My Calendar has good support for recurring events, but there is one pattern that is a bit awkward to enter – setting a recurring event to occur in the last week of every month.

The key challenge is that the way My Calendar counts weeks is always from the beginning of the month. So if the starting date is the fourth week of a month, then it’s going to set the event for the fourth week of the month. But if you set it for the 5th weeks, then it’ll choose the 5th week – and if an event doesn’t have a 5th week, it’ll interpret that as “no event this month”.

There is a checkbox available that is only present when an event is configured for the “recurring monthly by day” option that allows you to differentiate between an event that occurs on the 4th week of every month and one that occurs on the last week of every month.

How to set up your “last-week-of-the-month” event

This example assumes an event that happens on Wednesday; this is an arbitrary day to simplify the description language.

  • Add a new event. Set the date of the event to a last Wednesday of a month that contains five Wednesdays.
  • Set the recurring pattern to “Monthly by day (e.g. the 3rd Monday of each month)“
  • Set the Repeat Until value to whatever value is relevant for your event
  • A checkbox will appear with the text “If event falls on the 5th week of the month in a month with four weeks…“. It should be checked by default; if not, check it.
  • Save the event.
  • If the starting date was a month when the event isn’t actually happening, expand the “View scheduled dates” data, and delete the instances that don’t exist.