How to share outlook calendar

Many of my clients are small organizations that use Microsoft Outlook as a personal information management tool for email, calendar, and contact management. Sometimes there is a need to share Outlook calendars.

Some users come from larger organizations where Microsoft Exchange Server supported things like sharing calendars, and out-of-office messages. What these users didn't see was the high cost to purchase Exchange, and the high resource cost of managing and maintaining Exchange Server.

So, what can a smaller organization do to share outlook calendar without Exchange? There are a number of solution options to satisfy this need, ranging from expensive and complicated, to less costly and slightly less difficult to manage, or you can share your calendar free and with an easy to manage method.

Somehow I knew you would prefer this option. Microsoft has created a useful video that gives an overview of three ways to share your Outlook calendar. The first method involves Exchange. The other two methods are discussed here.

1. Publish your calendar (online with a free Office Live account) and invite users to view your calendar directly in their Outlook.
2. Send your calendar by email. This for one shot sharing for any Email recipient, and better when the recipient also uses Outlook.

These procedures for sharing an Outlook calendar are fully supported in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.

1. The first thing you need is a Windows Live ID account. You may already have one if you have a Hotmail, MSN, or other Windows log in. This account allows you to use Live as the store and forward agent for calendar sharing. They receive and hold your calendar till it is downloaded to the person(s) you specified for sharing. You only need to do this step once. After you create the account, an Email will be sent to you asking you to validate (confirm) the Email address you used.
2. Next you need to right click on the calendar you want to share, and select "Publish My Calendar". Select the published calendar options. The initial upload of your calendar takes place next.
   
3. After your calendar is published, you get an opportunity to share the calendar. You will enter the Email address of the target Outlook user.

See the screen shots below.

Some considerations to be aware of with Outlook calendar sharing:

• Read only - the shared calendar is read only. The person you share with cannot add to or change your schedule.This is a one way share.
  
• Details can be controlled. The shared calendar can show you as busy or open for a time period; no schedule details can be seen. Or you can share all of the appointment details.
• Calendar range - you decide if history is shown and how far into the future to show. The default is 30 days prior to the publish date, and sixty days after.
  
• One shot or continuous - The Advanced settings window allows you to send a calendar one time, or have your ongoing calendar sent.
• Update schedule - you can't change this as it is a system consideration. The update schedule usually works out to at least hourly. Just remember that it is not an instant update.
  

If you need to share a specific day or date range to somebody and are not interested in ongoing sharing use this option. The recipient does not need to use Outlook to get this one time calendar share.

• Right click on the calendar you want to share by Email.
• An Email form is started, and an options selection window is opened.
• Chose: today or a date range; how much information to send.
• Select the Email address and send.

See the screen shots below.

You can set up an out-of-office message within your Microsoft Outlook.

You should make a regular backup of your Outlook personal folders (pst file); the pst file holds all of your important data.

You can make a copy of your Outlook contacts, to share or move to another copy of Outlook or to use in a database.

Five tips for managing calendars in Outlook 2010 from TechRepublic.