About
How to create a calendar in Microsoft Outlook to share with others so they can also make changes, and publish the calendar so others can subscribe to it.
Who is this for?
Working groups who need a way to collaboratively organise meetings and other activities and share that information widely to the community.
Anyone who wants to publish a calendar to enable others to subscribe and be automatically updated on changes to the calendar.
What are the requirements to do this?
Creating a calendar requires a Microsoft outlook account, such as an Office365 account that are often provided by employers.
Accessing a shared calendar also requires a Microsoft outlook account.
Subscribing to the calendar feed is open to anyone: this functionality is supported by all major software platforms (see How to I subscribe to a calendar feed).
How do I create a calendar?
In the web version of outlook follow the instructions under “Create a new calendar”
It may say “create blank calendar”, in which case use that option.
How do I publish a calendar?
Follow the instructions under “Publish your calendar”:
As of 16th May 2023 this looks like so:
The most useful link is ICS, as this allows anyone with the link to subscribe to your feed.
Do I need to share my calendar? How do I do it?
You only need to share your calendar if you have to collaborate with others in curating the content of the calendar, e.g. the co-chairs of a working group may all need to have the ability to alter the calendar to share the burden, or make changes in a timely manner.
There is extensive documentation on calendar sharing in Outlook: there are multiple ways to set sharing on a calendar, which can be confusing, but the information to be entered is the same.
To keep it simple and consistent, follow the same instructions as above to access the Shared Calendars settings, and under “Share a calendar” select the calendar you created and need to share, and in the dialogue enter the email address of each of the people you need to share with, select “Can edit” and click “Share”:
If you only have two options: “Can view when I’m busy” and “Can view event titles and location” then it means you are trying to share a calendar with someone outside your organisation and that is not permitted by the configuration of your Outlook service.
Limitations
There are limits to what information is exposed in a calendar subscription. For example notes and alerts are not shared in the feed.
It is possible to include a video conference link by adding it to the location field, e.g.
