Outlook 2003 - How Do I Share My Calendar with Others?

Many times in the corporate world users will want to collaborate with each other and share resources, well in Outlook 2003 the most commonly asked thing in the office where I work is how can I share my calendar with so and so? So to make this easy on them and others looking to share their calendar I thought I would write this easy to follow tech article to explain just how to share calendars among users in Outlook 2003.

First of course you have to open your Outlook 2003 and get to the main screen, which typically opens in the Mail folder option. The next step is to open the Calendar option which is a button on the left hand pane of the Outlook 2003 program, amazingly named Calendar. Once you have this opened there are a few links in the left hand pane window these links are blue and should say "Open a shared Calendar" and "Share my Calendar", you of course will want to click on "Share my calendar". This will open a new window labeled Calendar Properties and should be at the Permissions tab. If it's not in the permissions tab then simply click on that tab and let's add a user to our access list.

Once in the Permissions tab there should be a button "Add" in about the middle of the window. If you click on this then it will open the Exchange Directory and you can search for the user or users you want to add to the sharing of your calendar. Once you have found the user you are looking for you will want to click the Add button at the bottom of this window, you will see it adds their name to the text box where it says Add users. You can add all of the users you want to allow access to your calendar by going through and adding them using the above mentioned method. Once you are done adding users click OK.

Now you will be sent back to the Calendar Properties window in the Permissions tab, in here we will want to click on the first user that was added and we will now set their permissions to your calendar. This is important because you might only want to allow users to see your calendar and not actually change it in any way. If that is the case then in the permission settings only check the box that says Read Items, this will give them access to see your calendar and nothing more, they won't be able to edit your calendar in any way.

Now if you want the users to have more permissions you will need to add permissions that apply to the user, if you want them to have full control over your calendar simply check all the boxes or use the drop down labeled "Permission Level" and just set them to Owner. Now this user can do what ever they want to your calendar.

This all can come in handy if you have an assistant or someone who plans your day and schedule events for you, they can access your calendar and add the events and you will be notified without having to do anything. This is a very common practice for secretaries and assistants to gain access to their boss's calendar so they can control all of the calendars functions.

You can also make one calendar and give everyone in the office access to it, allow all users to edit the calendar and see the calendar so everyone knows what is going on at the office and when they need to be where. This also allows users to collaborate with each other easily and effectively.

Now if you want simple steps to do this quickly without a lot of reading here they are

1. Open Outlook
2. Click the Calendar Tab
3. Click Blue Link "Share My Calendar"
4. In Permissions Tab Click Add
5. Add all users needed to view Calendar
6. Click OK
7. Click on first users name, set permissions using drop down boxes or check boxes
8. Repeat step 7 for all users
9. Click OK
10. Now have users open the shared Calendar

I hope this helps you with sharing your Calendar with other users so that you can more easily collaborate and get things done in the office.