Sharing Your Calendar with Others

Calendar sharing won't work for about half of all Outlook users because it works only with Exchange Server accounts. SharePoint services enable you to add a read-only copy of a SharePoint calendar to Outlook, but if you don't have Exchange or SharePoint services (including WSS), you can't easily share calendars with other people.

If you use Exchange Server, click on Open a Shared Calendar in the Navigation Pane. You'll add a SharePoint calendar from the portal Web page, not from Outlook.

Exchange Server users can view other people's calendars only when they have permission to both the mailbox and the calendar folder. To change the permissions on a mailbox, right-click the top level of the mailbox (where Outlook Today is), choose Properties, and then select the Permissions tab. Repeat for the Calendar folder.

After you add a shared calendar to your Calendar view, you can view any or all calendars. Add a check to the box beside the calendar in the Navigation Pane to show the calendar; uncheck the box to remove it from the view. To remove the calendar from the Navigation Pane, right-click on the calendar and choose Remove f rom Shared Calendars.

Only the Day/Week/Month views will show multiple calendars side-by-side. Any other view style displays only one calendar at a time.

If you don't use Exchange Server or SharePoint and need to share your calendar, there isn't any easy way to do it. If you need to share only a few items, sending them as iCalendar or vCalendar works well. Choose A ctions, Forward as iCa l endar or A ctions, For w ard after selecting or opening a calendar item. If the recipient receives the calendar item as a message, you'll need to use RTF formatting as discussed earlier in this hour .

When you know you want to share an item with someone as you're creating it, create a meeting request and uncheck A ctions, Reques t Responses.

Forward several calendar items in one message by selecting them, and then choosing the A ctions, For w ard or Forward as iCa l endar menu option. The recipient can drag the items from the message to the calendar.

You can find other techniques for sharing calendars without an Exchange Server at http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/share.htm.