set to either busy (block scheduling) or free (informational). If you sync with Google Calendar, Outlook, or any CalDAV service, those all-day events will appear consistently across your connected accounts. You decide whether to block the auto-scheduler from placing tasks on those days or simply nudge it to reduce task load. If you travel frequently, start by marking travel days as all-day busy; if your family’s holiday plan affects your capacity but not your availability, mark those days as free but lower energy.

Here are a few quick-start examples to illustrate:

Sick Day: Create an all-day event, mark it Busy, and enable muted notifications so meetings and tasks aren’t scheduled or distract you while you rest.
Travel Day: Mark as Busy to prevent meetings. Add flight details as timed events if you want precise blocks and reminders.
Team Hackathon: Create a two-day All-day event marked Busy; add a separate “Demo Hour” as a timed event. Now the banner communicates focus and the event ensures coordination.
School Holiday: Mark as Free but set your day as low-energy. This helps the system reduce your task load while leaving room for urgent items.

Before moving on, do a quick checklist: set your default all-day reminder preferences, decide whether all-day events should block auto-scheduling by default, pick a color that stands out for “OOO,” and subscribe to relevant holiday calendars. If you need help fine-tuning reminders, see the notification preferences guide.

Step-by-Step Configuration Guide

Follow these steps to create and configure your first all-day event in detail. This process ensures your entire stack—calendar views, sync providers, and the auto-scheduler—treats your day exactly as intended.

Open your calendar on desktop or mobile, navigate to the target date, and click or tap to create a new event.
Enter a clear title like “Out of Office,” “Travel Day: NYC → SFO,” or “Company Retreat.” Good titles help collaborators and future-you understand at a glance.
Enable the All-day toggle. If the event spans multiple days, extend the date range to fit (e.g., Monday–Wednesday).
Set your availability:
- Busy: Use this to prevent meetings and discourage task placements on that day.
- Free: Use this for informational banners that reduce capacity without fully blocking.
Decide whether this event should affect auto-scheduling:
- Affects Scheduling: Treat the day as unavailable for auto-scheduled tasks.
- Informational Only: Keep the banner visible but allow the system to place tasks if needed.
Choose color and category. For example, use red for full OOO, blue for travel, and green for internal offsites.
Adjust reminders. Many people prefer:
- Out of Office: No reminders, or one reminder the day before.
- Travel Days: A morning reminder to prompt packing or check-in.
For global settings and fine-grained control, visit the notification preferences guide.
Add notes or attachments. Paste your hotel reservation or packing list right into the event so you have context handy.
If relevant, invite guests or share the event with your team calendar so everyone sees your status.
Save the event and cross-check your connected calendars (Google, Outlook, etc.) to confirm it synced correctly.

You can also convert existing events into all-day events. Open any timed event, toggle All-day on, and the event will span the date without specific hours. This is handy when you realize a commitment should represent the full day, not just a time slot—like shifting a “Workshop 9:00–4:00” into an all-day “Workshop Day” with a separate timed “Workshop Session” for the exact hours.

To import all-day events from external sources (like company holiday calendars), subscribe to the calendar via your sync provider or import an ICS file. When subscribing, ensure “all-day events” are enabled and verify how they’re displayed across time zones. If you’re managing multiple calendars, choose one as your primary write-back calendar to avoid duplicates. If you’re new to scheduling automation and want to understand how these events influence task placement, the auto-scheduling pro techniques article offers deeper strategies.

Advanced Settings and Customization

All-day events aren’t one-size-fits-all. You can fine-tune how each one behaves by customizing availability, scheduling impact, notifications, and categorization. Start with the availability setting (Busy or Free) and the “Affects Scheduling” toggle. Busy + Affects Scheduling is a strong block: it stops new meetings and instructs the auto-scheduler to avoid placing tasks. Free + Informational is softer: it communicates context to you and your collaborators while keeping the day open for essential work when needed. For teams, this nuance is crucial; you might keep a product launch day as Busy to discourage meetings but still allow urgent tasks to slip in if deadlines dictate.

Energy and capacity settings elevate all-day events from passive banners to active planning signals. Mark a day as low-energy (e.g., post-travel recovery) so your task engine prioritizes lighter work. Conversely, designate high-energy all-day days as “No Meetings/Build Day,” allowing the scheduler to cluster deep work and protect focus. If you haven’t set up energy levels yet, the energy-based scheduling guide explains how to calibrate your personal energy map so all-day events lead to smarter task placement.

