Sharing an Outlook Calendar: How to share appointments with your colleagues

Microsoft Outlook is not just one of the most widely used e-mail programs – the software also provides extensive groupware functions to manage contacts, tasks, and appointments.

Many companies rely on Outlook Calendar to organise collaborative work or schedule customer appointments. Collaborative scheduling is particularly convenient because employees can access their customer’s calendars. This is done using Outlook Calendar Release, meaning that different employees within a company can collaborate on plans, as well as customers, business partners, and external service providers.

What Outlook can provide for sharing calendar information with friends, acquaintances of colleagues, or business associates depends on whether the software is used as a stand-alone application, as part of the Microsoft 365 online service, or in combination with an exchange server.

While Microsoft 365 provides various Office applications as an online service in the cloud, Outlook is a locally-installed desktop application. In the private sector, it is primarily used as an e-mail program that allows users to manage different e-mail accounts through the same user interface. Within an organisation, however, Outlook usually acts as a client program for the Microsoft Exchange Server, a central repository for e-mails, appointments, and tasks.

Below, we will provide you with a guide to the different sharing functions the Outlook desktop application provides, as well as the Microsoft 365 App calendar.

5. Customise advanced options: Under “Advanced”, Outlook offers the option to include appointments and attachments marked as private in screenshots of your calendar. Additionally, you can opt for one or two email layouts:

• Daily plan
• List of events

6. Enter email recipient and send message: Enter the desired recipient’s email address and add a personal message to the email if required. Click “Submit” to share your Outlook calendar.

Each message created using the “Send Calendar by Email” feature also includes an iCalendar (ICS) file that allows the recipient to open the selected section in any calendar program. The file format is supported by a variety of products from different providers. The most popular of these applications include Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar, Evolution, eM Client, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Novell GroupWise.

If you use your Outlook desktop application in conjunction with an exchange server, the software allows you to share calendars that are updated automatically. To share an Outlook calendar, you just send an invitation to share to people inside or outside your company. This allows those selected to view the shared calendar in their own calendar viewer. Alternatively, Outlook offers the option of publishing your calendar as a website.

4. Enter email recipient and submit release invitation: Enter your intended recipient’s email address. If necessary, you can also add a personal message to your invitation.
   
   If you would like to request a calendar share from you intended recipient at the same time, you can tick the checkbox.

A recipient who receives a sharing invitation by email just needs to click the “Open Calendar” button to include the sharing calendar in their own calendar list.

The drop-down menu will show you the feature “Publish to WebDav Server…” Select this.

Even older versions of Outlook’s email and groupware program allow you to share calendar information with other people.

Microsoft is fundamentally redesigning the desktop application interface every time it releases a new version of the program. However, the “Share Calendar” feature has been available in every version of Outlook from 2007. The prerequisite is that software should be used in combination with an exchange server. We have summarised the click paths for sharing the default calendar in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 below.

1. In the navigation area on the right-hand side, click the “Calendar” button to switch to calendar view.
2. Switch to the “Folder” tab using the menu bar.
3. Click “Share Calendar”.
4. Make sure that the “Allow Recipients to View your Calendar” folder option is selected.
5. Enter the recipient’s email address.
6. If necessary, complete the invitation to share by adding a personal note to the email.
7. Click “Send”.

1. Click the “Calendar” button on the right side of the navigation bar to switch to calendar view.
2. Under “My Calendars”, select the default calendar named “Calendar”. The navigation bar displays seven blue links that allow you to perform various actions.
3. Select the “Share Calendar” link. Outlook 2007 opens a new message window and attaches the sharing invitation.
4. Make sure that the “Allow Recipients to View your Calendar” folder option is selected.
5. Enter the recipient’s email address.
6.  If necessary, complete the release invitation with a personal note in the email.  
7.  Click “Send”.

In both versions of Outlook, the sharing invitation contains the calendar information as an .ics file. This allows the recipient to add the shared calendar to their own Outlook Calendar list. Note: ICS files are only supported on Outlook 2007.

Outlook 2007 and 2010 also make it possible to then adjust or deactivate calendar shares using the “Calendar Authorisations” button.

5. Send approval invitation: Click on “Share” to send an email with the invitation to share.

The recipient has the option of viewing the shared calendar online, or downloading it using a URL as an ICS file and then adding it to their personal calendar view in Outlook or another email program.