How to Share Your Calendar in New Outlook

Discover how sharing your calendar in New Outlook can boost team productivity, transparency, and streamline scheduling

Reading time: 4 Minutes

I’m lucky, I’ve always worked in small focused teams with a core set of common goals and interests. In those tight-knit communities it's great to use the tools you have to work around each over and keep up-to-date without the constant need to check in.

Something I’m always valued is sharing my Outlook calendar with close colleagues, I find it can significantly improve coordination and productivity with coworkers.

Why share your calendar?

Here are the reasons why I think sharing your calendar is a great idea:

• Improved Scheduling: When everyone can see each other's availability (what they’ve got on – not just when their busy), scheduling meetings becomes a breeze.
• Transparency: Sharing calendars creates culture of transparency and trust. Team members can see each other's workloads and commitments. Cue a bit of empathy maybe?
• Efficient Time Management: Knowing when your colleagues are planning tasks and projects ensures that you can align your work with theirs, leading to more coordinated efforts.
• Meeting Deadlines: With better visibility of each other's schedules, teams can plan ahead, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure deadlines are met.

Six months ago, I adopted ‘new Outlook’ – don’t hate me, but I quite like it… now 😁, after a period of finding my feet. I recently wanted to share my calendar with Scott, and realised I had no idea how to do this in the new Outlook. I figured it out so thought I’d share it with you!

How to Share Your Outlook Calendar in New Outlook

Sharing your calendar in New Outlook is straightforward.

Here’s the steps I followed to share my calendar with Megan (Note: all content is fictitious!)

1. Open Outlook and go to calendar
2. Click on the calendar you want to share in the navigation pane
3. Select Share from the menu at the top

4. Enter the email addresses of the colleagues you want to share your calendar with (I added Megan’s) and be aware that the people you add here, will receive a sharing invitation via an e-mail too.

5. Choose the level of details you’d like to share:

• Can view when I’m busy (only shows if you are free or busy)
• Can view titles and locations (shows titles and locations of your events)
• Can view all details (shows all details of your events)
• Can edit (make changes to your calendar)
• Delegate (manage your calendar on your behalf)

6. Click Share to send the invitation

When someone shares a calendar with you

Here are the steps that Megan took:

1. She received my request to share my calendar via an e-mail from myself, and she then clicked Accept

2. She then opened her calendar in Outlook and clicked Add calendar, then Add from directory

• Megan chose her account to search from (it was the only option)
• Added my name to search for
• Selected to add to ‘People’s calendar’

3. Finally, she clicked Add
4. My calendar appeared in the People’s calendars list. Here you can see mine and Megan’s calendar side-by-side, but you can also do overlay.

Privacy Settings

It's important to note that any events you mark as private will only show as busy time. This means the details of the event will remain hidden, ensuring your personal appointments stay confidential.

I hope you find this helpful and maybe start sharing your calendar with your colleagues to reap the benefits of better coordination and productivity.

Do let me know if you have any other tips or experiences you'd like to share about using new Outlook. We always love hearing your thoughts and suggestions.

Matthew

Matthew Burrell is a consultant at Your 365 Coach

Published 9 October 2024

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