Time zones can be tricky with all-day events. An all-day event is typically “floating” in your local time zone, meaning it covers the date regardless of where you are. If you create an all-day event while in one time zone and travel to another, some systems shift the event by a day. To avoid confusion, confirm whether you want all-day events to “float” (stay on the same local date wherever you go) or be “absolute” (tied to a specific time zone). When planning travel, consider pairing an all-day “Travel Day” with timed events for flights to anchor the day. For frequent travelers, FluidCalendar’s defaults favor floating all-day events, which keeps holidays and OOO days aligned with your local calendar view.

Repetition and templates save time. If you take the first Friday of each month for admin work, create a repeating all-day event with Busy + Affects Scheduling and add a pre-filled checklist in the notes. For a quarterly offsite, use a custom color and attach logistics documents. For OOO days, build a template with your preferred reminders (e.g., a 5 p.m. reminder the day before to set your out-of-office reply) and sharing rules (e.g., visible to your team but without sensitive notes). If you coordinate with a team, the calendar sharing techniques article shows how to align these setups across shared calendars without oversharing details.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of All-Day Events

Start by naming conventions. Clear, action-oriented titles transform your calendar from a list into a plan. Use prefixes like “OOO,” “Travel,” “Focus,” or “Hold” to communicate intent instantly. Color-code consistently: red for full OOO, orange for travel, green for focus, and gray for informational contexts like school holidays. In the notes field, add links to itineraries, agendas, or checklists—e.g., “Packing list: laptop charger, passport, headset; Set OOO email tonight at 6 p.m.” This keeps your day self-contained and saves you from hunting through messages.

Pair all-day banners with precise timed events and blocks. For example, mark Friday as “No Meetings—Deep Work” (all-day, Busy), then add two 90-minute Focus blocks for creative work, leaving the afternoon free for lighter tasks. As exceptions arise, add short, timed events to avoid eroding the day’s purpose. If you rely on time blocking, use a single all-day event to set context and then let the auto-scheduler fill in tasks within your protected windows. If you want to optimize those buffers around all-day commitments, check out the buffer time optimization guide.

Frequent travelers and client-facing teams benefit from combining all-day events with sharing and scheduling strategies. Mark travel days as Busy, add flight times as timed events, and share the all-day event to indicate limited availability. For freelancers planning client events, treat prep and teardown days as all-day Busy with checklists attached; the event planning guide for freelancers shows how to structure these workflows. Sales teams can block “Territory Travel” or “Conference Day” as all-day Busy to steer bookings toward productive windows; see the team meeting scheduling guide for salespeople for more tactics.

Finally, align all-day events with project timelines. For a product launch week, create all-day “Launch Window” banners and keep them Busy. This helps stakeholders respect capacity while the auto-scheduler clusters tasks tied to the launch. If you’re a remote worker managing deadlines, assign all-day “No Meetings—Delivery Day” to concentrate on handoffs and QA; the project deadline management guide includes strategies for coordinating long stretches of deep work. When in doubt, remember: one well-named, well-configured all-day event can prevent dozens of ad-hoc reschedules.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

“My all-day event shifted by a day after I traveled.” This usually stems from time zone handling. All-day events can be interpreted as floating (local-date based) or absolute (anchored to a time zone). If you created the event while in a different time zone, some calendar providers display it a day earlier or later when you switch zones or cross midnight during travel. To fix this, ensure your all-day events are set to float with your current location or, for travel-specific items, use timed events for flight windows and keep the all-day event informational. When crossing daylight saving time boundaries, double-check the date before the change. If a particular provider keeps shifting the dates, edit the event in your primary calendar system and resync.

“I’m seeing duplicate all-day events after syncing multiple calendars.” Duplicates typically occur when the same calendar is connected through more than one account or when multiple accounts subscribe to the same external holiday feed. Choose one primary write-back calendar and one source for subscribed calendars. If you see duplicates, audit your connected accounts and disable duplicate feeds, then remove duplicate entries. In some cases, changing the event color or ownership in one account makes duplicates easier to identify and clean up. After deduplication, confirm that only one service writes to your primary calendar and the others read it.

“I didn’t receive reminders for my all-day event.” By default, many users disable reminders for all-day events to reduce noise. If you need an alert—say, to set an out-of-office reply the day before—open the event and add a reminder manually (e.g., “1 day before at 5 p.m.”). Then review your global settings in the notification preferences guide. On mobile, check system-level notification permissions and any Focus/Do Not Disturb modes. For shared all-day events, ensure you’re subscribed to changes and have notifications enabled for updates you care about.

“Auto-scheduling ignored my all-day event and placed tasks anyway.” Verify two settings: availability (Busy vs. Free) and the “Affects Scheduling” toggle. If the event is Free or set to Informational Only, the scheduler may still place tasks. Switch it to Busy + Affects Scheduling to block placements. Also check whether the tasks were tagged as must-do (e.g., deadline-bound or high priority). In those cases, the system may still schedule essential work but will compress it into available pockets or prompt you to reschedule. If you’re coordinating across a team, ensure the event is visible to shared calendars so others don’t inadvertently book over it.

“My guests see different dates for my all-day event.” When inviting people across providers (Google, Outlook, etc.), all-day events can display according to guests’ time zones. They should still see the same date in their local view, but regional settings or locale differences occasionally cause inconsistencies. Ask guests to confirm their time zone settings and ensure the event is marked as All-day (not a 24-hour timed event). If the date is critical—like a company holiday—share the event via a shared calendar subscription so it displays consistently for everyone.

Integration with Other Features

All-day events and auto-scheduling are natural partners. When you mark a day as Busy and affecting scheduling, the system excludes that date from task placement, favoring nearby days with capacity. This helps prevent the classic problem of tasks piling into already-overcommitted days. For “soft” constraints (like a family holiday where some light work is fine), switch to Free and reduce your energy level so the scheduler biases toward easier items. To get more from this dynamic, explore the auto-scheduling pro techniques article, which explains how task priorities and buffers interact with your calendar boundaries.

Energy-based scheduling multiplies the value of all-day events. Labeling a day as low energy—for recovery, travel, or obligations—nudges the scheduler to place low-cognitive-load tasks like inbox cleanup or expense reports. Setting a day as high energy with a “No Meetings—Build Day” banner encourages focused work, especially when paired with protected focus blocks. If you’re calibrating this for the first time, the energy-based scheduling guide walks through mapping your energy peaks and troughs so all-day events help the system make smarter choices.

All-day events also play a crucial role in collaboration and visibility. With shared calendars, a simple “OOO” banner prevents accidental bookings and clarifies team capacity at a glance. You can tune what collaborators see—title only, busy status, or full details—depending on your privacy preferences. For rollouts or offsites, create team-wide all-day events that reflect the collective status. To learn how to share these effectively without oversharing, check out the calendar sharing techniques guide.

For specific workflows, all-day events support structured planning. Freelancers can reserve “Prep Day” and “Teardown Day” as all-day Busy around client events, then use the event planning guide for freelancers to attach checklists and templates. Sales teams can block travel and conference days to funnel demos into high-quality windows; see the team meeting scheduling guide for salespeople. Remote workers managing deliverables can use “Delivery Day—No Meetings” as all-day Busy to align with sprint reviews and handoffs; the project deadline management guide covers how to balance long-term milestones with day-level boundaries.

Finally, think about buffers and recovery. A launch isn’t just the launch day—it’s the prep and the cooldown. Create all-day “Prep,” “Launch,” and “Recovery” banners with distinct colors, then let auto-scheduling fill the surrounding days with the right mix of tasks. If you’d like to refine how transition time is protected, the buffer time optimization guide offers a playbook for designing buffers that stick. With these integrations combined, you’ll have a calendar that respects real-world constraints while keeping momentum.

Conclusion and Next Steps

All-day events are more than banners—they’re strategic signals that shape your week with minimal effort. When configured thoughtfully, they clarify availability, protect focus, and inform smart auto-scheduling. Use them to mark OOO days, travel, offsites, deep work days, and milestone windows. Pair them with timed events for exceptions, energy settings for realistic pacing, and sharing settings for transparent coordination. With a handful of templates and clear naming conventions, you’ll eliminate most rescheduling friction and give your future self fewer surprises.

If you’re just getting started, create a few go-to templates: “OOO,” “Travel Day,” “No Meetings—Deep Work,” and “Delivery Day.” Set each with the right availability, scheduling impact, reminders, and colors. Subscribe to holiday calendars, prune duplicate feeds, and audit your tasks to ensure deadlines align with your all-day boundaries. As your schedule evolves, refine energy levels and buffers so your plan remains both ambitious and sustainable.

Ready to put this into practice? Spend five minutes setting up your next month’s all-day events, then let the scheduler do the heavy lifting. With thoughtful use of all-day events, FluidCalendar becomes a clearer window into your commitments—and a stronger ally in protecting your time.